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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Can a guy working out of his garage buy a kit from madisound or the like and compete with companies that have unlimited resources? I build houses, but wouldn't be able to compete with pulte/dell webb. The guy in the garage is paying more for the raw material than the big guy pays for the complete custom cabinet coming from china's finest

 Lets go with the standard markup, 50% so I'll use the salon 2 or persona 7f for their exotic cabinets and drivers. The list of $22k means the dealer pays $11k and if revel maintains the margin after R&D the pair cost $5500, or the persona at $25k cost dealers $12,5 so paradigm if they have the same margin build the pair for $6200 bucks. How is the guy working out of his garage going to offer that value? He would go broke creating the first pair of cabinets! sure put some sonotube in a square box and cut holes for the drivers ala HSU research. now tune the xover for the exotic custom drivers. Sorry, but in my mind I see a guy with a typewriter trying to keep up with a printing press.
@mapman You know how big an Ohm fan I am. That said, I have heard a few of the Magicos, and the presentation is completely different from Ohms. The Magicos are much lower in distortion than many other speakers, including Ohm. While Magicos have more minimized the contribution from the box, they are still monkey coffins, and have a top-down sound. Ohms, IME, are neutral to bottom-up. It wouldn’t be much of a shoot out, with fans of both house sounds lining up with one or the other. A better shout out, IMO, would be a pair of the big Ohms with something like the Legacy Aeris, at twice the price.
Hey bondman hope all is well.
Yeah I’ve heard Magico’s and that is a different sound. Off almost 100k of tube gear. The shop owner (Sound by Singer) laughed at me when I said I had Ohms.
I said there would be value. That alone might help swing a few folks.
If I hooked the Ohms up to that same $100k tube system, I suspect things would Get interesting.
@hilde45
Greg Belman from Bache Audio is  a very talented designer. English is his second language but his knowledge of speaker design is what counts. I've heard his speakers at shows and always came away impressed but it wasn't until the NYC '19 show I decided to make my way to the Brooklyn showroom. After my visit to the showroom I ordered my pair of the Tribeca's.

My Tribeca's with the Eton woofers are at the same price point as my Audio Physic Tempo Plus speakers. IMO, the Bache's offer better value.