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High-end DIY bookshelves?

gn77b

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Oct 30, 2020
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Long story short, I built speakers in the past, I have the tools and the knowledge, access to shops with CNC machines etc. Being short of time and not that willing to turn my house into a workshop as I once was, I want to try a pre-existing design and only take care of the building part. My goal is to satisfy my curiosity: is it possible to achieve the sound quality of commercial upper range booksleves with DIY? Important: I already own a commercial system which satisfies me, this is purely an experiment, but if it turns out sucessfully they could become my main speakers. I thought about Zaph's ZD5 but then found the negative review of his ZA5.2 speakers here on ASR and thought hold your horses gn77b. Or maybe something from Troels Gravesen? Or anything else. For some reason I've grown to dislike floorstanders but I'm willing to make a compromise if it's worth it. So I'm open to suggestions.
 


 
Talking about Germany, I built these a long time ago https://www.visaton.de/en/products/2-way-speakers/alto-ii

For the price very respectable sound, I'd recommend them for someone on a budget any day. Nothing wow by any means but very balanced, not too much of one thing and not enough of another. Which got me curious of their more expensive designs. Unfortunately they don't have any bookshelves that appear to be capable of full range sound, all of them are small boxes with small mid-bass units. I'll check your links out, thanks.
 
This speakers will be available as a DIY-Kit too without the biggest model though:

 
I'm not looking necessarily at a kit, I can build them myself from scratch, I'm just not willing to design them myself as it's time and energy consuming. What I'm looking for are tried and tested (auditioned) designs.
 
 
Interesting design. The tweeter reminded me of a kit I built for a friend and it seems still have the pics, it was the Seas Idunn. I remember it sounding nice but not really wow. OTON that was 13 years ago.
 
I owned the Zaph ZA5 speakers for years. They are very good and the measurements support this, regardless of the subjective portion of the review on this site.

Their primary issue is lack of bass depth. If you have a subwoofer or two they could be extremely enjoyable.

I also own CSS 1TD-X. It’s a great kit - very nice sound, no sub required. They recently released a waveguide version of their tweeter. It wouldn’t surprise me if some new kits were coming that are using it. This, plus some round overs on the edges of the cabinets could potentially take their performance to a very high level (although I am speculating).
 
Long story short, I built speakers in the past, I have the tools and the knowledge, access to shops with CNC machines etc. Being short of time and not that willing to turn my house into a workshop as I once was, I want to try a pre-existing design and only take care of the building part. My goal is to satisfy my curiosity: is it possible to achieve the sound quality of commercial upper range booksleves with DIY? Important: I already own a commercial system which satisfies me, this is purely an experiment, but if it turns out sucessfully they could become my main speakers. I thought about Zaph's ZD5 but then found the negative review of his ZA5.2 speakers here on ASR and thought hold your horses gn77b. Or maybe something from Troels Gravesen? Or anything else. For some reason I've grown to dislike floorstanders but I'm willing to make a compromise if it's worth it. So I'm open to suggestions.
I have had pretty good success with Paul Carmody's Speedster design. I've build pairs for my summer house and a family member. I haven't seen measurements for them beyond what is displayed here:
https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/bookshelf-speakers/speedster
 
My goal is to satisfy my curiosity: is it possible to achieve the sound quality of commercial upper range booksleves with DIY?

This is already answered, and it's yes. I wager this isn't really your actual goal and if it is, you can just stop now before building. I would not expect any sort of revelation to be had here.
 
Paul Carmody Carrera - Revelator & Hiquphon (on his website)

Joachim Gerhardt Kalasan - Satori Drivers (thread on diyaudio.com)
 
This is already answered, and it's yes. I wager this isn't really your actual goal and if it is, you can just stop now before building. I would not expect any sort of revelation to be had here.
Were you on your psychedelics when you replied? I'd be interested in dose price vs soudstage width ratio.
 

This measures damn well and it's surprisingly cheap. You could get the cabinets cut somewhere and it would be almost as straightforward as a kit.

However, I would say in 2024, the really meaty DIY jobs would use a 3D printed waveguide, a purifi midwoofer, and an active DSP design probably using a Hypex Fusion amp. If you poke around on DIYAudio.com you'll find a handful of builds that compete with basically anything you can buy commercially. Not cheap by any means, but you can get TOTL bookshelf performance via DIY this way.

On the other hand, by the time you're done, you will spend a bit more than a KH120II costs and probably only come out way ahead on distortion, if anything. So as others have said it's not a no-brainer value prop.
 
Purifi is moving forward, including an upcoming tweeter. They have shown a reference design.https://purifi-audio.com/blog/tech-notes-1/spk16-reference-design-12.

It is a bigger speaker, I have not heard of a test but Present Day Productions MUM-8 has published enough information that it probably could be duplicated.

I would simplify the design with a sealed box.
 
I was going to suggest the Mechano23 as well but @kemmler3D beat me to it. The suggestion to check out DIYaudio is a good one as well.
 
I've been running Zaph's SR-71 design for many years now as my primary set of speakers and they have made me very, very, very happy. Sufficient bass, which should address Amir's complaint about the Zaph 5.2 design. There's a kit from Madisound with pre-built crossovers that I would definitely advise you to do.

The Mark K Seas ER18DXT design that @digitalfrost linked to shares the SR-71 woofer, and may well be superior if you believe the rumors. I've been getting around to building the Mark K design for a long time, this may finally be the year. To be clear I've not heard the Mark K design. Also, I can't quite get clear what the heck the cabinet dimensions are supposed to be. I could seriously use help here!

I've built two pairs of Paul Carmody's Speedsters, and they seem good, but I have the pair that I didn't give as a gift as a bedroom set that doesn't get a lot of use, and when they do get used I'm playing thunderstorm recordings to go to sleep to. So my opinion is a lot less informed than it should be given that I have built two pairs. It may not be fair, but I always worry Carmody is not as concerned as Zaph and others with accuracy. You can find unpopulated circuit boards for the Speedster crossovers on EBay, which is super helpful and definitely worth doing. I'd like to say they have pretty good bass for the size, but I'm corner loading them in a small room on dressers so I don't feel like that's a fair and unbiased assessment. Definitely a design I was glad to have CNC help for on the baffle.

I'm still building the Mechano23, but I drilled through a $0.40 resistor and now am waiting for a replacement, so no opinion there yet.
 

This measures damn well and it's surprisingly cheap. You could get the cabinets cut somewhere and it would be almost as straightforward as a kit.

However, I would say in 2024, the really meaty DIY jobs would use a 3D printed waveguide, a purifi midwoofer, and an active DSP design probably using a Hypex Fusion amp. If you poke around on DIYAudio.com you'll find a handful of builds that compete with basically anything you can buy commercially. Not cheap by any means, but you can get TOTL bookshelf performance via DIY this way.

On the other hand, by the time you're done, you will spend a bit more than a KH120II costs and probably only come out way ahead on distortion, if anything. So as others have said it's not a no-brainer value prop.
Yeah, I'm absolutely aware that it's not cheap. Thing is, take for instance the Seas Idunn kit I mentioned above that I built for a friend. At the time I owned Dynaudio Audience 52 s which were almost their lowest level speakers at the time but the Seas sounded inferior in bass and that with a box 2x the size. TBH the best overall DIY speaker I built was the Visaton one I mentioned above because while it wasn't great by any means it didn't suck in any way. My theory is that commercial speakers go through a lot of trial and error before they reach a balance that's acceptable at a certain price point. So this has been in the back of my mind: is there a DIY speaker that is simply not great, but GREAT?

Anyway, don't mind me, I'm just thinking out loud.
 
...is it possible to achieve the sound quality of commercial upper range booksleves with DIY?
Yes, it is possible.

If this is your goal, don't build a budget DIY speaker. I love high value builds, but if you are trying to see what you can achieve in a DIY speaker, build a premium one. (This doesn't mean it had to be crazy expensive.)

I may have missed it, but what is you're budget?
 
Yes, it is possible.

If this is your goal, don't build a budget DIY speaker. I love high value builds, but if you are trying to see what you can achieve in a DIY speaker, build a premium one. (This doesn't mean it had to be crazy expensive.)

I may have missed it, but what is you're budget?
Good question, maybe EUR 1000 in drivers alone?

Definitely not aiming for a budget design. Oh and one more thing, even though I want to try a bookshelf, by my definition lack of acceptable bass extension is a show stopper. All my commercial bookshelves had more than enough of it. OTOH bass alone doesn't make a speaker great, obviously.
 
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