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DIY audio, where to get started?

fpitas

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The latter's easy -- build it to satisfy for a lifetime.
And/or use components with baked-in resale value.



Heh -- we really should work on coordinating our posts better.:D
Right?
 

fpitas

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In a world where big horn speakers were common and companies were looking for engineers, I would have signed up. In a world where Bose cubes are the norm and Altec is plastic computer speakers, I got a real job.
 

mhardy6647

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Maybe we should go on the road! Like Hope & Crosby...
Bob_Hope_and_Bing_Crosby_in_Road_to_Bali-e1614101288630.jpg
 

fpitas

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Hillard 511.jpg


Hilliard 511 Also.jpg


These guys knew DIY!

/Yeah, Hilliard may have had a few engineers to help ;)



hilliard diag.jpg
 

hex168

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I agree that cost-effectiveness of DIY is not there for standard mainstream speakers.* However, if you want something a little unusual, DIY is the way to go. Examples not well served by the market at the mass-produced (tens of thousands of units) cost -effective level:
*Compared to ASR recommended speakers; see ASR and Erinsaudiocorner speaker reviews. However, a lower bar is to beat an average speaker; also see ASR and Erinsaudiocorner speaker reviews.
 

fpitas

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The problem with these built-in installations is you have to design in the positioning and the sweet spot is forever fixed.
Well, the house was owned by Altec as a place to entertain movie producers etc.
 

DonR

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Well, the house was owned by Altec as a place to entertain movie producers etc.
If they are entertaining movie producers, a pair of Insignia computer speakers should do the trick, going by recent movie sound tracks that I have heard.
 

fpitas

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If they are entertaining movie producers, a pair of Insignia computer speakers should do the trick, going by recent movie sound tracks that I have heard.
I'll note that Altec eventually got bought by a Chinese firm who punch out nasty computer speakers.
 

MRC01

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As @sergeauckland and @mhardy6647 suggest, getting a DIY kit is a good way to get started. JDS has a kit for their 3-band EQ; I built it last year, it was a fun, easy project, good one for beginners. And a high quality piece of kit. Many moons ago I built a phono amp from the DACT CT-100 board. It turned out to be a truly SOTA head amp with fully adjustable gain, balance, loading, so it can be configured to drive any cartridge. I also built my own passive attenuator, which served me well for nearly 20 years before selling it, and it's still in service.

Yeah so DIY can be fun, it's definitely educational, and you can build good quality stuff. It may or may not be less expensive, depending on the path you take.
 

DVDdoug

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Chuck,

What kind of projects are you thinking about? Do you know any electronics?

TI has all kinds of chips that make it fairly easy to make a preamp, headphone amp, or low-to-medium power amplifier. But a lot of "modern" chips are surface mount with close-pitch pins make it difficult for hobbyists. ...You can still get a pretty-good selection of chips in DIP packages.

Speakers are the easiest thing to build. You don't necessarily have to do "furniture quality" woodwork or finishing. I cover most of my speakers with leather-look vinyl (like most guitar amps, except I usually use brown whereas most guitar amps are wrapped in black vinyl).

One time I built particle board speakers and then used a woodgrain kit to make it look like walnut.

Up to a point you can build a speaker more economically than you can buy one. When you get into high-end speakers you probably can't match what you can buy.

You do need some space for woodworking and it helps if you have a guide for your saw so you can make straight cuts. It's also helpful to have a jigsaw or router with a circle-cutting jig.

Or, some people use all kinds of things to easily make a speaker "cabinet"... A bucket, or barrel, or a pipe, or almost anything to control/contain the soundwaves from the back of the speaker.

You can find some good speaker kits but I don't know of any "good" (and complete) electronics kits. I remember seeing Heathkit amplifiers and they looked and functioned as good as anything you could buy but they have been out of business for a long time.

It seems like lot of people are building music streamers around the Raspberry Pi.


...I don't build anything electronic anymore unless it's something I can't buy. Most electronics is made on automated assembly lines with cheap labor, and very little labor. Any special-custom parts (like the case/cabinet and front panel) are also manufactured in quantities that allow better than DIY quality/appearance at lower than DIY cost.

And there are things you simply can't build yourself... You can build your own smart phone and I think you need a license before you can buy Dolby or DTS decoder chips or anything related to (copy protected) HDMI.
 

fpitas

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Gorgonzola

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Perhaps this?

Jim
I think yours is a good suggestion about Akitika.

I've been eyeing the Akitika PR102 preamp: $500 in kit form -- or $700 assembled. But given my 50/50 success record assembling electronic kits I realize that the extra 200 bucks might be well-spent. :(
 

Timcognito

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DIY is the means not the end like any hobby or pastime. But once started can the the source much satisfaction and better yet learning. In rare cases it can reveal ingenuity and even rarer genius. Or you can just buy the shit.
 

kemmler3D

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I think the budget aspect of DIY is pretty hard to do unless you go high-end. At least, I'm hoping so? I've never built a speaker at home, but I'm eyeing some purifi drivers and hypex plate amps for a "maximum overkill" type of project... would be about $3K all-in and I'm hoping to get close to the $5-10K performance band in SOME aspects. I am not foolish enough to think I can beat a (say) KH420 with off-the-shelf parts.

However, I tend to agree that it's FAR from an easy way to beat commercial offerings. If someone dropped some random drivers and a mic on your lap and said "hey, design a cabinet and crossover for these", would you be confident in knowing what to do from there? If not, you are limited to kits with good instructions, or you are facing a long climb up the learning curve before you have speakers you like.

Some of the more expensive kits are supposed to be competitive with commercial performance, but the actual cost vs. buying commercial really depends on how much you spend building the cabinet, (read: shop around for the wood and do the woodworking yourself, or the cost goes $$$$) and at the low-to-mid end (say <$1000) it's very hard to beat commercial value.

All that said, I would agree that learning about speaker building is a great way to learn about audio in general. If you can build a speaker and speak to all the design choices, you can also speak confidently about speakers in general, which means you're going to do very well in your purchasing decisions in the future. Or, you picked up a cool (?) new hobby. Or both.

Personally I think DIYing electronics is an even worse value proposition, but if you are into electronics and enjoy the satisfaction of DIY, it's very popular over at DIYaudio.com - which is where you should *literally* start. :)
 

fpitas

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All that said, I would agree that learning about speaker building is a great way to learn about audio in general. If you can build a speaker and speak to all the design choices, you can also speak confidently about speakers in general, which means you're going to do very well in your purchasing decisions in the future.
Reality: 99% of the time you walk away aghast that an engineer would do something like that.
 

kemmler3D

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99% of the time you walk away aghast that an engineer would do something like that.
If that's your reaction, the engineer was probably designing for manufacturing or cost, not sound quality. In general I would say cost and manufacturability dominate design choices in audio below the absolute top tiers.
 

fpitas

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If that's your reaction, the engineer was designing for manufacturing or cost, not sound quality. In general I would say cost and manufacturability dominate design choices in audio below the absolute top tiers.
Or for some bizarre high-end sound, like the lemons we see reviewed here.
 

kemmler3D

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Or for some bizarre high-end sound, like the lemons we see reviewed here.
In those cases I would maybe call it "artistic expression" and not "engineering" since there's no theory or performance target guiding the inputs and outputs... :D
 

gene_stl

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View attachment 247989

View attachment 247990

These guys knew DIY!

/Yeah, Hilliard may have had a few engineers to help ;)



View attachment 247992
One of my previous houses had a built in system like that built by an engineer. When I saw it I knew the house was for us. He used a bedroom as a woofer enclosure. The mono system was designed into the original blueprints of the house.


I think you can learn a whole lot by DIY. If you don't want to accept the often corrupted word of salespeople at stores you have to know the answers yourself. It is a shame that there aren't any companies like Dyna or Heathkit anymore although for audio purposes you can get almost the same from Akitika , Neurochrome, and Hypex among many others. My advice to the OP is go for it. Buy a bunch of Velleman type kits of graduated difficulty and teach yourself to read schematics and to solder.

I was very skilled in electronics when I got interested in audio but still took a couple of years of college electronics. I built a bunch of kits. When I wanted to build monster DIY speakers I found a new friend who had a wood shop with a very squared up table saw and lots of router skills We became best friends. First we built my speakers. Then I helped him design his.
 
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