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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
danvignau's avatar
danvignau
935 posts
 
     I am afraid you are misinformed.  The dealer cost on high end audio speakers is 50% of retail.  Parts are always priced individually at higher prices.  For example, when a 1963 Bel Air 4 door sedan with a the options of a radio, carpets, 283 V-8, automatic transmission, and backup lights sold for $2995, as my Mom's did, the individual cost of parts was over $30,000, as calculated by the local dealer parts department.  
   
     When you price an individual speaker driver, you are paying the highest cost per unit.
     On my pair of 1981 B&W DM14's a replacement woofer was $150 from B&W, or $600 for the four in a pair of speakers. It also has two very nice tweeters that were certainly not cheap for their day.  I saw the invoice from B&W to the dealer, because my Saint Augustine neighbor was the rep who sold them to the stores.  The store paid $500 plus $50 for "shipping", which was really the rep's 10% "commission".   It has four plus a very nice wood cabinet, stands. a quite expensive crossover, and nice grills.    Retail was $1000.

      When the dealer says he makes $400 on a set of $2000 speakers, he paid $1000 for them, but pays the salesman a commission (Often 20% of the profit, which is $200.), has building costs, utilities, insurance, taxes, etc, so he possibly does only personally pocket $400.     
zerobias's avatar
zerobias
73 posts
 
I have a pair of Polk (don't laugh now) LsiM 703 bookshelf speakers that sound absolutely wonderful.  Beautifully balanced, and a non-fatiguing joy to listen to.  I paid $600 for the pair.  Fit and finish is first rate.  I'm very happy with them.  A real sleeper.  
banyanbull
35 posts
 
It's easy to build and market a cheap speaker when all you're required to do is procure your drivers from another source, build an enclosure, fabricate a crossover, then brag about how much you're saving the end user by direct marketing. Reviews are a dime a dozen. I've encountered speakers that met with glowing accolades that sounded terrible. We all have.  Pertinent questions, that have nothing to do with personal opinion would include who makes your drivers? How much of your budget is centered around research and development?  What are your testing facilities?  How long have you been in business? The ultimate cost of a speaker has much to do with these factors. Based upon similar information a general idea of expected performance can be determined before the speaker is even unboxed.  Some of the companies mentioned here will likely be out of business before your speakers are broken in. Do the homework.        
tonyrox
21 posts
 
When I got into this geeky hobby I built my first pair of quality speakers from a mail order (way pre-www), company Speakerlab (which apparently is still in business).  12" 3-way in a box I made from MDF sourced from the local lumber yard.  Those carried me through HS and beyond, until I eventually bought some Polk 7's and a few others.  FF to the early 2000's and I bought a 5.1 set of Tannoy Saturn 8's and PS350 sub.

Now my 'reference' system is in my office with a set of ELAC UB5's, a Pro-ject S2 DAC, VPI Scoutmaster, and an old Denon 3802 receiver setup in 2.2 configuration.  Point is that I've had Klipsch RP-500M's, Jamo Coronet IV's, Kef IQ10's, and the current choice the Elac Uni-fi UB5's, with the only constant being the dual 10" Klipsch RPW-10 subs, and they all sound good and all are really cheap.  So regardless of what a mentally unbalanced troll says, it's obvious they've all been tuned by their designers.

Hard to go wrong with an Andrew Jones product.
b_limo's avatar
b_limo OP
2,273 posts
 
@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!


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