Design a $60,000 Speaker - Start here

I personally feel that the Tidal and Vandersteen's are my favorites.  Totally different speakers.  Once I learned what Vandersteen has inside from drivers to a box in a box to custom made drivers made out of a special carbon fiber, I realize why they cost what they do.  He gives us some of the top values in all of audio.  

Then there it Tidal who uses even more costly components and has a much larger mark up.  I'd die to hear the Vandy 7's with Sub 9 woofers, Tidal (any of them) and the Rockport Lyra in the same system, room etc...  That would be a fun chili cookout.

I have been told the diamond tweeter in the Tidal Contriva is $10.000.00 at thats not even there top of the line speaker. Im not sure I agree with speakers are the most over priced component' perhaps at certain price levels your correct but have you seriously looked at or heard Tidal speakers, the workmanship, Duelund xover parts, drivers. I cant even imagine how much those xovers cost alone.There are a few other manufacturers that belong at this level.

Not to take away from Eric's thread, but completely related, imo. A question for Eric, and the rest of you. One of the best and significant speakers of all time, especially for the money, were the Dahlquist DQ10s. None of those drivers were costly. Same woofer as in the Advent. Brilliant design, engineering, and thinking outside the box ( no pun intended ). And, a 5 way design. Carl Marchisotto, Jon Dahlquist, and a few others, all involved. How was it they sounded as good as they did ? I could imagine a re-do of that speaker, using the best drivers, best crossover components, a heavier mass box and frame, etc. I had a few pair in my life, and enjoyed them, with larger ss amplifiers. Opinions please. Or, should I start a separate thread ?

60k speakers is veblen goods territory. Anything for home use priced like that is - IMNSHO.
PS. 60k worth of home equipment carries the annual secondary carbon footprint of 20 tons of CO2 ( connected to the manufacture). Add the electricity used for the operation and its carbon footprint.

I have an Audiokinesis speaker system (2 front and 2 effect speakers) where most of the cost has gone into the design, cabinets and crossovers - the drivers are quite standard (but selected) pro-sound drivers. Thereby,. the cost of these speakers are kept reasonable.

Formerly I had the Dynaudio flagship speaker, the Consequence, with more costly drivers. In my case (with a quite large room), the Audiokinesis system sounds better, it plays better "with" the room, but this may also be due to not giving my Consequence enough power. Even with a huge Krell FPB600 amp! So yes, I could get good sound, but only at full power, and even then, two Krells would have been better. Good drivers, in an over-controlled speaker, may not be the best bet. On high decibel levels, I got what I wanted, the Krell going into pure class A operation (auto-adjusting) and the speakers STARTING to dance and sing. But then the neighbours came complaining. The Audiokinesis system doesn’t have quite the refinement. But it plays better with the room, and in my context. So I don’t look back.
A plus with speakers with moderate cost or standard drivers is the DIY factor - it is possible to experiment, without spending large amounts of money. I changed to PRV compression drivers in my Audiokinesis system. Not as good as beryllium drivers, probably - but a step up, for low cost.

Greed makes the world go round, desire feeds it. We control our desire and greed fails. Whatever we buy, its price is determined by what the market will bear and that has nothing to do with value.

Bump...  Sonus Faber..  the drivers on some of their lesser range look pretty cheap. I dont esp like the sound from the base tweeter they use.
Back to 60k speakers, that 11" accuton is a beast! But why 8 ohm? The parameters call.for a large box, so 2 in parallel to get a decent sensitivity rating wd mean well over 100 litres..
Another option is isobaric, using the excellent SB 9.5" satori woofer. Best ’rear end’ of any driver imo.

I know a few companies use laser technology to be able to read how the cones are responding to various things.  Some are even posted on Youtube for you to see.  

So what kind of testing is done on the driver material. Both listening tests and tests for distortion and resonance. All these different materials, surely some must be better then others. 

Zobel networks are another mythical beast.

Zobels are used to flatten the driver impedance, usually to assist high / low pass filters in behaving more ideally.

Their need/use/benefit and specific implementation is pretty speaker dependent.

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2016/12/crossover-basics-zobel_8.html

See the section "Do I need a Zobel."

I love the magazine ads that showcase the crossover. All these parts. In some cases there is more going on in the crossover as some single ended amplifiers have circuitry. They also have notch filterers to eliminate cab resonance at certain frequencies. 

Please don't get me started on active speakers. I paid big bucks for a rack to isolate my amplifiers from the resonance and now they put the amp right in there next to the woofer. 

That is remarkable.

you could actually learn a great deal from Richard Vandersteen
the 7 is not built to a price point it is the best he knows how to do today and is the culmination of many many years of work and innovation
i might add that every single part and operation is subject to what I call Dutch Frugal Engineering scrutiny but at the end of the day it has to sound better - hence a somewhat conventional barrier strip binding post that can be directly connected into the soldered traces for the crossover - eliminating wire
i believe it is relevant as you yourself start the thread with driver cost

One can go entirely active with speakers, yes, but the speakers will still sound notably better if the drivers have passive zobel networks.

Pay good money for a speaker and the air sucks out the signal. ;)

Yes. It is nice to eliminate as much crossover as possible. Crossovers are subtractive, they take away from the signal. Pay good money for an amplifier and the the damn speaker sucks out the signal. Not nice. 

The acoustics and improvement of bass in consumer listening rooms is very well understood,......

On my life, I fundamentally disagree. (in a casual friendly way... but if pushed...) I’m talking about how the ’fix’ of the rooms is, in my direct experience, a fail. Not even close to how much better it may or could be. Meaning, they don't understand the nature of the problem well enough to create a more functional solution than they have.

From my prior post:
" (lots of things I’m not allowed to mention or talk about) "

The written word and the internet combine to make it seem like a ego contest. I’m not projecting that or meaning that. :)

We're starting to explore the question of acoustics a bit better than in the past, but..we're not all the way there, yet. Not as far as I've had the chance to witness, in various installs and locales, that is.

Hey Teo, that’s kind of a long and meandering post, and makes it hard to respond to. Let me see if I can address two of them:

• Yes, speakers with one or two 7" woofer’s are in the sweet spot of affordability, credible bass and above most dangerous room modes.
  
• The acoustics and improvement of bass in consumer listening rooms is very well understood, but not by most consumers, or even most Hi Fi dealers.

Best,

E

In smaller European rooms, the room lift will help out with the bottom end.

In bigger north American rooms, not as much, as averages go.

Most speakers need to be ’interviewed’ with room size and position as part of the analysis. Both a useless obvious statement -- and needing to be said.

All that said, a pair of 7’s (per side) will work wonders in most mid sized rooms. Extreme low bass that is as full range as it can possibly ever be tends to require perfected rooms be built or found, as well as the same applied to the speaker.. Which most can’t or won’t do. At any level of expense or income.

Few understand that bass control in a room is actually the most potent and difficult part of acoustics to fix and tame at the same time it is the least understood and most badly attended to by experts or the layman. None of our acoustical standards even have the guts to pay attention to bass, it’s all magic and mystery down there, according to those ’standards’. (weighting standards for measurement, etc). They ignore that which they can’t make sense of or understand. Bass reflex as a realized system that is in heavy use illustrates this point quite well. (Exhibit A kinda thing)

(the most informed and capable person I know of in room acoustics, by far.. is my Biz partner Taras, the approx 60 film set acoustics systems under his belt, is the least of his resume)(lots of things I’m not allowed to mention or talk about)

Giant extreme bass is like a rock hard suspended track day car. Fun for those few times it can be entertained as conjoined to the given musical source/package. Look how extreme I am! For regular life... the other +90% of the time...not entirely like tits on a boar and a hindrance, but warming up to it...

Re Wilson Benesch:

This is a 2.5 way speaker system, with an isobaric woofer.  Moderately interesting.

The woofer has 2x the motor strength, and the configuration minimizes asymmetry.  The 2.5 way helps eliminate baffle step issues, and improves sensitivity. The 0.5 way indicates the mid has no low pass filter, and the woofers add additional bass.

As for "real engineering" well, OK then. I think it's creative, and drivers sure look pretty. I have never heard a pair.

I discount ANY literature that claims small drivers are the way to get deep, low distortion bass however, but still, a 2.5 way with 7" drivers is probably pretty well balanced.

Best,

E

Here is what Wilson Beseech is doing. 

http://wilson-benesch.com/products/endeavour-stand-mounted-loudspeaker.html

They are using two drivers in clam shell configuration. The driver that projects music/sound into the room is not facing the listener but rather the speaker. The website shows the woofer but the midrange also incorporates the same technology not the clam shell. This is what real engineering looks like, not just shiny drivers or driver coated with zircons.  

The views I represented above are really my view, and may not represent those of the masses. 

Monitor Audio seems to have done a lot of work to make this happen more easily in cost effective fashion.

Accuton has completely transformed the definition of motor and coil in their latest mid-woofer drivers. The first driver I posted about has very limited basket at all, and this one, has essentially no basket at all:

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/woofers/accuton-c168-6-990-7-ceramic-cone-mid/bass/

Best,

E

Ralph
I think the implications of an aerodynamically designed speaker is foreign to most. A major goal of a good driver must be to deal with the back waves of sound. Having them bounce off the basket and back through the paper thin cone is just not acceptable. The designer should make every effort to allow those waves to easily pass all the driver components to reach the dampening material of the cabinet or the cabinet walls. 
I know of two companies that do this. Vivid Speakers and Wilson Benesch. Wilson Benesch Uses a wind tunnel test on their drivers and computer models to make sure they maximize the flow of air. I think this is real advancement in speaker design. 

Jim

I wouldn't necessarily start with the drivers. First I would get rid of the MDF. 

Well, it's a different thing to talk about how you get speakers into stratospheric price points than saying everyone can build a world-class speaker.

However, it helps to have an ear that is independent of Stereophile reviews, and price tags. Then you can pick out real gems for cheap.

My philosophy: I don't want to drink a good $300 bottle of wine. I want to drink a $20 bottle of wine that tastes just as good.

I will be going to my garage to build speakers in a few minutes they will be better than anything presently available.(ho ho)

I have been modifying speaker's for 25 year's,  my next step will be building my own speaker's,  I  do appreciate this thread,  however,  I have been saying for year's that speaker's are the most over priced component in every given system,  next, certainly would be cable's,  How many time's have we all listened to substantially cheaper speaker's outperform costlier speaker's?, This is the reason I never judge anyone's system until I listen to the system,  Believe me,  I have had my fair share of being  laughed at by audiophile's that are ignorant for believing that costlier speaker's are automatically better!, so,  you can understand why I appreciate this thread🥃🍷🍸🍹,, cheers. 

Isn't the cost of the drivers only 10-15% of the total parts cost of the speakers and the cost of the cabinets more than half? So its fairly simple to consider a $60K pair of speakers using only $8K worth of drivers.

Went through the list of driver manufacturers.....*Yawn*

SOS.....MHO....

Teo:

The other side of the coin is using tweeters that are deliberately ragged. By emphasizing narrow bands, it can seem like you are getting more details. And you are, but at the cost of other bands.

This is a particularly good way to sell a pair of speakers. Compare to a neutral system, you’ll suddenly discover new notes! Well, it’s artificial. << sigh >>

Compare say Magico on one side and Wilson on the other. Magico is bright (to me), but smooth as glass.

But buy what you want. :)

Best,

E

Customers generally find they are fighting to buy gear that  gives them detail, transient, and spacial cues (all born of the same considerations).

Down to the point that some end up with what another may call an 'unlistenable system' due to the spacial cues being where they want them, or expect them to be, but the rest of the package tripped up or exaggerated in an uncomplimentary fashion.

When it comes to the speaker part of the equation...ultimately this may be considered to come from the tweeter and it's integration with the given mid to mid bass driver. And a whole plethora of other aspects are at play.

Getting a tweeter to do it right is no small task, and yes, this is where a decent chunk of money is going to be spent.

@erik_squires


I would agree with Wilson philosophy.

Mid range is most important followed by bass and finally treble.

The fact is that very good tweeters can be made for about $50 and the job they do is fairly easy - so why spend more?

A good mid range and in particular a good bass is where it gets expensive because the diaphragms must move orders of magnitude in greater excursion than a tweeter.

A accurate subwoofer driver is the most expensive to build with high required Xmax, however it barely covers an octave so I would rate the subwoofer last in priority.

My theory is that expensive tweeters are popular with designers because even an expensive tweeter is cheap compared to an expensive woofer and an expensive woofer requires an expensive mid range (to match sensitivity and high SPL capability) but an expensive tweeter can be combined with any old crap and the soeaker marketed as SOTA.

Seems like more should be invested in midranges than tweeters.  In any event, I'd be interested in hearing those Tidal speakers, as website seems to convey that every little thing about them is magic.  (To borrow a turn of phrase....)

This brings up another kind of interesting / lopsided issue around audio. The cost of tweeters.

Wilson is one of the few companies that keeps this more or less in balance (again, not promoting, not a fan). The cost of high-end tweeters is kind of astronomical, and lopsided especially when you consider how LITTLE sound actually comes out of a tweeter. A tweeter may cover 3-4 octaves at most, but often commands half or more of the driver cost.

In my own speakers, I ended up spending $500/tweeter but only around $240/mid-woofer.

I think that if you slap Be on any speaker you can increase the value perception and retail price of it, regardless of whether it's any good or not. Same for Daimond, and even AMT.

From what I've seen, Wilson loves bass and he spends his money there, getting progressively less expensive as the frequency range goes up. Not a bad approach really.

In the case of the Tidal diamond and midranges though, that's probably 75% of the driver cost.  Astronomical.

Re: Tidal:

They are also using real diamond (not diamond powder) tweeter and midrange. This adds a great deal to the basic part cost.

Now ask me if a diamond midrange and tweeter are better than the best Be or AMT's. Answer is, I have no idea. :) The best AMT and Be tweeters are unbelievably good.

http://www.accuton.com/en/products/speakersystems/diamant-driver/


Best,


E

Don't the Tidal loudspeakers use that driver?  I think they are more than $60k...

http://www.tidal-audio.com/technology-drivers/

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That is called market research. Or you can also appropriately call it a feasibility analysis. I'd assume in this speaker making game that there'd be at least some rudimentary research completed to ascertain if there will be a market. But who knows, there are so many speakers and at all different price ranges.

Where I would first start is to look at the market and ask what is this $60k speaker going to offer that other $60k speakers do not? 

^^ other than this thread, there is no context and even then not much. I'm a pilot and I think about aerodynamic issues sometimes. Turbulence around the basket of a woofer seems like a thing that if solved, could reduce distortion.

MISCO is a driver manufacturer in Minneapolis that can make a really wide range of drivers. They make custom stuff for some pretty well known high end speaker manufacturers in the US. 

@atmasphere

Wut? I missed a few posts that would put your question into context.

E

It is also very very bad for business if your customers focus on COGS. You want them to focus on value. In that are things bigger than technical performance. Modernity, aesthetics, sound decision making, exclusivity. Lots of reasons to buy a car/speaker/house or eat at a particular restaurant.

I'm not attacking anyone, it just is what it is.

Thanks for the list of driver makers I was not aware of by the way, very cool. :)

Best,


E

@ctsooner

Not sure why you are interjecting Vandersteen and this thread and me personally together. Seems a bit of a word salad. I mean, I'm sure Vandersteen makes fine products, but you seem to be replying to something I don't remember saying. I have no reason to disparage or undermine them.

I don't think my point was that there was just 1 way to do anything. I just think this is an interesting way to look at speaker construction and costs.

Vandersteen should do everything they can to minimize costs while improving quality. In my own field that is how I work. Increasing the COGS for its own sake is a bad way to do business.

Best,


E

@erik_squires

I've had this idea that the struts that go from the front to the back of the woofer need to be machined aluminum, and formed in a sort of airfoil, so as to minimize turbulence. So far I've yet to see any woofer that uses anything like that.

Do you know about MISCO?

I wish I knew more about driver manufacturing. I mean, is there a show where I can go and buy a woofer press? :)


Erik

The voice coil annual will take you, eventually..to someone or some group that can make that a reality.

Of course, you are talking about a cone press? Which is pretty basic, actually. You can make one yourself, but accurizing it will be your big issue.

Working with paper will be what makes it easier.

You can buy a smaller injection moulding set up and can have the moulds made for experimentation..for probably..under $20k. This is for plastic based cones, obviously. Since they are so thin, you are not restricted (relatively) due to a thing called shot size (volume of plastic per single injection). You could go from 3" to 12" cones on probably the same set-up.

Designing an effective mould and process for such thin materials is your biggest problem. The other way to do it is much like pressing records with lots of excess materials.

A paper cone cheapo set-up would be similar to a casting variant, or similar to a composite layered design/build set up.

A small CNC set up with good Z capacity (XYZ, maybe even rotation) can have you making your moulds for paper and similar materials..in quite a short time. A few dedicated months could get you there.

In the face of such things that require multiple disciplines be mastered and integrated... it is no wonder that machining of cones has taken off, and touted by some as being the best thing around. One can also machine and use that as a core for composite pressing, and so on.

Many possibilities out there that can each be touted in the given sales literature.

We quickly enter the ’different but possibly not better’ area in potentials, as we still don’t have a commonly known and utilized answer to what *exactly* the ear’s part is - in this equation. Lots of things still up in the air.

Which means argument without clear resolution.

It's a joke guys, I'm just following Erik in the theme of circling the drain. :)

Vandersteen's cost to build the 7 mk 2 (not even including the aluminum woofers or the carbon fiber/balsa wood cones/driver that are built in-house and sent out to make the drivers to spec):  $1,800 for the mid and $2,400 for the mid-bass.  The open back, non reflective construction we are now seeing in drivers are part of what was originally, the patent for Vandersteen drivers. Eric you are quite aware of drivers, but must be unaware of what does and has gone into Vandersteen drivers.  The mid's of the 5A Carbon is the same as what's found in the 7's.  Quite unusual for speaker at this price. Are you only speaking about driver cost and build or also cabinet?  They also have double cabinets and are wrapped in carbon fiber.  Everything in house for total QC.  

Just thought I'd add, lol.  Interesting question though. 

" Easiest way to sell a $100k speaker is to license the Mercedes Benz logo from Daimler and then mount that on the front in 24k gold! Or maybe Platinum! "

That is silly nonsense you do not know what your talking about if you truly believe this why don't you build such a speaker then you will be rich! The truth is that people who can afford such an item are not as stupid as you want to believe it is all part of the confusion and sillyness here about what wealthy people can afford and how that makes some people here very uncomfortable.

Easiest way to sell a $100k speaker is to license the Mercedes Benz logo from Daimler and then mount that on the front in 24k gold!  Or maybe Platinum!

*L*  I'm already making an 'exotic' Now...

I could sell you a pair for far less than 60K$ happily.  At 60K, I'd be more than ecstatic to give you a lifetime warranty, unless you blow them up on a weekly basis.  Then I might get a little irritated...*L*

At 60K, I'd rather buy a car...or build the house I'm planning now.

Don't laugh.  I Do that sort of thing with remarkable frequency...;) 

I never meant this thread to be how to design a "good sounding" speaker by the way. :) Just one that would retail for lots of cash.

Hahahaha. :)

Erik