I feel bad for speaker manufacturers


Think about it. If you were going to start a company that manufactures audio components, which would you pick? Arguably the worst business to get into would be the speaker business. Right? First, it’s painstakingly hard to market a new speaker that can break through in today’s ultra-competitive environment. Second, the development costs are relatively high because you have to invest in expensive cabinetry (at least on the high end) , electronic components, and drivers. And except for bookshelves, you have to absorb or charge so much more to get your product to your customers because of the relatively large size and heavy weight of the product. Third, and again especially if you have any floor standing speakers of any size, which, let’s be honest, any speaker company that wants to make money will have to have, you have to pay to hump these things to shows around the country and likely internationally as well.

Now let’s compare the life of a cable manufacturer. Let me state up front that I am a big believer that cables, interconnects, digital cables, and power cords can make a big difference in the ultimate sound of an overall system. Tires on a car, right? And yes, they also have several variables to deal with: silver, copper, tinned, dielectric, shielding, connectors, cryogenic, etc. But they’re all small, light, and relatively cheap. You can ship your product for next to nothing with almost no risk of damage, and you can travel to audio shows carrying all of your wares pretty much in a medium-sized backpack. Oh, and then there’s this. While speaker manufacturers are lucky if they can retail their products for four to six times their cost of production, cable manufacturers get to retail their wares for ten, twenty, or even fifty times or more of their manufacturing cost. There’s the well-worn tale of speaker manufacturers coming to shows in a rented minivan while cable manufacturers show up in Ferraris. It’s sad but funny because there’s some truth to it. I credit @erik_squires with generating this thread because in his recent thread he made me think about how hard it is to successfully create and market a truly successful speaker today. Anyway, it almost seems unfair, especially since speakers contribute so much to the ultimate sound of our systems while cables, while crucial, contribute RELATIVELY much less. What say you?
soix
Sure, it's no joke building high quality loudspeakers. But if we can start off building ones which can fool us into thinking we're listening to a real live human being (give or take radio station compression artefacts), then that's a great start to build upon.

Since there are far more smaller classic designs than bigger ones its not too hard to see where the design complexities lie.
Far easier to build a good mini monitor, and far cheaper too.

Big deep bass adds so many many more difficulties to the entire package (cabinet, drive units, amp, room etc) that attempts to get it right often screw up some of the remaining frequency range.
Koost since its so easy you design a loudspeaker make something orignal marketable profitable make it have great aesthetics and make it  shippable and easy to house + drive and also lets have a world beating sound come on its so dam easy do it!! or shut up.