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!  
b_limo

Showing 2 responses by bondmanp

@blueranger  +1!  I have no idea what Ohm's profit margin was on my $2800/pr of Walsh 2000s that I bought 10 years ago.  But I have yet to hear a speaker under $10k that I would rather own.  That's $280 per year for many hours of beautiful music, and I think I have bought my last pair of speakers.  Another plus, every upstream upgrade I make has made my 2000s sound even better.
@mapman You know how big an Ohm fan I am. That said, I have heard a few of the Magicos, and the presentation is completely different from Ohms. The Magicos are much lower in distortion than many other speakers, including Ohm. While Magicos have more minimized the contribution from the box, they are still monkey coffins, and have a top-down sound. Ohms, IME, are neutral to bottom-up. It wouldn’t be much of a shoot out, with fans of both house sounds lining up with one or the other. A better shout out, IMO, would be a pair of the big Ohms with something like the Legacy Aeris, at twice the price.