Why Should I spend time and effort in customising my speakers?

The first question arises, why customize? Almost every shape and size and design with different sound quality have been made by so many speaker companies, there should be no need to pay for customization of audio speakers? One can walk into any retail store or browse the internet and come across thousands of options, all ready to pick up off the shelf or ready to ship. The finish of factory produced speakers will be any day better than the most carefully hand crafted speakers. There are hundreds of big and small companies who produce speakers, and most are available in the place you stay, if not immediately, then probably with long distance shipping. With today’s logistics, you can call for products from any part of the world, and with just a little patience, you can have what you desire in your house.

Well, there is one small problem. Your room is as much as an acoustic echo chamber as the speakers. And with different shape, size, and height of the room, including the furniture and doorways and windows, getting the best out of a factory produced speaker becomes quite a difficult task. Most speakers are tested using anechoic chambers, and their peak performance is when placed at certain angles, at a certain distance from the listening ear and from walls and open spaces, that they just don’t sound the same as they sounded in the showroom. In fact, you would be lucky to extract even 75% of the performance. I myself have bought so many good speakers in my lifetime, but have struggled to obtain anywhere similar to the measurements which persuaded me to buy those speakers.

The only answer is to customize your speakers as per the acoustic characteristics of the room in which they are to be placed. Even in dedicated home theaters with padded walls and ceilings, and soundproofing, speakers made to order will most times work better than off the shelf speakers. The idea is to create just perfect speakers for the room in which they are to be placed. In case of home theaters with multiple speakers placed all around the room, it becomes all the more important for the speakers to be simulated, measured, tweaked, and then installed. Even the best speakers return below par performance if they are not right for the room.

In the following pages, we would look at the key components of a speaker system, and how we can design the best possible system for your application.