 If you're anything like me, you probably spend a lot of time in peaceful solitude, contemplating the mysteries of the universe. And when you're not doing that, relaxing at home with a glass of white wine, listening to the soothing melodic tones of your favorite artist on a high-end speaker setup. But when it comes to home audio, are high-priced, off-the-shelf designer models really worth what they cost? Or is it possible for someone without a lot of experience in audio engineering, or even woodworking, to put together a set of speakers that can stand up to them for a fraction of the cost? Let's find out, shall we? Music TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet. To try TunnelBear for free, check out the link in the video description. We set out to build a set of TriTrix MTM TL speakers that we bought from PartsExpress.com. This kit is one of the simpler ones, and often recommended for people just getting into DIY audio. And it checks off a couple of key boxes for us, promising high audio fidelity at a relatively low cost. And while it's too early to say much about sound quality, the cost comparison looks pretty good. By building our own cabinets, rather than buying prefabbed ones, we shaved almost $100 off the price, even after accounting for buying our own construction materials and renting the tools we didn't have, making our total cost around a quarter of what I paid for the Kev Q500s in my home theater that we're going to compare against. So let's get started. Our cabinet is slightly different from the one that would be supplied by PartsExpress, as we ended up adopting some modifications suggested by RegalianAux.com. If you're interested in reading about his experience building the same speaker set, and a more in-depth guide to construction, check out the link below. We built both speakers out of one 4x8 sheet of MDF board cut into 2x4 strips for ease of transportation. We first marked out all the pieces we intended to get out of each sheet, then cut them with a combination of the table and circular saw. A good carpenter will tell you, measure twice, cut once. And while that's undeniably great advice, here in the studio we tend to follow the cut, pray, love, then keep on cutting philosophy that I learned from that doctor that I used to visit back when I wasn't covered by the company health plan. I don't know if I'm gonna let Tyler write these scripts anymore. Anyway, once we cut all of these, we needed to put holes for the woofers and tweeters in the cut of wood that will be the front of the speaker. I'm sure there's a specific name for that piece, but I don't want to baffle you or me with too much audio terminology, so we'll just call it the front. We used a router and a jig to get the circle cuts and recesses. If you want tips on how to make your own jig for doing circular cuts like this, check out this link. With all our pieces ready, it's time to stick them together. We want to leave one side off the cabinet for now so that we still have access to do all of our wiring. Pro tip, it's very important to drill pilot holes, which we totally nailed, and to use cabinet screws with countersunk holes in the first place so you don't have to go back and redo them to end up with a more clean look. With our cabinet fully constructed, the next stage is to put together our crossover. The crossover is the part of your sound system that takes the single input signal coming from your stereo, computer, TV, or what have you, and that breaks it up into multiple output signals containing different frequency bands that are then sent to the specialized loudspeakers best equipped to handle them. Our TriTrix kit contains two woofers and one tweeter. Woofers handle lower audio frequencies while tweeters are designed to handle the higher end of the spectrum. You can learn more about this here. The TriTrix uses a second order crossover, which means it uses a double filter to separate out the frequencies. One to the woofers and one to the tweeter. When building a crossover with multiple inductors, it's important to set them up so the inductors don't talk to each other. This has nothing to do with our constant fear of a machine uprising by allowing electronics to communicate, but rather to do with preventing the two coils from creating mutual inductance by being orientated in the same direction. In order to avoid that, we're going to lay one horizontally and the other one up vertically. Then, once you've soldered all the connections between your inductors, capacitors, and ground, you can place the crossover in the cabinet, mount your speakers, and wire it all together. To avoid having excess wire cluttering up your interior, drop wires down from your speaker and cut them at the appropriate length to meet up with your crossover. The woofers in this system are wired in series, which means their resistance is added together, increasing the overall resistance that the amplifier sees and letting it run cooler and more efficiently. After the wiring is all taken care of, we just stuff this baby full of nylon fiber and seal it back up. At this point, a master carpenter might go straight into painting or covering the cabinets with vinyl, but we're going to have to do a little bit of cosmetic tweaking. And, much like my aesthetician, our primary tools are going to be polyfill and a power sander. Now that these speakers look a little more like the version I saw on Pinterest, it's time to find out how well they perform. Our three lucky volunteers were blindfolded and subjected to these speakers and my Q500s, and they were then asked if they could tell which was which and to score the audio quality on a scale of 1 to 10. This one sounded like sharper, like the high notes are like all a little bit clearer, but the second one, it sounded better in the low, but it was just kind of drowned out in the mid. Let's go with the first one, like an 8. And then the second one, like a 6. I think the first one was better. I think it sounded louder and more sharp. The second one was kind of more dull, and I think I'd rate them probably a 7 and a 6. The second set was okay in the highs and the mids, but still a little cloudy to me, and it was in desperate need of a subwoofer. For me, I'd give the first one like 7.5 and the second one like 5.5. So there you have it. In the end, our subjects could tell the difference, but our DIY build came in only slightly beneath the speakers that I spent a large chunk of my YouTube money on for my birthday earlier this year. So if you're looking to put together an audio system, I'd recommend saving a considerable amount of money by putting it together yourself. Although I would add the caveat that if you really want to make sure you end up with a solid final product, it's probably worth it to pick up a kit with pre-cut cabinet pieces unless you are extremely confident in your woodworking skills. Just like how if you're not 100% confident in your website-making from scratch spills, you can use Squarespace. Squarespace has 24-7 support via live chat and email. It's only 12 bucks a month. You get a free domain if you buy Squarespace for the year. All of their fantastic and beautiful templates feature responsive design, so your website scales to look great on any device, and every website comes with commerce, their cover pages feature, their Apple News compatibility, their logo designer, pretty much you name it. It can be done in the cloud on Squarespace. So check it out today. You can get a two-week trial for free with no credit card, and start building your website now. And when you decide to sign up, use offer code LTT to save 10%. 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