More than half the cost of a commercial loudspeaker is marketing costs. You’re generally not paying wholesale price from the manufacturer. If you’re buying from a local audio shop, list price is a 40% markup from what they pay for it, and they’re often not getting it from the manufacturer, but from the distributor, who is also representing other manufacturers as well. So you’re paying the distributor’s markup. This means that the price you’re paying is at least 2 times what the manufacturer is charging and probably a bit more than that.
The manufacturer has to charge at least 2 times their cost because they’re in business to make a profit. Yep. If they don’t make a profit, they don’t stay in business. So this means that the cost to build a loudspeaker is about 1/4 of what you’re paying.
There are any number of excellent loudspeaker kits available. The engineering has already been done. The magic is there for the taking. The comparison I love to show is the Joseph Audio PERSPECTIVE2 Graphene, which retails for about $12,000, to the SEAS Thor kit, available from Madisound for $1,993. Depending on how you do the project, you can spend another $400 to $1000 on building them.
Even if you don’t see yourself as a woodworker, a loudspeaker is a very easy cabinet to make up. Any local cabinet maker can knock them out for a reasonable amount. The hardest part of making any loudspeaker is making it look good. You can have the cabinet maker put a veneer and nice finish, or you could take the cabinets to an auto body paint shop, like this loudspeaker:
http://russbutton.com/Russ/audio/imgs/loudspeaker_auto_paint_job.jpg
and they could come out looking incredible.
And if you’re thinking about dropping $12k on a loudspeaker, then you’d do yourself very well to think about this Thor kit.
The manufacturer has to charge at least 2 times their cost because they’re in business to make a profit. Yep. If they don’t make a profit, they don’t stay in business. So this means that the cost to build a loudspeaker is about 1/4 of what you’re paying.
There are any number of excellent loudspeaker kits available. The engineering has already been done. The magic is there for the taking. The comparison I love to show is the Joseph Audio PERSPECTIVE2 Graphene, which retails for about $12,000, to the SEAS Thor kit, available from Madisound for $1,993. Depending on how you do the project, you can spend another $400 to $1000 on building them.
Even if you don’t see yourself as a woodworker, a loudspeaker is a very easy cabinet to make up. Any local cabinet maker can knock them out for a reasonable amount. The hardest part of making any loudspeaker is making it look good. You can have the cabinet maker put a veneer and nice finish, or you could take the cabinets to an auto body paint shop, like this loudspeaker:
http://russbutton.com/Russ/audio/imgs/loudspeaker_auto_paint_job.jpg
and they could come out looking incredible.
And if you’re thinking about dropping $12k on a loudspeaker, then you’d do yourself very well to think about this Thor kit.