I just have to weigh in here. I have been thinking the same thoughts privately this week. It is a curious balance.
I just finished a PPA and STEPS. I'm listening to it with my HD650s as I type. Frank Zappa, The Yellow Shark. Lovely
But the effort that has gone into it has been enormous. Living in Oz makes it all that bit harder - I'm almost tempted to write up a guide for building in Oz.
So, does it save money. Yes and No. I've been at DIY audio for over 25 years. Over time I have accumulated just about every tool and toy. And there have been a number of occasions when I have been able to fix some household item for myself or someone else with trivial effort and cost, when a professional fix would have cost serious money. So there are useful trade-offs when you get into the hobby.
I think the big savings come if you strive for the high end. You simply can't compete with commodity grade products that are mass assembled on robotic production lines. But once you look at most high end gear the prices are quite out of proportion with the cost of components. I'm not really sure what commercial offering could be compared to a PPA, but I'm sure it would be far from cheap. Same goes with most other items you might build. Loudspeakers are an exception, you can often do very well even at the cheaper end, so much of the cost is in the box and the cost of shipping a lot of air about. But some of us hope to compete with the $10,000 speakers - and even get close.
The high end of HiFi gets to unreasonable prices quickly because the costs and margins are so much greater. Cable costs so much because the single largest cost the manufacturer faces is marketing, and then the margins on cables and other accessories are usually at least 100%. Only a very small fraction of the purchase price is actually going into the object.
But, we never count our time. The time it has taken me just running about, finding the bits, and all the other messing about - I could easily have earned far more money than the cost of paying one of the guys out there that earns some extra cash assembling these things. But, it was fun. Humans enjoy the creative process, and for many of us, just taking the time out from life's stresses to sit down and enjoy just building something is worth far more to our general well being than any metric based upon how much our time is potentially worth.
If you take the attitude that we actually need to spend some amount of time in such solo creative pursuits, then the answer is that if you build up a serious hobby that has the side effect of supporting other joys in life - like being able to listen to music to best effect - then it easily pays for itself. And over time you can be in the position of owning equipment that you could not reasonably ever have expected to have otherwise. But you do need some element of patience. Woodworking is a similar (and complementary) pursuit. One can spend a fortune on tools, but once you have got to the point that you have built a few items of furniture, you are way way ahead. Priced a nice dining room table lately?
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