Speakers that are a great value!


I’ve been researching off the shelf speaker drivers quit a bit lately and smaller speaker companies as well.  I’ve been finding that companies like Fritz, Salk and Tekton offer incredibly well priced products.  I’m finding that with certain models, there really only appears to be small profit margin.  I understand that when you buy large quantities of drivers, you can get a small discount but still.

For instance, I’m seeing speakers that sell for $2000 might have $700 worth of drivers in them.  When you add in $100-$200 worth of crossovers, $100-$200 in cabinets, $50 for miscellaneous components like binding posts, damping material, wiring, solder or connectors you come up to around $1200 worth of raw components. Now add in labor to construct the boxes, possibly put veneer on them, solder and put together crossovers, install drivers and then ship the speakers, the value is really quite good.  I haven’t even talked about obtaining the woodworking tools to do such a product, rent on a building, utilities on that building and the labor costs if you have any employees. 

My point to all this is to open a discussion and to help people understand that there may only be a $400 profit margin on a $2000 pair of speakers.  I think that these are an exceptional value at full asking price and that should be taken into consideration when thinking about buying speakers from these manufacturers.  
I sometimes hear that these speakers are overpriced and that the value is not good and I would tend to strongly disagree!  
128x128b_limo

Showing 7 responses by b_limo

@juliepriest, nonsense!  LS50W’s are a fantastic bargain.  I talked my brother and 3 different friends into buying them. I bought a pair as well.  The edifiers I hear are fantastic too.  The LS50W’s made me sell passive LS50’s and all my associated gear. I was going to go that route but I enjoy geeking out on each individual piece and look at the whole thing as a hobby, otherwise I’d have active speakers.

One day when all I want to do is enjoy the music and have a simple set-up, I’ll go that route again.

@Aj523, I am not familiar with Seaton! I will look at the’.  Thanks for the addition to the list!
Will do, Ascend Acoustics is another great value!  
When you consider the price that you can get these for on the second hand market, the value just skyrockets.

There is a listing for 3 Sierra 1’s with the NRT upgrade, and ghe asking price is $500.  That is just ridiculous, yet I’m certain that someone will ask him to take less, which is also ridiculous.

But yes, Ascend Acoustics is another that offers great value!

Your Fritz Carbon 7’s are an awesome value as well!  

+1 Erik, agreed!

with this broken leg, I have had a lot of time on my hands (no pun intended) and have been listening to music quite a bit; I’ve also been researching speakers obsessively.  
Something I found that I thought was pretty crazy is that the drivers in the Salk WOW1 cost a total of $702 and the speakers sell for $1295 in a satin finish.  That is nuts!


Seas W12- $225.20 each
Hiquphon OW1 - $252 a pair
Interesting that the name WOW1 is a combination of the “W” seas driver and the “OW1” of the tweeter!  
And to add to Eriks post, the series crossovers that Fritz uses are awesome.  They tie the drivers together in a totally cohesive way and the crossover point is just not audible to me at all.  I haven’t seen any other speaker use No Rez to damp the Enclosure (I’m sure other designers use it, I just haven’t seen it yet).  No Rez is about 4-5 times more expensive than the polyfill that I see in most speakers.
@phil55,  

“His no crossovers design requires him to tune by ear the wrappings on each coil to get each speaker to sing as he see fit”... crazy huh?  Fritz is the man!  Not to say there aren’t other greats building awesome speakers right now.  
Its a great time for hifi if yiu ask me 😁
@cesheid, I have not heard the dirty weekends but they look awesome as well, and you don’t see them come up on the resale market...tells me something.

i would def try a pair and almost did this past year but things weren’t in position for me to do so. 
👍 another great bargain!  Good one
@kink56, the discount on buying 100 Beryllium tweeters vs 1 beryllium tweeter is actually less than you would think.  Take into account the amount of capitol it takes to buy 100 beryllium tweeters!  
@zerobias , lsim703 definitely deserve to be on this list!  They are great speakers at a great price 👍

@banyanbull , if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.  No one, aside from the CEO of Bose or Harman International, is becoming rich of this.  Many of these smaller, buyer direct companies, have been at this for a long time and aren’t going anywhere. They are hard working individuals and usually do it for the love as much as the $. Fritz sold his first pair of speakers out of his van in 1973.  Salk has been at it for 20 years. Tekton was a company that was building great value speakers over 10 years ago.

I’m not so sure you’ve done your homework!  Either that or your speakers just take a really long time to break in!