Have done a little bit of surfing in DIY speaker areas. Have become interested in Dynaudio drivers and crossovers. Ran into a reference that these used to be available on the Dynaudio site but have been removed. Do any here know of a second party source for purchase?

Check out http://www.snippets.org/ldsg
The main suppliers for the US of raw speakers are Madisound, and Zolytron(sp?) and one more. The ldsg pages describe various aspects of DIY speakers, and where to get them It contains a massive amount of info, including some examples of which drivers end up in which speakers.

Its Zalytron not Zolatron. www.zalytron.com. Another good supplier is speaker city www.speakercity.com. Also GR Research.

The first thing you'll find in looking at drivers on these sites is the realization that the RETAIL cost of the raw drivers (and the OEMs don't pay anything like the prices we pay) in most finished speakers rarely exceeds 10% of the price of the speaker. This huge differential is of course due in part to the mark-ups in the trade. But to be fair to the higher-end speaker companies, what you are also paying for is (a) a highly engineered passive crossover network that is far superior to what even a knowledgeable hobbyist can achieve with the available home-level design programs and test equipment; (b) a cabinet that is more accurately cut, probably more aesthetic, but for GOOD speakers also highly designed. To use Linn as an example, most of their cabinets have angled sides. I'm convinced that this technique is a tremendous advantage, but its beyond the capabilities of 99% of even dedicated home woodworkers.

Having home-built several speaker pairs in the past, and having used a couple of kits recently to start building up my home theater system, I offer the following advice:

(1) Aside from truly exotic (i.e. $$$) stuff, the pros seem convinced that Focal / Audiom and Scan Speak currently make the best widely distributed drivers (plus Raven for tweeters, see below). Although driver preferences are highly subjective and DynAudio seems to have a number of devoted followers, my own ears say that the drivers mentioned above are considerably more accurate.
(2) The audio world is awash in decent bass and mid-bass drivers, but tweeters are another story. The ribbon tweeters from Raven and the higher end Focal / Audiom dome tweeters seem currently to be getting the nod from the pros - but at a price. In all but one of my home-built / kit-built systems, I have spent more on the tweeters than on the other drivers.
(3) Although Parts Express does offer generic crossovers that feature high-quality parts, the crossover design is the Achilles heel of both the home-built AND the kit speakers (although much more so for home-built than for kit). Smoothing out the impedance and balancing the SPL for the different drivers is highly specific to the attributes of the driver by model number.
(4) Especially with the widespread availability of decent-quality powered subs, I highly recommend that you stick to two-way systems for home-built or kit-built. (This designation refers to the crossover network and therefore includes the popular MTM designs).

For your laugh for today....
Typical me, I actually got my husband stirred for second over the sound system, when I mentioned you know if you built something it would be a lot cheaper and something to play with.

If you can time his need to build something which cycles…it gets him every time.

I told him I had fallen in love with the styling of a set of speakers I had run into at a boutique I went hunting on the web and found the set I saw, (when I saw them I didn’t know what they were..turns out I have good taste) And if we were to look into DIY, I’d want it to look like this:
http://www.dynaudiousa.com/products/evidence/temptation/temptovr.htm

The exterior he could do…it’s the interior that’s a problem. I think big don’t I.

Just a heads-up: aside from retailing at $30K/pair, these array-type speakers need a large listening area, note that the minimum recommended listening distance is 10 feet, and generally do better with greater than normal headroom (i.e. ceilings in excess of 8'). If your husband can machine aluminium to these types of specs, he's pretty skilled.

I’m really just showing off my ‘dream speaker’ but it did get me to wondering how much leeway there is in fitting your own setup into that cabinetry design.
I’m such a female putting the cart (cabinet) before the horse (crossovers, drivers, baffles etc). I can see at a glance into DIY why men can give their lives up to getting speakers right either as a profession or in their spare time. Simply discussing the exterior build or something extremely similar for a DIY, the husband stated if I wanted a cabinet [like that] he could build it but he’d do the Tweeter chamber in something like Corian milled to shape (including the hourglass tuck) he suggested Black/granite textured. This off the top of his head thinking of a material with density. I wondered if the designers might have chosen alum for its ability to quickly disperse heat or if it really even has any bearing other than ascetics on that line. Lots to think about. My husband doesn’t have the tools on-site to mill that thickness alum. A friend owns a fence company (machines fencing components), and has milled some exotic parts for various projects of his own over the years to extremely tight tolerances. I’d rather ask him and go for alum.

I noted the distance for an array of that size and have already begun to just ‘look at’ drivers. I see quickly you can spend thousands on the drivers and the particularly the Scan speak use in many reputable speakers already caught my eye. If the husband is truly interested, (he said if I did the footwork for components etc) I might aim towards a baby grand version. That speaker is my idea of stunning in the cabinetry department. Just reading when I can on DIY speakers should have a positive effect on my understanding in AV whether a project ever comes to fruition or not.

I wouldn't think you'd need aluminum. Some of this stuff is marketing hype. As long as the cabinet is sturdy (IE doesn't resonate at all) you could make it I think. I do think your underestimating the difficulty of building the crossover. I doubt all the like drivers are wired in simple parallel. One option you might want to consider is bi or tri-amping the speakers and then using something like the Behringer electronic xover. This removes any speaker interactions with the
crossover. Speakers are definitely not a 8 or 4 ohm resistive load. There are other advantages to driving the speaker directly by the amp, including.
No inductors. You just can't get as "ideal" of an inductor as you can a R or C.
The power levels in the electronic xover are lower, so higher precision parts can be used in the low level xover. Damping factor will be better. Even fantastic inductors in series with the woofers will have some resistance, degrading the amplifiers ability to control the cone.

More tweakable. The Behringer or other xover can twiddle with the crossover freq/amplitudes with a knob.

Downside of course of all of this is you need 6 channels of amps for stereo... What I think would be a really fantastic setup would be if Outlaw would dump out digital for all the channels with a protocol packet for volume. Then if they added a product that could eat the digital bit stream and cross it over to 3 channels with FIR filtering. Output that to a 3 channel amp and voila, a general purpose amplified crossover from direct digital inputs. Then either with an external box or internal processor, time align and frequency fix the three channels with a measurement microphone.
Probably better to do that external to avoid duplicating for each channel I know it sounds expensive... Think of the advantages. Each speaker has a power plug and a digital input (which could maybe even be wireless...)

Lena, you sure can pick 'em! For a long time, Dynaudio was selling their drivers to the "DIY" market. A few years ago, they pulled out. For some reason their drivers are still fairly sought after. Check Ebay some time, and you may see a pair or two here and there, and they get pretty good money for them. I've heard a few (DIY) systems using Dynaudio drivers, and they were good, but I've heard better. Depending on how much you want to spend on speakers, there are a lot of great driver manufacturers out there. Just last weekend we had a little get-together here in Iowa for local speaker builders. There were some really great designs there using some really nice drivers. Here are some of the impressions I have...

My personal experience was that I could tell the biggest difference between speakers in the highest frequencies, so my opinion is that the tweeters may make a bigger difference than the mid/woofers (assuming the woofers were also of high quality). I really like the Scan Speak tweeters. The Hiquiphon OWIII that I heard was also pretty nice. The Seas Millenium and Dynaudio D260 were also pretty nice, but didn't please my ear quite as much. Again, personal preference. I've never heard a ribbon tweeter, but everything I've heard about them indicates that they are hard to get right. I would think that because of their typical poor dispersion, they wouldn't be real good for HT use. (Some may be great for dedicated music listening...)

For midbass drivers, there are a lot of options. The Seas Excel drivers seem pretty nice to me. I think that any of the Scan Speak drivers would also be great. I've heard several Peerless, Vifa and Seas systems, and they all seem pretty decent on a cheaper budget.

For a wide variety of kits, check out the stuff on the Zalytron web site. *Most* of them were designed by some really great designers. I usually buy my parts from Parts Express, mostly because it's convenient and they have a pretty big selection. Madisound is probably one of the biggest speaker distributors in the US. They carry some stuff that Parts Express doesn't. They also have some design services, etc.

Check out Gonk's FAQ page. I think there are a bunch of links there to a variety of sources for parts and information. This is definitely a hobby that can consume a lot of time if you allow yourself to become addicted. Although a completely different subject matter, it has a way of pulling you in the way auto work does. For those that are a little technically minded, there's the intellectual side that is fascinating. For those that just like to turn wrenches, there's the "creation from nothing" factor that makes a person proud to say "I built that".

Jason

Stabie: you're quite right, a sturdy cabinet using a dense material such as MDF in sufficient thickness and both adqequately and correctly braced is nearly always good enough. Right again on the crossover / impedance: if you go beyond a two-way system, parallel wiring will usually take the effective impedance below what most amps can handle, in many multi-driver cases below what ANY amp can handle. And this goes to the nut on true bi/tri-amping (I say "true" which means low-level electronic crossover and discrete amps for each driver group as opposed to the phony bi-amping often used today where the same amp feeds signal to the crossover section for each driver group). I did true bi-amping on my first "serious" stereo system, and am unlikely to repeat. The gain in transparency and speed of response was audibly noticeable, but no driver is uniform throughout its frequency response or impedance. Practical meaning: truly bi or tri-amped systems will also reproduce the peaks and valleys in the response curves which a well-designed crossover will correct, and due to the impedance variations, a true bi or tri-amped system will be out of balance between driver SPLs at various points in the frequency response.

Lena: for most home apps with normal cubic spaces (in which I would include my own, even with an open plan and a 16 foot ceiling) I am not a fan of the large multi-array speakers such as your top of the line DynAudio (there are many others from which to choose). I would always choose a high-quality 2-4 driver design for sound preference and not just price performance. If you really want to test DIY, sticking to a limited number of drivers and a rpoven cabinet design is even more critical.

Jason: seems that we have similar opinions on driver suppliers, in particular that it is the tweeters that separate the wheat from the chaff. I've heard all of the main ribbon tweeters. The good ones such as Raven 9500 are MIGHTY sweet. Problem is that, to my ears, they are just not as seamless with conventional bass / mid-bass drivers comapred with high quality domes.

That statment made me think on a related topic, - I had noticed on quick surfing several nice DIY setups listed with selected drivers sourced from different manufactures.
I was wondering if it tames a variable to stick with one source for all drivers’ chosen and if this would help reduce some of the possible interactions.
I too felt the tweeter selection /resources allotment would have the largest impact. I envy the wide selection you have both heard. Thanks very much for all the info, sources and links to follow, - will be spending time in the future when available looking at all suggested.


[This message has been edited by Smart Little Lena (edited October 30, 2002).]

You will nearly always find frequency response curves and impedance curves for any reputable driver - either at the manufacturer's site or at the dealer's site (or both).

For more-than-2-way systems, sticking to not only the same manufacturer but the same family or line within that manufacturer will reduce your problems for the woofers and mid-woofers and their so-called "voicing" will be very similar. There is no particular advantage or disadvantage to mixing brands when it comes to tweeters versus the lower-frequency elements.

As a concluding note: yes, you can save money by buying a kit, but you cannot make a set of cheap drivers sound like a set of expensive drivers - paradoxically, that is exactly what some of the speaker companies do through their highly engineered systems.

Made me think of some trivia for the day for those intrigued by the history behind making music. I am fascinated by those ‘somethings’ which sometimes occur beyond a masterful design. The magical almost mystical mixes of serendipitous parts, which can affect sound, like the microorganisms, bacteria and fungal threads in some famous Cremonese wood.

I have always felt strongly that real life is stranger than fiction: For lovers of classical music. Did you know that Joshua Bell now owns "The Red Violin". He sold his 1732 Strad, the ‘Tom Taylor’ to be able to purchase the famous ‘Gibson’ Stradivari with its own convoluted history not unlike that of the fictional 17th century Cremonese violin the movie follows. The almost 300 yr old ‘Gibson’ Strad (described as having very red varnish) was stolen twice in its history and lost for ½ a century was purchased by Bell at a reputed 4 million from Norbert Brainin.