There is a huge difference in the price of loudspeakers. Some are a few dollars others are thousands. What are the factors that make a speaker driver expensive? If it was low distortion wouldn’t the distortion figures be advertised? Some is of course proprietary materials and expensive processes like MAOP or diamond coatings where the process often destroys more membranes and diaphrams than are used. There is also market demand, which I don’t think is a big deal for most hi-fi speakers. In the example below one is a matched pair, obviously there is a cost to match drivers to some tolerance, but is it worth $800?
What is the cost driver to produce good power handling, flat frequency response, low distortion, etc?
Here’s a somewhat absurd example from PE:
The least expensive full sized dome tweeter.
$6.98, GRS 1TD1-8 1" Dome Tweeter 8 Ohm ($13.96 for an unmatched pair)
A similar, and the most expensive, dome tweeter.
$808/pair, Morel TSCT1044 Supreme 1" Silk Dome Neodymium Tweeters - Matched Pair
What is the cost driver to produce good power handling, flat frequency response, low distortion, etc?
Here’s a somewhat absurd example from PE:
The least expensive full sized dome tweeter.
$6.98, GRS 1TD1-8 1" Dome Tweeter 8 Ohm ($13.96 for an unmatched pair)
A similar, and the most expensive, dome tweeter.
$808/pair, Morel TSCT1044 Supreme 1" Silk Dome Neodymium Tweeters - Matched Pair
What makes anything expensive?
Supply and demand.
The supply curve is based on marginal cost, which takes into account expensiveness of material (Beryllium, more copper, etc.), labor costs (Denmark vs China), etc. If the market is not perfectly competitive than market power/product differentiation will matter in addition to marginal costs.
Demand will depend on tastes (white cones, phase plugs, carbon fiber weave, distortion, directivity), overall levels of income, availability of substitutes, etc. Marketing can influence tastes, but also long term reputational effects can shift demand and validate a price premium.
Supply and demand.
The supply curve is based on marginal cost, which takes into account expensiveness of material (Beryllium, more copper, etc.), labor costs (Denmark vs China), etc. If the market is not perfectly competitive than market power/product differentiation will matter in addition to marginal costs.
Demand will depend on tastes (white cones, phase plugs, carbon fiber weave, distortion, directivity), overall levels of income, availability of substitutes, etc. Marketing can influence tastes, but also long term reputational effects can shift demand and validate a price premium.
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In a single word: tolerances. There are other factors, but that's the biggest one. Materials though - alnico, beryllium, there's lots of prohibitively expensive "things" involved in manufacturing the high-end stuff. R&D seems these days to be the domain of the cottage-industry brands.
A nice little concise example of how/why expensive things are expensive can be seen in the emergence of the Japanese manufacturers in the 50's. You've got brands like pioneer, making headway in ultra low-cost while simultaneously pursuing the ultra high-end. On the one hand, you've got aluminum stamped frames and wide VC gaps and low efficiency. And on the other - cost as no object pieces that essentially belong in a laboratory.
The American manufacturers tended to do one or the other, or to start out in a high place and decend into the mundane. The Japanese brands were doing both at the same time, more or less from the get-go.
https://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/unit/p-101-e.html
https://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/unit/pw-38f-e.html
If you wanna hear about tight tolerances... those fellas in... I think Korea? Who are doing reproductions of Western Electric drivers... they've got HUGE challenges even with modern CNC. Imagine rejecting a unit over a 0.0003 inch variance! In their own day, those drivers cost more than a car and were typically leased, not sold. Nobody could have afforded them anyways.
A nice little concise example of how/why expensive things are expensive can be seen in the emergence of the Japanese manufacturers in the 50's. You've got brands like pioneer, making headway in ultra low-cost while simultaneously pursuing the ultra high-end. On the one hand, you've got aluminum stamped frames and wide VC gaps and low efficiency. And on the other - cost as no object pieces that essentially belong in a laboratory.
The American manufacturers tended to do one or the other, or to start out in a high place and decend into the mundane. The Japanese brands were doing both at the same time, more or less from the get-go.
https://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/unit/p-101-e.html
https://audio-database.com/PIONEER-EXCLUSIVE/unit/pw-38f-e.html
If you wanna hear about tight tolerances... those fellas in... I think Korea? Who are doing reproductions of Western Electric drivers... they've got HUGE challenges even with modern CNC. Imagine rejecting a unit over a 0.0003 inch variance! In their own day, those drivers cost more than a car and were typically leased, not sold. Nobody could have afforded them anyways.
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From an economics perspective, another aspect is simply product segmentation. SB Acoustics makes $40 woofers as well as $400 woofers. Both may have required say a hundred hours of R&D but the textreme variant is more expensive to manufacture and will sell in lower volumes, so it's more expensive to recoup the same costs. Of course the cheaper one isn't 10 times worse, it's maybe only got 50% more distortion, but you hit diminishing returns pretty quickly after $50 imo (for smaller <6" drivers). For larger drivers... I'd guess it's more of manufacturing tolerances. I'm sure 18sound drivers amazing but when you can not only DIY but even commercially buy a pair of speakers for $800... they better sound amazing. Of course Be/PVD coatings/extreme materials also factor in when used.
Tangential but I'd be interested in this or another thread also talk about factors affecting sound quality (and perhaps how they affect cost). If not size/WAF/wavelength constrained, I think using many drivers to reduce distortion (as IIRC Linkwitz had talked about) is likely a much more cost effective solution.
Tangential but I'd be interested in this or another thread also talk about factors affecting sound quality (and perhaps how they affect cost). If not size/WAF/wavelength constrained, I think using many drivers to reduce distortion (as IIRC Linkwitz had talked about) is likely a much more cost effective solution.
IMHO, that we pay far too much attention to the tweeter vs. the midrange or a mid-woofer. I mean, I like having an excellent tweeter, but when it comes to sheer importance of what we will hear we seem to have a completely imbalanced view of how much to pay for each driver.
A large part of driver cost is probably exclusivity, and the cost to make vs. sell. A $500 tweeter is going to go into $15k-20k speakers. Using such uber expensive drivers reduces the chances of them appearing in hobby level speakers.
A large part of driver cost is probably exclusivity, and the cost to make vs. sell. A $500 tweeter is going to go into $15k-20k speakers. Using such uber expensive drivers reduces the chances of them appearing in hobby level speakers.
I guess a good example of the market forces is 20 years ago when Tang Band had better than average speakers at a relative bargain price. They figured out they could sell them at higher prices, and now they seem to have extended their pricing to where better quality European, Japanese, and other drivers offer higher value. One thing that will affect the price is consistency. There is a cost for a good quality control program. TB didn’t have good QC in the early days.
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while demand can raise prices in the first place, on the long run high production numbers following demand can hugely reduce unit costs.
Obviously, the cost is worth it to those that shell out $808 for a pair of tweeters 😉 .
The range in cost between speaker cable, capacitors, automobiles and alcoholic beverages shows that people's cost vs benefit ratios can be orders of magnitude apart.
We could have a chat about 3" beryllium dome compression drivers.... good used car territory
😵😵
Yeah idk about modern stuff - that's out of my purview. I might as well have just stepped out of a time machine from 1953, if you look at my own system and interests.... I was thinking about bringing up the retail prices for funktion systems from like 1999 as an example of "modern" kit lol... but yes, $8,000 bins with two $500 woofers and alot of great horn/enclosure design.
And beryllium oh my goshness, yeah there the diaphragm can cost more than the magnet structure ON THE MANUFACTURING END. Everyone has dropped them because cancer lawsuits.... I don't have any, um but I would really like some. Any TAD driver with a good diaphragm would be a huge blessing in my life.... I vividly remember hearing some for the first time, at an EDM show of all places. What really blew me away though was the horns - fantastic clarity from the "camping" area at the festival in question. Crazy dispersion. They were some hand fabricated paper mache dudes...
And beryllium oh my goshness, yeah there the diaphragm can cost more than the magnet structure ON THE MANUFACTURING END. Everyone has dropped them because cancer lawsuits.... I don't have any, um but I would really like some. Any TAD driver with a good diaphragm would be a huge blessing in my life.... I vividly remember hearing some for the first time, at an EDM show of all places. What really blew me away though was the horns - fantastic clarity from the "camping" area at the festival in question. Crazy dispersion. They were some hand fabricated paper mache dudes...
If measured by actual weight used in diaphragms, the cost of beryllium makes diamonds look like a bargain.
And then there's the "beryllium alloy" diaphragms using 2% beryllium...
And then there's the "beryllium alloy" diaphragms using 2% beryllium...
It would be totally fair to say that there is something called wank factor as well as herd factor and the biggie, the elite herdism that can also have a hand in creating shelf price points. But the same manufacturer may very well use a tier of material capability types, engineering effort and so on to actually differentiate the various series
But, taking an honest look at that may show that the lesser variants are actually being held back to create a seeming cheaper price. Let's take a premium car audio brand that made it to the highest of home reviews with actual development work. Back in the day, for JLAudio to develop something the W7 was real cutting edge engineering and going on to create the Gotham was sticking with the effort and going all the way with the W7. No one here in the industry or serious enthusiast considered it overpriced by any means and something to aspire to
Does it make sense for the W7 to sell for more than the original price 20yrs later? I don't think so. It's now easier for a manufacturer to engineer something in that W7 class and for a hack like me to take that and bodgie up a Gotham, with grater access to greater tech
But the most dismal things to observe, the herd flocking to a handful of recognised influencers and the brands and models getting airtime. As a component/item manufacture back in the day, I used this to great effect by seriously investing in the forum tech which let me ultimately being able to ask for much greater prices by rendering an illusion of team effort between the consumer, retailer and manufacturer. This was profit and what I was in it for
But. It was that allergy with putting on cloven slippers over my natural feet that originally drove me to create something different in the first place!!! It's a weird and wonderful and sorry situation all at the same time, when it comes to part prices and what drives them, but it won't work unless there were enough willing to pay!!
But, taking an honest look at that may show that the lesser variants are actually being held back to create a seeming cheaper price. Let's take a premium car audio brand that made it to the highest of home reviews with actual development work. Back in the day, for JLAudio to develop something the W7 was real cutting edge engineering and going on to create the Gotham was sticking with the effort and going all the way with the W7. No one here in the industry or serious enthusiast considered it overpriced by any means and something to aspire to
Does it make sense for the W7 to sell for more than the original price 20yrs later? I don't think so. It's now easier for a manufacturer to engineer something in that W7 class and for a hack like me to take that and bodgie up a Gotham, with grater access to greater tech
But the most dismal things to observe, the herd flocking to a handful of recognised influencers and the brands and models getting airtime. As a component/item manufacture back in the day, I used this to great effect by seriously investing in the forum tech which let me ultimately being able to ask for much greater prices by rendering an illusion of team effort between the consumer, retailer and manufacturer. This was profit and what I was in it for
But. It was that allergy with putting on cloven slippers over my natural feet that originally drove me to create something different in the first place!!! It's a weird and wonderful and sorry situation all at the same time, when it comes to part prices and what drives them, but it won't work unless there were enough willing to pay!!
I mean nothing makes sense, Jim Lansing hung himself at 47, people listen to "sound bars," and renditions of designs from 1928 masquerade as novel. We are in a strange timeline for audio. My favorite woofer I own was manufactured in 1943, and we generally perfer a recording format invented in the 1800's which took it's modern form (33rpm) in the early 40's.... up is down. Materials science pushed things forward, but for amplifier circuits I feel like everything was on the table by the mid 50's......
Advertising, planned obsolescence, and slim-margine corporate business structure... it's up to companies that move 15, or maybe 50 sales per year to hold it down. And you gotta market to the highest dollar slice - the 1% the only people that have any money anyways. You can sell bottom-barrel Costco speakers and contract out every aspect of the manufacturing, for THE MAN, like idk Phillips or Panasonic or something... OR... you can create a product that costs $18,000 for a stereo pair. Those are pretty much the only two pathways. If you really want to manufacture drivers.
Advertising, planned obsolescence, and slim-margine corporate business structure... it's up to companies that move 15, or maybe 50 sales per year to hold it down. And you gotta market to the highest dollar slice - the 1% the only people that have any money anyways. You can sell bottom-barrel Costco speakers and contract out every aspect of the manufacturing, for THE MAN, like idk Phillips or Panasonic or something... OR... you can create a product that costs $18,000 for a stereo pair. Those are pretty much the only two pathways. If you really want to manufacture drivers.
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For a hint, look at Scan-Speak.
Originally owned by Danes, it was sold to Chinese investors in 2004, and has an employee strength of 18 people, the Chinese owners have about 1400 employees.
They supply parts, which are assembled in Denmark.
Those speakers are far better known than I feel is their worth, but like above, it is more a marketing ploy than real stuff.
And you guys forgot the magnet debates...Alnico, Ferrite, Neodymium
etc.
The choice of enclosure also is important, a brilliant driver will sound terrible in the wrong housing.
Fact is, most of us oldies have difficulty beyond hearing beyond 10 kHz, and you can reduce distortion by reducing the volume, or change to a bigger driver if you need the same volume, distortion mostly occurs if you run the speakers close to their limits.
Unless it is a terrible speaker, I find Philips and JBL are quite adequate, and there are hundreds of makers in the Delhi area making speakers, and many others making OEM for TVs and party speakers etc.
Just buy the best you can afford, they are usually enough to listen, or you can look at some of the designs here on this site by (among others) Patrick Bateman and planet10, they are very good, and it is your decision to build those.
Of course, they use ready made drivers, so the advice is a little out of line.
One more thing, most people listen at about 2 to 3 Watts per channel, enough for a small room, so unless you have tiny computer speakers, they will sound mostly the same.... exotic stuff does not do well at low volumes.
And again, your choice of music will influence the choice of speakers, but consider your amplifier and inputs as well for quality of signal.
Speakers are basically cage + magnet + voice coil + cone + wire and fasteners, each has a big price band.
How much you pay, well it depends (as an analogy) whether you wear a Seiko or a Rolex, both tell the time with quite good accuracy.
I cannot wear a watch in 100% humidity and 40 degrees here in Baroda, I see the time on my cell phone.
BTW, check out who makes Rolex, their cheapest brand was Swatch!
I simply mention the brands as examples, no ties to them.
In sum, it is mostly bragging rights, and branding... Audi , VW and Skoda use the same engine blocks, but see the price difference!
Originally owned by Danes, it was sold to Chinese investors in 2004, and has an employee strength of 18 people, the Chinese owners have about 1400 employees.
They supply parts, which are assembled in Denmark.
Those speakers are far better known than I feel is their worth, but like above, it is more a marketing ploy than real stuff.
And you guys forgot the magnet debates...Alnico, Ferrite, Neodymium
etc.
The choice of enclosure also is important, a brilliant driver will sound terrible in the wrong housing.
Fact is, most of us oldies have difficulty beyond hearing beyond 10 kHz, and you can reduce distortion by reducing the volume, or change to a bigger driver if you need the same volume, distortion mostly occurs if you run the speakers close to their limits.
Unless it is a terrible speaker, I find Philips and JBL are quite adequate, and there are hundreds of makers in the Delhi area making speakers, and many others making OEM for TVs and party speakers etc.
Just buy the best you can afford, they are usually enough to listen, or you can look at some of the designs here on this site by (among others) Patrick Bateman and planet10, they are very good, and it is your decision to build those.
Of course, they use ready made drivers, so the advice is a little out of line.
One more thing, most people listen at about 2 to 3 Watts per channel, enough for a small room, so unless you have tiny computer speakers, they will sound mostly the same.... exotic stuff does not do well at low volumes.
And again, your choice of music will influence the choice of speakers, but consider your amplifier and inputs as well for quality of signal.
Speakers are basically cage + magnet + voice coil + cone + wire and fasteners, each has a big price band.
How much you pay, well it depends (as an analogy) whether you wear a Seiko or a Rolex, both tell the time with quite good accuracy.
I cannot wear a watch in 100% humidity and 40 degrees here in Baroda, I see the time on my cell phone.
BTW, check out who makes Rolex, their cheapest brand was Swatch!
I simply mention the brands as examples, no ties to them.
In sum, it is mostly bragging rights, and branding... Audi , VW and Skoda use the same engine blocks, but see the price difference!
another factor is economies of scale - the larger the production volume, the cheaper something can be made. There is also a learning curve - over time one learns to make it cheaper. Couple that with the elasticity of markets and you see that these factors work to drive the cost of commodities down and high end products up. The lower the price the larger the market, the cheaper the item can be made thus enabling an even lower price and an even larger market.
A quote about high-end audio: these things don't sell if they are not overpriced.
Legend has it Dynaudio wanted to pull out of the diy market at the beginning of the 90ties. Before pulling the plug, the company started to dramatically increase its prices, at least in the Netherlands. The result was sales went up spectacularly, so the withdrawal was postponed a couple of years. Make it (uber-)expensive, and the story telling will start by itself in the strange line of business audio is.
A substantial portion of the cost(s) behind any commodity comes from the engineering, research (if any), design, wastage, salaries, other expenses (e.g. equipment, electricity), tests and certifications (e.g. THX or CE) etc.
A big company usually has a lot of resources (labs, equipment), better paid engineers, technical know-how etc. Thus big companies make good drivers that also cost 'good' money. Small companies have less resources but also take less money from customers.
And sometimes the price is simply driven up to make things 'look' sophisticated.
A big company usually has a lot of resources (labs, equipment), better paid engineers, technical know-how etc. Thus big companies make good drivers that also cost 'good' money. Small companies have less resources but also take less money from customers.
And sometimes the price is simply driven up to make things 'look' sophisticated.