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The mistake armchair speaker snobs make too often

Recently read the comments, briefly, on the Stereophile review of a very interesting speaker. I say it’s interesting because the designers put together two brands I really like together: Mundorf and Scanspeak. I use the same brands in my living room and love the results.

Unfortunately, using off-the-shelf drivers, no matter how well performing, immediately gets arm chair speaker critics, who can’t actually build speakers themselves, and wouldn’t like it if they could, trying to evaluate the speaker based on parts.

First, these critics are 100% never actually going to make a pair of speakers. They only buy name brands. Next, they don’t get how expensive it is to run a retail business.

A speaker maker has to sell a pair of speakers for at least 10x what the drivers cost. I’m sorry but the math of getting a speaker out the door, and getting a retailer to make space for it, plus service overhead, yada yada, means you simply cannot sell a speaker for parts cost. Same for everything on earth.

The last mistake, and this is a doozy, is that the same critics who insist on only custom, in-house drivers, are paying for even cheaper drivers!

I hope you are all sitting down, but big speaker brand names who make their drivers 100% in house sell the speakers for 20x or more of the actual driver cost.

Why do these same speaker snobs keep their mouth shut about name brands but try to take apart small time, efficient builders? Because they can.  The biggest advantage that in-house drivers gives you is that the riff raft ( this is a joke on an old A'gon post which misspelled riff raff) stays silent.  If you are sitting there pricing speakers out on parts cost, shut up and build something, then go sell it.

erik_squires
soix
10,424 posts
 

I never quite could figure out the knock against speaker manufacturers that use off the shelf drivers?

I tend to agree with @simonmoon here although I’ve no experience like him or Eric building speakers to back it up. Companies like Scanspeak, Seas, Vifa, RAAL, Dynaudio, etc. have been manufacturing drivers for decades, and if I was building speakers I’d have to have one big set of cajones to think I could meaningfully improve on their drivers’ performance. I’d think optimizing and using better parts in the crossover along with improving the cabinet structure/design would be higher on my list than trying to design/manufacture my own driver and reinvent a pretty damn good wheel that’s already been refined to a high level. I think those who think speakers that use excellent but off-the-shelf (or modified versions thereof) are somehow sub standard are kidding themselves or maybe just have a lot of $$$ to burn. Not saying in-house drivers don’t or can’t have significant advantages as they clearly can, but in terms of the overall speaker design it’s not tops on my list of concerns given the quality of good drivers today — or at least not until we get high enough up the price scale where the other critical speaker components have already been largely addressed. But that’s me. Good/interesting post BTW.

erik_squires OP
16,916 posts
 

Worth noting that while there are a lot of inexpensive drivers that perform very well in terms of frequency response and distortion the big money goes to power handling.

It's easy to find a tweeter < $50 that's super smooth and clean sounding when it only has to handle 10 W or less, but an entirely different thing when you apply power to it. That's where, IMHO, the adults are separated from the boys. 

For this reason alone, though I may not use them, JBL professional products get a knod of respect from me always.

phusis's avatar
phusis
1,296 posts
 

@erik_squires wrote:

It's easy to find a tweeter < $50 that's super smooth and clean sounding when it only has to handle 10 W or less, but an entirely different thing when you apply power to it. That's where, IMHO, the adults are separated from the boys. 

For this reason alone, though I may not use them, JBL professional products get a knod of respect from me always.

I dare say I have my fair share of experience with a range of pro driver brands, and if JBL pro gets the approving nod from you, you might as well include quite a few other brands down the road. Not asking of you to do so blindly, but compared to other pro manufacturers JBL, as much as I respect them, aren't necessarily sitting on a high horse here - believe me. I had my mind wrapped around them rather exclusively years ago with a big love in particular for their more powerful and horn-hybrids studio range and the likes of the K2 S9500 (those 1400ND woofers, not least the 1400PRO version - the first neodymium magnet woofers to be put into production, if I recall correctly - are dynamite), but in the years to come came to realize others went on to challenge JBL, and in core areas even exceed them. I'm not only thinking brute power handling force and durability here, but as well when speaking compression drivers and what's considered the more "audiophile" aspects, not least of which is lower SPL "attentiveness" and overall finesse. Those brilliant engineers back then like Keele and others put their lasting mark certainly on Altec, Electro-Voice, JBL and more (of which my own pro cinema EV's are a product child), but fortunately we have a range of current designs from other, european brands to carry on the torch. Btw. right now listening to Sinatra's 'My Way,' and you'd think his songs were meant to be reproduced by large format horns and drivers :) 

erik_squires OP
16,916 posts
 

@phusis  I don't think everything JBL ever did was outstanding, but rather that they always take power handling into consideration.

 

There are "furniture grade" Altec Voice of the Theater speakers for sale on A'gon and I so wish I had the space for them!

kota1
2,706 posts
 

@phusis

Btw. right now listening to Sinatra’s ’My Way,’ and you’d think his songs were meant to be reproduced by large format horns and drivers :)

Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin owned 3 Paragons EACH to listen to their own Master Tapes. Since a Single Paragon is Stereo, they had to be using a Paragon as a single speaker instead of stereo (effectively 6 speakers systems in 3 cabinets.

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