Add Ascend Acoustics to Fritz, Salk & Tekton. I own pairs of Fritz Carbon 7's and Ascend Acoustics Sierra Towers. Both sound great for the price. They certainly are not overpriced for the value you get. Selling direct to customer will keep the asking price down.
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!
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!
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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! |
Just to give you some idea, building my DBA using 10" drivers bought on a Parts Express sale that included free cabinets, and not counting stuff that was already just sitting there in my shop, I wound up about $2400. The Audiokinesis Swarm was right around $3k. They aren't directly comparable. Mine uses higher quality drivers, an extra amp, and Rosewood veneer. But Duke's are all ported, with plugs to make sealed if you want, and to be perfectly honest if you look close, much more professional in detail and appearance. Not to mention, plug and play. Versus untold hours and hours of my time, labor, sawdust, and glue. And screws. Clamps. On and on. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. In terms of value, drivers and cabinets are the least of it. Merely the bits we can see and (pretend to) understand. The real value is in the untold hours of trial and error, failure and loss, that got the guy to the point he had something good in the first place. Since you mention Tekton, its clear Eric built hundreds, if not thousands, of failed speakers before coming up with the low mass driver array idea so key to the sound he's getting. Accounting for all of that (if even you could) to then turn around and be able to figure out how to put it all together into a finished product the final sale price of which is not all that much higher than what we would pay for just the raw materials? Amazing. And its the same story for a lot of these guys. Duke, Eric, Keith, Frank, Peter, Krissy, Ted, pretty much every one I know. Same story. |
+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. |
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Bose 901's.. now that someone found the secret sauce to make them sing... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObb0QF8dEo |
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They make speakers to sell . As at least 80% of those who buy them listen primarily to rock . Many speakers are voiced to rock'' cuse thats the market .I' ve owned 2 Dynaudio speakers , they sound great but in about 2 hours listening fatigue sets in listening to Classical music . They know what they are doing . |
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could you please provide us just one link Kenjit, a single as in 1 link, to a single speaker that you have designed, tuned and built?The short answer is no. Much of my experience comes from retuning existing designs that i already own. Its also a work in progress. I do this for my own benefit. Only I decide how much of what I do is shown to the public. You are not qualified to validate what ive done since the kinds of speakers that you find acceptable do not meet my high standards and its unlikely your ears are good enough to hear anything better than what youve already heard. You cant evaluate a speaker from pictures anyway. Forgive me if I am confused Kenjit. What good is that research Facility and massive measurement lab if their speakers are not tuned correctly?That is a good question which you would need to ask Dynaudio. Dont hold your breath. And perhaps you could clarify the fact that you have stated numerous times that it’s best to properly tune a speaker by hand and ear but now you say that approach is wrong. Im confused...You can believe what you like. Its not as if there is only one way of doing things. Every designer thinks they know best. I personally believe in custom tunIng BY HAND AND EAR. Other speaker companies dont know what the heck they’re doing so they use both measurements and then tune by ear. |
My opinion is that focusing on the costs of components for a speaker is not really useful. I’m a trained cook. Give me good ingredients and see what I come up with. Give the same ingredients to a good home cook and it will be night and day. So, experience, measurement, and a certain genius can produce a great speaker or something just okay. I own Vandersteen Treo CTs and respect the engineering, voicing and philosophy that went into its creation. Good value? I think so, cheap, no. |
Ahh. Now we are getting to the point. Kenjit has in the past, in initial posts, burns ALL speaker manufacturers, and as such pours ridicule on all audiophiles saying all of us were wrong. Only Kenjit called himself correct. NOW the story is about “custom” tuning by HAND AND EAR! Most dedicated audiophiles do the same! Kenjit, you are not unique, nor are you any better at it than anyone else. As you have not visited and listened to everyone’s systems, it is you who is the worlds greatest ignoramus. 🇦🇺 |
Excellent Speakers are quite difficult to evaluate because of individual"s sonic preferences. Some are bright , some boomy without factoring their prices. We have all listened to speakers in various audio stores, read their reviews but how many of you have actually listen to the speakers you are buying in you living or audio room ? Unless you do this which I have done with my current speakers, you can't judge them by their built or their price. I have my speakers since the early nineties and afraid that I won't be able to replace them. I have the almost extinct Apogee Duetta signature being driven by old solid state Krell imThorek |
@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. |
@kenjit I have to agree and clarify one point. I do believe that if you have a master speaker designer and tuner you can't go wrong. Just ask Fritz! 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. Thats why his speakers and the Carbon 7's are so sought after for their price, quality of build and selection of high quality speaker choices. |
Look for the union label... https://bullbuster.net/community/img/articles/475-8f46a89824def1933f6681a3d4f91acb.jpg DeKay |
Sigh. Another thread nearly derailed by kenjit. Remember: what we're talking about here are not just good-sounding speakers, but good-sounding speakers where it's really demonstrable that you're getting real value for money, not some ineffable built-in value. Fritz and Bache are model examples; add in the extra cost of fine cabinetry, and Salk is too. Think about all those other threads where people wail about the cost of the raw drivers vs. retail cost of the speakers. |
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