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.
It seems that lately no matter what topic I try to discuss it gets turned into a discussion about multi-channel audio. I for one would appreciate it if those discussions found a home in their own threads. I can take a hint. 🤝 Thread started, @mijostyn @fleschler @mahgister we can continue our discussion here: https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/immersive-audio-and-how-to-achieve-it |
I have been building speakers for over 40 years. Another miss-conception is that they are cheap. Not so. Markup on drivers and crossover parts is as brutal as finished speakers and one needs to figure I go through a couple prototype boxes before I am happy and usually several sets of drivers. I prototype the crossovers with cheap parts before I risk buying big air-cores and poly caps. Then, you think you can match those Chinese piano finish cabinets? I can but it takes me weeks and materials for a couple bookshelves can run several hundred. If you look at the direct sale companies, Buchard, Emotiva, Taylor, Ohm etc, you will see about half price compared to the traditional distribution network. It is actually hard for a DIY to match them in overall value and a disaster if you include your time. FWIW, I lean to paper cones and silk domes. Seas, SB, Vifa etc. Above 4K, I have never heard a tweeter beat an XT-25. Unfortunately, that leaves a problem getting from a 6 inch to the tweeter, so I am working on one now using an SB. The GR kits may be pretty fair. Danny can at least get the simple frequency response decent which is far above 90% of the speakers in the store! The CSS kits and even the spec design from ASR would seem to be reasonable. SEAS and SB have spec designs. All could be built if not getting crazy with exotic woods for under $1500 a pair. Do consider if the same materials were bought by a big company, they may be only $150. If I get lazy, I really like the CSS tweeter, but the ASR spec uses the Purify woofer which is in a class by itself. I prefer one of the SB tweeters over the DTX though. I wish Transducer Labs was still around. Fortunately for my bank account, the couple of times I thought about a commercial line, events saved me. Closed I got was a series of three and I had two stores and a distributor seriously looking. Why so few off the shelf drivers in commercial speakers? Well, preventing copy-cat rip-offs is one, and then we engineers always think we know better than transducer engineers who have been doing it for decades. Sometimes for good reason to make a woofer fit a box size and price point set by marketing. Sometimes just for our ego. In-house manufacturing is reserved for ultra high volume ( cost control, supply chain management, rapid prototyping like Dynaudio) or for the uber high end prestige market where you are trying to justify the price. Even there, you will find they don't make all the pieces. As far as quality control, if you can't control the quality of your supplier, it is your fault. I say that from the years I spent in Failure Analysis as a Quality Engineer. Even I knew how to prevent Chinese bait and switch runs. Eric, a super smooth $50 clean tweeter is not that easy to find though they are out there. If you have any recommendations, I am all ears. But yea, if you want to produce insane levels then follow the hints from the late Dr. Geedes and use compression drivers in horns and JBL PA midranges. Personally, a 1 inch soft dome can exceed the level of hearing damage in my living room so I have no need. Now the patents have run out, I keep hoping for AMT's with distortion levels that I can handle. They do so much well, but gasp, not there yet. Elac, Golden Ear, Martin Logan. ARRG! RAAL and other similar ribbons? Just as bad. I get the airiness and that is great, but just can't handle the distortion. Hidden cost factor: For what my woodshop cost, I could have bought top end Wilsons! Same with the misconception you can build furniture cheaper than you can buy it. |
You just referenced the XT25, so I thought you had this covered. The dual magnet versions can help bridge the gap for use in 2-way speakers. Even so, if you can fit a 4" midrange you can really do yourself a favor in terms of dynamic range, distortion and dispersion. The Scanspeak 2604 is also a great bargain with very smooth output. The GE AMT tweeters are not something I would use to judge the best AMTs today. |
Yea, from 4K up the Vifa is fantastic and easy to use. Have them on my desk with RS 120's. Go much below that, even in my near-field desk setup and the distortion skyrockets. It just does not have the surface area. Hard part is a decent midrange. I have not found one because of the efficiency problem and blending them with the woofer. Totem did well with them until the supply got short during COVID and they switched to a metal dome that IMHO is no where near as nice. I tried a pair of the SS, and a pair of the HDS. Both were OK, but to tame and flatten took too many parts. I have a pair of SB26 I am giving a try as they can work below 2K at reasonable levels. I tried their "ring radiator" and while it did sound clean, was a bit bumpy. I noticed Sonas Faber is doing something similar stabilizing the dome from the front. At least in the store, I am pretty impressed. I have used several pairs of the Seas 27 TBFC but in hind sight, I think the issues I was having was not rolling off the woofer steep enough. I had less luck with the 29TTF and the DXT. I am holding out hope for better AMT's. The Mundorf is a bit pricy for me ($1400/pair) just to play with and I have never heard one well done or seen any distortion measurements. I(distortion vs freq and spl) Dispersion is kind of an issue with them, but that can be dealt with. The SB is a lot cheaper, but again, neither heard or seen measurements and not pocket change. I keep hoping for a 90 dB efficient midrange that can go 400 to 4K. There was a lot to be said for the old "decade" monkey coffins. 40-400, 400-4K, 4K up. The new SB "filler" dome may have some possibilities. Actually, depending on how the SB's work out, I am half tempted to just buy some Sonas Faber Lumina IIs, sell all my lab stuff and give Komiko woodworking a try. |
