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 8 responses by mapman

Hey bondman hope all is well.
Yeah I’ve heard Magico’s and that is a different sound. Off almost 100k of tube gear. The shop owner (Sound by Singer) laughed at me when I said I had Ohms.
I said there would be value. That alone might help swing a few folks.
If I hooked the Ohms up to that same $100k tube system, I suspect things would Get interesting.
I’d like to hear a shootout between $10k Ohm 5015s and 800k Magico M9s.  I see value potential there. 
You are right about that. Thats why I consider myself the champion!


Ironically. You may well be the champion of wrong in which case you are right.  Congrats!
NP. Custom tune away. To each their own.

Some people might refer to that as tweaking. Some do call it tuning. Happens all the time. No news there.
Ok kenjit I said it’s hard to go wrong with Dynaudio but you are the expert on wrong it seems and apparently you can go wrong with most anything no problem. Congratulations!  You have a very special gift when it comes to “wrong”. 
I always say it’s hard to go wrong with Dynaudio for overall quality but you generally need a beefy good quality amp to make them shine. 
The JBL Studio series speakers seem to get accolades for value as do the latest line of Klipsch reference monitors.