Speaker manufacturers or box manufacturers with off the shelf drivers?

To the OP
certainly a legitimate question. There is a LOT more to speaker design than just catalog shopping drivers or even inventing your own. In a dynamic driver speaker, creating your own from scratch is daunting to say the least and IMO sort of stupid because it completely ignores the law of comparative advantage, however there are areas where it makes sense to collaborate- to wit the magical Vandersteen pistonic carbon and carbon balsa core drivers built on seas and Scanspeak baskets/ magnet assembly. Since 1977

Kenjit what would you reccomend the OP or anyone else do? Not own speakers of any kind cause they all suck? 

I’ve been wondering this same question lately, since I’ve been looking at buying some speakers from a small company that uses high end drivers.

My questions are how much better is the r&d and testing methods of large companies like kef, dynaudio, etc, come into play in terms of sound quality.  These smaller companies do not have these test facilities.  Also, it seems like the fit and finish of large companies nears perfection, whereas small companies look, hand built shall we say.

And my other question is does the real magic lie in the sum of the whole  of the parts?  Can a speaker built by a master speaker builder, in his shop, tuned by ear, sound better than anything comparable?  I mean, I assume its possible to have speaker “a” with $50 drivers, $100 crossovers designed well, stout enclosure, sound better than speaker “b” with $250 drivers, $25 crossovers and an enclosure with lots of resonance.

And lastly, I’m thinking that its easier to resell large brand name items, Focal, Kef, Klipsch, over small boutique companies.

Perhaps this all why I have enjoyed some of my times with Magnepans, they are not off the shelf drivers places in a MDF box. 

Again, simply asking a question.  With some of the replies it would seem that dynamic drivers in a box is what people think of for speakers.  Planer, Electrostats, the Heil driver and others seem, at least to my memory, to exist.