# DIY speaker equivalent to B&W 805s



## legion1capone

I currentlt have a pair of B&W 705 which I bought for a good price. I would have gone with the 805 but they were to expensive. Is there a DIY speaker kit that anyone can recommend that will be on par or better than the B&W 805s? Even references to specific tweeters, woofers, crossovers, etc.


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## Guest

Its my understanding they make their own drivers. Klipsch seems to have DIY support. Meaning, they will sell you the drivers and crossovers, leaving you to build the boxes. You could see if B&W does that too.

It's going to be really hard for someone to recomend a DIY project that will be the same, but I'm sure others will recommend good ones.


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## Zeitgeist

My understanding is that B&W makes their drivers and they're fairly proprietary (ie, their 'diamond' series tweeters)..

Unless it's for repairing a B&W speaker (and that might require proof of ownership, serials, etc) -- I doubt that they'll be very open to selling components.

As nice as polar plots are, I believe that that information is not public knowledge either.


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## tonyvdb

The challenge with building speakers like the B&Ws are that they use a very elaborate bracing system inside the cabinets. Thats why you pay as much as you do. Your looking for a "Kit" and I highly doubt that there are kits that use that kind of design as its very complicated to build.


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## Zeitgeist

Some of the cabinet designs for the B&Ws are rather hard to replicate without CNC or some real woodworking skills..

Some of the shapes they come up with are ideal for acoustics, but hard to build.


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## lsiberian

It is certainly doable, but it's also a lot of work. 

B&W's advantage is their midrange driver. Everything else can be dupilcated. Infinity does sell a driver equal to the B&W through there parts site. They are 100 a pop though and not circular so mounting is a major pain. Bracing is so easy even I can do it. :T


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## ISLAND1000

Check Madisound website for drivers, capacitors, resistors, and inductors. They also have a selection of kits.
I believe you can replicate the quality of B&W in a DIY project but it's gonna cost you and it's going to be time consuming designing and adjusting the crossover circuitry.
The drivers might be:
6.5 woofer (Acuton C173-6-096E ceramic cone neodymium magnet $615.00)
Super tweeter (Fostex TK500AMKII $810.00)

The crossover components might be:
Capacitors (ClarityCaps ESA Range $120.95 ea.)
Inductors (Goertz copper foil $138 ea.)
Resistors (Mundorf M-resist 20 watt $13.00 ea.)

The trick is to get each component to work within the parameters of each other. The woofer and tweeter have to precisely crossover at a designated frequency and at a certain rate. The crossover circuitry has to match the driver components in loudness and timber. This is the area of expertise that B&W is so good at. They have the lab tools and machinery to achieve ultra high levels of audio precision.

Another source for component choices and data is Zaph Audio. That site also has DIY projects. John Krutke, the site owner, is an excellent crossover/equalization circuit designer.


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## bambino

lsiberian said:


> It is certainly doable, but it's also a lot of work.
> Bracing is so easy even I can do it. :T


You can certainly do or outdo the B&W's but like noted it will be alot of work. There are drivers out there that can perform better but alot of it also has to do with the design of the whole getup from driver choice to cabinet design and possibly most important the crossover. Have you built speakers in the past?


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## lsiberian

ISLAND1000 said:


> Check Madisound website for drivers, capacitors, resistors, and inductors. They also have a selection of kits.
> I believe you can replicate the quality of B&W in a DIY project but it's gonna cost you and it's going to be time consuming designing and adjusting the crossover circuitry.
> The drivers might be:
> 6.5 woofer (Acuton C173-6-096E ceramic cone neodymium magnet $615.00)
> Super tweeter (Fostex TK500AMKII $810.00)
> 
> The crossover components might be:
> Capacitors (ClarityCaps ESA Range $120.95 ea.)
> Inductors (Goertz copper foil $138 ea.)
> Resistors (Mundorf M-resist 20 watt $13.00 ea.)
> 
> The trick is to get each component to work within the parameters of each other. The woofer and tweeter have to precisely crossover at a designated frequency and at a certain rate. The crossover circuitry has to match the driver components in loudness and timber. This is the area of expertise that B&W is so good at. They have the lab tools and machinery to achieve ultra high levels of audio precision.
> 
> Another source for component choices and data is Zaph Audio. That site also has DIY projects. John Krutke, the site owner, is an excellent crossover/equalization circuit designer.


You don't need an 800 dollar tweeter to build a reference speaker. I'm sorry but that is overpriced IMO. You can get an infinity MRS driver for 100 bucks. And I could get 8 of them for the price of that driver. For 138 you can buy a minidsp inplace of the esoteric inductor?

Price point on drivers is not a good indicator of quality IMO. There are plenty of phenomenal drivers under 100 dollars. Even the Exodus drivers are only 80 bucks and you will be hard pressed to do better on the woofer than an xbl^2 motor. 

A 3-way active 2-way is a must to really nail it.


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## ISLAND1000

lsiberian said:


> You don't need an 800 dollar tweeter to build a reference speaker.
> Price point on drivers is not a good indicator of quality IMO. There are plenty of phenomenal drivers under 100 dollars. Even the Exodus drivers are only 80 bucks and you will be hard pressed to do better on the woofer than an xbl^2 motor.


Isiberian, I totally agree! The point I was stealthily making is, how good are B&W speakers? Just because they are expensive doesn't automatically make them any better than WalMart.
It's just like connecting wires or interconnects, should you pay $113.00 for a 3 ft. piece of RG6 because it's got a "pretty" cover and a thousand dollars worth of magazine advertising?

Today a DIYer has access to equipment data where he can decide which pieces have the performance and price quality he is looking for. 
For drivers as an example, the Zaph Audio site has drivers extensively tested for 
Thiele/Small parameters
Frequency response
Harmonic distortion
Waterfall plots
and Price
there's even a "toggle" button useful for comparing the charts of two different drivers.

And then on THIS site and others, you have those pieces assembled by DIYers like you and I that will honestly tell you what's good and what's not.
For subs, the defining tests were and still are Ilkka Risanen's tests,
And for amps, it's ChasW98 tests preceded by Bink's
Pictures and actual performance are worth a thousand words but on some other DIY sites it seems the latter prevails.


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## Zeitgeist

I'm curious if you do use some of the "specialty" components that are quite expensive.... if you'd actually end up with a speaker that outperforms the 805s.

I'm not saying that the specialty components are better (and sometimes the driver that's 10x the cost actually performs worse)... but it does give you the opportunity to build a very high end speaker without any overhead.. Even using extremely expensive drivers - you'll still be below the cost of a retail B&W.

Would be neat to see a side by side of 2 "clone" speakers - one built with the best price/performance drivers... and one built with the super duper high end drivers. Might be minimal difference.

I recall reading reviews of a Behringer studio monitor --- and it outperforming a number of other faaar mroe expensive monitors (even Genelec I think). Definitely surprised me.

I have to agree that cost does not always correlate with performance.


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## bambino

Zeitgeist said:


> I'm curious if you do use some of the "specialty" components that are quite expensive.... if you'd actually end up with a speaker that outperforms the 805s.
> 
> I'm not saying that the specialty components are better (and sometimes the driver that's 10x the cost actually performs worse)... but it does give you the opportunity to build a very high end speaker without any overhead.. Even using extremely expensive drivers - you'll still be below the cost of a retail B&W.
> 
> Would be neat to see a side by side of 2 "clone" speakers - one built with the best price/performance drivers... and one built with the super duper high end drivers. Might be minimal difference.
> 
> I recall reading reviews of a Behringer studio monitor --- and it outperforming a number of other faaar mroe expensive monitors (even Genelec I think). Definitely surprised me.
> 
> I have to agree that cost does not always correlate with performance.



I too would love to see a side by side comaparison of some manufactured speakers against DIY, we allready know that we can outdo the competition with DIY subs but has it really ever been proven with DIY speakers?
It can be mind boggleing however that when buying seperate components to build speakers the cost of the parts to put them together (cabinet,drivers,X-over stuff, time and finishing) can easily reach the cost of really expensive manufactured speakers.


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## Zeitgeist

Good points bambino.

Well, perhaps we should define what the objective really is for a DIY equivalent.

Are we talking frequency response? Appearance? Dispersion characteristics?

Some other more subjective term such as clarity?

Since we'd need to get similar drivers (since I don't think you can order B&W drivers), but not identical, and we don't know the crossover schematics, we're basically looking at a unique speaker that essentially might only have dimensions and driver dimensions in common.


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## Zeitgeist

bambino said:


> It can be mind boggling however that when buying separate components to build speakers the cost of the parts to put them together (cabinet,drivers,X-over stuff, time and finishing) can easily reach the cost of really expensive manufactured speakers.


It is mind boggling..... I think for high-end manufacturers that marketing is extremely expensive. It takes more advertising and effort to make a sale on speakers that cost $8K-40K or whatever. However, there is no doubt there is more engineering and artistry for high end speakers.. compared to low end ones.. 

But - with all that overhead - it makes it very hard to understand what you're actually buying though in terms of actual component cost.

I don't know. I'm getting way off topic. :wave:


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## ISLAND1000

Zeitgeist said:


> However, there is no doubt there is more engineering and artistry for high end speakers.. compared to low end ones..
> But - with all that overhead - it makes it very hard to understand what you're actually buying though in terms of actual component cost.


Zeitgeist I think you've nailed it. The high end component builders can justify their astronomical prices by pointing to esoteric quality parts and the "artistry" of design and engineering whether or not it is real or conceptual.
Then there will always be those equipment reviewers that can be paid to say anything and everything to qualify the high prices. The consumer is left with protecting his investment by shaking his head in agreement with the manufacturer saying. "yup, mines better because I paid more".
In the final analysis, I ask the question, "who ARE these audiophiles that claim to be able to rate the equipment we buy and how good is their ability to ( hear ) " ? If they are like me, their range of hearing has been destroyed in at least a couple of frequency ranges by medications, beer, car noises and heavy equipment or intermittent clanging and banging of metal or wood, or even crowd noise at high school football games or a WWE wrestling match. Then there is the failing high frequency perception due to age related syndromes. If there's anybody left with critical hearing ability, let them first be tested before they become judge and jury of audio equipment sound quality.
How good are YOUR ears? :huh:


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## Theresa

Build using ScanSpeak Revelator parts. You could actively cross them over or use the designs from Zaph Audio. I doubt if B&Ws midrange is as good as ScanSpeaks. My center speaker uses a 7" Revelator mid-woofer along with a HDS tweeter and the midrange is faultless. As for cabinetry you can always add dowels to brace it. While innovative I don't believe the B&Ws enclosure would be so good as to make all the other charecteristics pale in comparison. I'm certain it is one of many little details that make the speaker so praise worthy but not the "end all."


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## Zeitgeist

I think that you can't go wrong with ScanSpeak Revelators. The designs that I've seen with it are VERY well reviewed..

Expensive - but seem to be excellent drivers.


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## bambino

A little off topic here but i was on the Madisound website last night and couldn't believe some of the prices for smaller drivers, it blew me away, and i thought Morel, Focal and Dynaudio were expensive:yikes:.


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## jinjuku

You could try the Statements from Speakerdesignworks.com. Not sure if you are looking for a B&W clone or something that is going to give you a general $10K worth of performance for $1K.


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## GranteedEV

With due respect guys, I wouldn't say that high end drivers don't have their advantages. 

If I could afford it, there's some price drivers I would in fact use. RAAL ribbon tweeters, $canspeak Illuminator, Seas Millenium Excel, ATC Dome Midrange, Hiquphon soft dome, Accuton Ceramic midranges, acoustic elegance woofers, TC Sounds woofers, as well as JBL Compression Drivers... just because there's great drivers out there that don't cost hundreds of dollars does not mean there's also not some excellent, pricier drivers. If you're willing to pay up, I'd say it'd be worthwhile to experiment and research not just great high value drivers but really, all sorts. 

One thing you pay for that is very valuable is consistency between parts. Chinese build drivers don't necessarily have the same consistency that the European built drivers might have. Lsiberian's otherwise excellent Hi-Vi tweeters are an example of this. Do you really want to have to buy 4-5 tweeters and hope you get two good, matching ones? Sure if it's cheap it might be fine in fact. For a single DIY build it might be perfect. I don't know if you could design a kit around something with such unreliable consistency. 

While I totally agree you can make extremely nice speakers with high value drivers, (and yes, IMO you can certainly "beat a B&W 800 series" with high value drivers) I'd say that different drivers have different design concepts so they do differ.

If the goal is just to make a speaker that blows your mind away, my advice to OP is to buy a DEQX.
Quite simply, the most powerful device any DIY Speaker Builder could want to own . 

After that, the drivers I would go with would be a function of the design goal. I can spit out 100 different design ideas that are so different with different drivers, different boxes, etc. 

For the OP, I recommend starting small, however. That's not to say that I don't think he should strive for the 805d or whatever, just something to get a feel for building loudspeakers before trying to go all-out

I recommend trying to build this:

http://www.audioheuristics.org/projects_gallery/ER18DXT/ER18DXT.htm

It should be a very transparent, passive 2-way bookshelf speaker with some quality, but inexpensive off-the-shelf drivers. 

I will say that there's some designs and perhaps even kits that are just as good, if not even better than, some of the better commercial speakers including the B&W 800 series, but IMO if you want the best speaker, DEQX is the way to go. I just want OP to start simple.


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## Geoff St. Germain

You can certainly beat a B&W 805 in terms of quality for less money with DIY. You can also spend more money and wind up with something not nearly as good (or terrible).

I think that a better way to come at a DIY project is in listing what you want in terms of performance goals, size and cost for the speaker you're going to build. The idea of beating some speaker that you've seen or listened to is fine, but are the $2K 805s your already your ideal speaker?

Also, as some have stated already, expensive drivers don't necessarily offer better performance than less expensive drivers and almost always offer diminishing returns on your invested dollar. If you visit the Zaph Audio site and look at some of the driver tests, you'll see expensive drivers with poor performance and inexpensive drivers with better performance. Of course there are very expensive drivers that give you better performance for your money, but you're getting into diminishing returns usually so that's where you have to make the call if spending twice the money for very slightly better performance is worth it.

For instance I'd say that these two kits are probably going to be "better" in some respects than the 805s:
https://www.madisound.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=8362
https://www.madisound.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=8691

Both kits are around a grand. If you have your 705s on stands then the Scanspeak ZRT is probably similar in terms of the space it's going to take up. The SB12.3 is much larger obviously, with a 12" woofer. 

If towers aren't what you're looking for then something alongs these lines will probably compete very well (at least) with the 805:
https://www.madisound.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=35_40_402_408&products_id=8306

Again, like I said, I think the best way is to come up with your goals and then try to match them as well as you can with a kit. There are a lot of well designed and well priced kits out there. People can recommend what they like, but if you don't know what you're goals are or if you didn't consider them when selecting the kit, you might be disappointed with what you get.


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## GranteedEV

Geoff St. Germain said:


> Again, like I said, I think the best way is to come up with your goals and then try to match them as well as you can with a kit. There are a lot of well designed and well priced kits out there. People can recommend what they like, but if you don't know what you're goals are or if you didn't consider them when selecting the kit, you might be disappointed with what you get.


Excellent point. DIYers as a whole often tend to lean towards speakers that will sound realistic in many rooms. That's why horn speakers and dipoles etc are much more popular in the DIY community... better understanding of acoustics to get ideal response with some tradeoffs...

Commercial speakers as a whole often tend towards impressing people during auditions, but isn't particularily neutral or room-independant. They often look gorgeous and have an engaging sound that takes advantage of the fact that people might not be most familiar with the "actual" nature of a recording. At times, to get them sounding as they should, you need to pad down your entire room with OC703. IMO Absorption should only be used for bass trapping, not for broadband nullification of speaker off axis response. Not all commercial speakers mind you... brands like Harman might do a great job in this respect. I'm not making generalizations about commercial speakers. But the theme above is very common at the very least.


So if the goal is to find a speaker that impresses during auditions, DIYing can be a very bad idea. Not many competent DIYers look to make speakers to "sell". 

If the goal is to find a technically superior speaker, then I definitely would lean towards the better DIY kits.

The point is very important:

"Technically superior" vs "What do you prefer".

That's why I recommended the ER18DXT build by Mark K. I think it's technically very excellent and yet affordable to a point where if the OP builds it and just doesn't prefer it over the "B&W sound", it wasn't a huge investment full of regret. If OP does end up loving that speaker, and I think he will, then of course there's infinite potential to get to the next level. High power Multi-ways, active, dipole, big horns, etc.


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## informel

Geoff St. Germain said:


> For instance I'd say that these two kits are probably going to be "better" in some respects than the 805s:
> https://www.madisound.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=8362
> https://www.madisound.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=8691
> 
> 
> If towers aren't what you're looking for then something alongs these lines will probably compete very well (at least) with the 805:
> https://www.madisound.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=35_40_402_408&products_id=8306


those link are just sending you to the site, not pointing at product anymore


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## jinjuku

informel said:


> those link are just sending you to the site, not pointing at product anymore


Well, given the fact the post is 6 months old and Madisound redesigned their website just a month or so ago


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