building my own speakers

[dystrother]

its come across me that like building a computer, building speakers might get me exactly what i want for a better deal. the guy named florian on here brought this to my attention, so thanks to him. The thing is, i know a ton about building speakers, all i know is itll get me a better deal. Im looking to build a pair of bookshelf speakers. I dont know exactly what i want them to do(other than sound perfect) but i have about 200 to spend. So...suggestions? what am i looking for? (i live in a dorm) and i want these to one day convert into surrounds. Also, where will i get the best deal?

[kexodusc]

Can you build your own cabinets? If you don't have the tools or know someone who does, then you're left with buying a complete kit or pre-made cabinets.
Not to worry as there's still some great options out there for $200.

You might get better luck in the Tweaks, Mods, and DIY forum too, that's where most speaker building questions show up....

[N. Abstentia]

Personally I think it's hard to beat the $99 Athenas at Audio Advisor. You sure couldn't build them for $99, especially since you live in a dorm and I'm assuming you don't have a woodshop at your disposal.

[Woochifer]

Man, you're just going all over the place! Yesterday, you were asking about online vendors, and now you're looking to build your own speakers?

My question to you is how many stores have you visited, and how many speakers have you actually had a chance to listen to? You first need to assess whether the prefinished speakers in those stores at the $200 price point deliver good enough performance to suit your listening preferences, before you go about a DIY project. If you like what you hear from the speakers in your price range, then you obviously haven't exhausted all your options. If everything that you hear is lacking and you can't afford to move up to a higher price point, then the DIY and second hand options are more attractive.

Most people I know who build their own speakers have generally owned multiple sets of speakers before, and went the DIY route because they want to control the performance parameters around what they want in a speaker. And indeed, there's a price value component to consider as well.

DIY is a good avenue for getting more performance for the price, but if you've never handled a soldering iron before and have no experience with woodworking, the project can backfire on you. Also, you'll have no idea how the speaker sounds until you actually build it. And as I said before, speakers are the most subjective component in an audio system. What sounds like the last word in musical reproduction to one listener might sound like crap to someone else. DIY speakers are no different in this respect. One of my former roommates had multiple sets of DIY speakers scattered around the house, and was constantly redesigning and rebuilding them. To my ears, all of them sounded worse than the $150 bookshelf speakers that I was using.