The most fun you can have in audio is DIYing your own speakers

If I had the time I'd like to try it.

10x is very off. Pricing for retail goes more like this manufacturer gets 30-40% over total costs retailer sells for about 33% over what he paid manufacturer. Still some like magico are pricing at what the market will bare.But on average if it costs manufacturer a $1000 they will sell to retailers for about 1300-1400 retail would be about $1800-2k. This cost structure is fairly standard.

I have reached about 40 hrs on the Klang & Ton Madisound kit - The Lee Taylor cabinets are works of art with the Koa wood veneer . The sound is the best I have heard in my room . These replaced a pair of Ohm Walsh 2000s . The price to performance ratio is a good reason to take the DIY plunge .

@johnk -

I don’t see where we are off except in one thing: I’m talking about the cost for the _drivers_ alone (woofer + tweeter, etc) vs. final retail pricing for the entire _speaker_ (drivers, cabinet, crossover).

Your math goes down the same places I went and then stopped at speaker manufacturing. If you went a little further you would get to where I went to.

Best,

E

Agreed with OP. I once did it. It was fun and I could learn a lot in the process. Here is my DIY speakers, except for the cabinets which were old speakers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t17fJJ_yOXk

I was happy with my DIY speakers, so I wanted to build a really nice pair. But after sometimes considering my wood work skills and the fund that was needed to get the tools, I had to give up.

Since seeing this post and suggestions on the cabinet makers, I start thinking again about making a pair. It should be fun.