All good studio monitors sound the same. Here's proof.

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========== Video Description ==========

OK the title is a bit much but after watching this video you'll see what I mean. If you compare decent speakers with linearity and time domain accuracy as design goals, you shouldn't hear any meaningful difference that isn't just chin stroking audiophile nonsense. Of course the exceptions to this are enclosure size. The larger the speaker cabinet, the lower the frequency at which the bass will start to roll off. You can use DSP or active EQ to hype that bass up a bit, at the cost of a lower overall SPL before reaching distortion, like the Neumann KH310 does, and like I do here with the mid dome DIY speakers, but there are diminishing returns. There's no replacement for displacement.

The tiny "professional studio monitors" which have loads of deep bass use a mixture of EQ and resonant components like ports or passive radiators to pull off this magic trick, but unfortunately it's not magic, it's time domain distortion. If you want accuracy, either you build a pair of large format mastering speakers or you accept a bit of low end roll off relative to the size of the speaker. A decent speaker is otherwise pretty flat, and if it is not, then it is just not an accurate speaker. Most of the "pro audio monitors" on the market are not accurate and not really pro. If you want the good stuff, commercially produced accurate monitoring starts at multiple thousands of dollars and goes up pretty sharply from there into mastering territory. All the stuff under a grand is basically junk and between 1-10k is very hit or miss with only a handful of sealed options. The market is dominated with ports and passive radiators.

In this video, I put my upgraded DIY speakers, now with an improved passive crossover, head-to-head again with the legendary Neumann KH310s in a series of blind AB tests. We compare speaker positions (stands vs desk), rooms (treated vs untreated), and I also through in a $2K DIY mid-dome version powered by Hypex DSP plate amps which many of you wanted to see. There's also an important update about my online courses, a new course called Speaker Science, and I explain why the classic $500 build might still be the best bang-for-buck option for accurate studio monitoring when your room isn't big enough or well treated enough for a pair of large format mastering speakers.

Note on the price of the "classics"... the components cost just shy of 250€ per speaker including 21% VAT when ordered from sound imports to the EU, which includes drivers, inductors, capacitors, resistors, terminal screws, PCBs, stuffing and speaker wire. This doesn't include a piece of wood, glue and some screws. This also doesn't include tools or solder, which I'm assuming you have if you are working with wood and know how to solder.

In the cheapest case, seen as an upgrade if you already build the subs and small speakers, you already did the enclosures, you use an old polyester pillow for the stuffing instead of buying poly fill, you skip the terminal screws and solder directly, and skip the PCBs and wire point to point on a spare bit of perf board, and reuse the 4" drivers from the small speakers build and the woofers from the upgradable subwoofers, the price of the upgrade to the classic 3-way would be around 115€ per speaker and half of that cost is the tweeter.

You squeeze a few quid more out of the build if you use thinner gauge inductors and mount the crossover to the rear of the speaker for better heat dissipation in case they get hot. You can also downgrade from film to non polarized electrolytic caps for the lower value caps. If you do this, you might build the upgrade for less than 100€ per speaker. But if you penny pinch so hard, it's probably just getting a bit of a compromise.

Of course you can spend more, you can buy diamond tweeters and whatever nonsense for thousands of euros. You can get a pair of hypex plate amps. You can do whatever. My original design concept for the classics was to build a pair of inexpensive passive sealed reference grade speakers that can be used with an inexpensive amp. I think I did that. It would have been better if the components were even cheaper. But if you go too cheap with the drivers they will not be reference quality. The woofer is already on the budget side. And I think mid domes just don't offer good value for money compared with high quality small cones.