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Joseph Oberlander wrote:

Nousaine wrote:

What the DIY producer can do .... is make cabinetry that is elegant, unique
and
magnificently finished. There's nothing wrong with that but, after
building,
measuring and listening to hundreds of OEM and DIY full range and satellite
speakers over the years I can think of exactly 2 that could not be equalled
or
bettered by a commerical product for significantly less money.

And here we disagree. With enough time, testing, and tweaking of
the design, a DIYer can easily equal the low-end offerings from
most every manufacturer.

IME that is simply not the case. And I'm a big DIY fan but quite frankly very,
very few DIY projects sound as good as a Paradigm Titan. One of the big limits
is buying drivers one or two at a time and having the facilities to verify
actual performance and no ability to build or order to spec.

Also, designs and plans for older speakers from the 80s and 90s are
available,

So? who cares? And exactly how do you get modern drive units with the same
electrical/acoustical performance?

as well as several major manufacturers that offer kit
versions of their high-end speakers.

From a manufacturer I'd be guessing that you'll get out-of-spec parts for the
kit version. OTOH the kits from TAE and Madisound that are based on D'Appolito
designs are more sure bets.

All of this data gets absorbed
and passed around. A decade ago, The Web was in its infancy. Now,
it facilitates the exchange of this data to such an extent that a
smart DIYer can start up their own speaker business and do well
enough.

As was true in the 70-80s. Legacy was started in a garage. The 'tale of the
tape' in that era was that in the "Audio" Equipment Annual there were 300
speaker manufacturers listed every year but only a third of them made it from
year to year. This was because a 'speaker" business was so easy to 'start.'

A few local customers/dealers, a day-job and a little extra cash would get you
going as long as you were making speakers in small batches. But the pitfalls
were a good review somewhere with exploding demand that couldn't be met or,
more likely, acquistion of production facilities and inventory on the 'bet'
that demand would continue to grow by 100% every year for a long time;
forgetting that 1 to 2 units, 2 to 4 units and 4 to 8 units is not the same as
100,000 to 200,000.

Take KEF or B&W or Tannoy. A pair of MXm-2s doesn't have any magic
happening in the cabinet - it's a rectangular box with a few
tweaks to improve the bass since it's ported. The technology,
other than the shielding, is well-understood 1980's designing.

Contrary to popular belief, the big companies don't spend very
much if any time developing their lower-end "budget" models.
Certainly nothing that a DIYer with enough time and patience
couldn't do.

Certainly "could" do but in my experience seldom do .... unless they have
access to professional expertise and validation equipment. Actually that's
exactly why clubs like PSACS and SMWTMS were formed and wildly successful ....
to pool resources so that amateurs could have access to professional experts
and equipment that few could afford themselves.

It's on that basis that I say that remarkably few DIY projects equal the level
of sonic excellence attained by the better speaker companies at ANY price
level. I will concede that DIY projects often equal or better the more pathetic
"high-end" speakers.

And it's certainly true that with amplifiers a DIY project can fully equal
commercial product. But in the latter regard it's simply just cheaper and
easier to buy a good amplifier.

Let me take this on another tangent. With my custom subwoofer I knew that I was
going to need substantial EQ at 10-12 Hz. My choices were to build a simple
dedicated fixed EQ ... or simply buy a Symmetrix 551E 5-band parametric
equalizer ($250 street price) which would already have a professional-grade
case, could be used in related projects if needed, would probably have a resale
value and save me some time.

It was easier, faster and only moderately more expensive to just buy the
function I wanted than to DIY it.

The guy who runs Ellis Audio has been at it for several years and
has easily more man-hours than KEF would spend on a comparable
sounding speaker. KEF would of course have several people working
for a few months on the design versus his several years by himself.

This is just a guess on your part. Furthermore the KEF engineers won't have to
spend time answering the phone and cleaning the bathrooms either.

And I question the "several years" assumption. If a speaker designer spent
years on a design how did he manage to eat during that time? Day-Job? Oh well
then he really didn't spend years then?

And isn't 3-months from 8 engineers still 2 man years?