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!  
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Excellent Speakers are quite difficult to evaluate because of individual"s sonic preferences.  Some are bright , some boomy  without factoring their prices.  We have all listened to speakers in various audio stores, read their reviews but how many of you have actually listen to the speakers you are buying in you living or audio room ?  Unless you do this which  I have done with my current speakers, you can't judge them by their built or their price.  I have my speakers since the early nineties and afraid that I won't be able to replace them.   I have the almost extinct  Apogee  Duetta signature being driven by old solid state  Krell

imThorek 
@blueranger  +1!  I have no idea what Ohm's profit margin was on my $2800/pr of Walsh 2000s that I bought 10 years ago.  But I have yet to hear a speaker under $10k that I would rather own.  That's $280 per year for many hours of beautiful music, and I think I have bought my last pair of speakers.  Another plus, every upstream upgrade I make has made my 2000s sound even better.
Has anyone heard Zu Audio's Dirty Weekends? They run about a grand depending on your choice of finish. 
@kenjit I have to agree and clarify one point. I do believe that if you have a master speaker designer and tuner you can't go wrong.  Just ask Fritz! His no crossovers design requires him to tune by ear the wrappings on each coil to get each speaker to sing as he see fit. Thats why his speakers and the Carbon 7's are so sought after for their price, quality of build and selection of high quality speaker choices.