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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
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
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. 
highend666
352 posts
 
GR Research..
erik_squires
16,338 posts
 
It’s True. Look at the drivers Fritz uses and compare the speakers to similar offerings from Wilson or Gamut.

Of course, drivers alone do not create a product worth listening to, nor should they be the only way to price speakers, but I think Fritz does everything well.

b_limo's avatar
b_limo OP
2,288 posts
 
+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!  
b_limo's avatar
b_limo OP
2,288 posts
 
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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