Speakers - cost of components Vs the box?

[Ethos]

Many years back, I had heard that for most commercially available speakers, the bulk of the budget goes towards creating and decorating the box - with a much smaller portion going towards the components and drivers. I'm not including the manufacturer's overheads and profit and the retailer margins - just the cost of building the speaker. Just heard the same thing repeated from a pretty well known reviewer.

Would anyone know how true this is?

 

[simon g]

Depends on the speaker. Cabinets certainly can be costly, for many reasons. There again, the drive units can also be costly. For example, let's suppose a pair of Seas White Diamond tweeters are used; they'll be over £5k I would imagine.

So, the answer, as ever, is: it depends.

 

[hiesteem]

I can imagine that being the case. Don't think there is much in woofer design for most companies, and I can only think of a few companies that develop their own tweeter.
Save for a bit of bracing and internal dampening, making a well constructed cabinet has to be the priority. However I would suggest this area has significant impact on the sound quality.
When I think of Tannoy speakers especially the Eaton's they ain't pretty, but boy are they well made and have very solid cabinets.

 

[Jezzer]

I think saying ‘most commercially available speakers’ is quite accurate as most speakers are built to a budget. Though this becomes less true as you go up the ladder…

 

[Bodgit]

I'd tend to agree with that, most speaker manufacturers buy in the drivers and install them into their own cabinets. However, I would also factor into the price, the design costs which I know are a one off, but have to be recouped.

 

[rdale]

I think the most cost effective upgrade you can make to budget speakers is to improve the crossover components. The cabinets and drivers tend to be OK, but decent capacitors, resistors and air cored inductors would raise the bill of materials cost too much when the speaker needs to retail for at least five times as much as the cost of the parts to build it.

 

[bigrod]

It was certainly true back in the 70s and 80s
A decent box made by Wharfedale with quality veneers might take 4 coats of lacquer to get the desired finish , this does include sanding sealers and drying times and denibbing between coats . Could take 4 days and then they have to be handled with extreme care to prevent scratches and dents and obviously if you’re making a lot you need a lot of dust free space to store them during drying between coats ..
The drivers probably take an hour at the most to put in ..60% of any manufacturing costs in the UK is employee wages

 

[JANDL100]

If it's just "a box" then they are doing it wrong. The container and support of the drivers are fundamental to the performance of a speaker. You don't want to cheap out on the box.

 

[pmcuk]

It would be nice to have a "universal speaker cabinet" with a removable front, which could take all kinds of different speaker units and crossovers. That way you could keep the boxes and just upgrade the units. This would reduce wastage from all kinds of redundant speaker boxes which just go to landfill. I'm surprised no enterprising company has used this idea. Just needs a really good medium sized box, well damped and good looking with curved sides.

I'm really tempted to make such a box, though it would be a lot of work. One way of doing it would be to fasten the front on with 19" rackmount frames so you would screw on the front with the usual M6 rackmount screws. Very solid. In fact I wish I had made a pair of universal boxes years ago so I would have been living with all the benefits of upgradable speakers in the years since. But back then I used panel speakers.

If anyone has ideas for such a box or knows of a ready made one, send me a PM!

 

[awkwardbydesign]

It would be nice to have drivers that could be used in a universal box!

 

[marko]

For example, and in terms of fit and finish, these Audio Notes are nothing short of ‘Exquisite’!

 

[diceman]

It would be nice to have a "universal speaker cabinet" with a removable front, which could take all kinds of different speaker units and crossovers. That way you could keep the boxes and just upgrade the units. This would reduce wastage from all kinds of redundant speaker boxes which just go to landfill. I'm surprised no enterprising company has used this idea. Just needs a really good medium sized box, well damped and good looking with curved sides.

I'm really tempted to make such a box, though it would be a lot of work. One way of doing it would be to fasten the front on with 19" rackmount frames so you would screw on the front with the usual M6 rackmount screws. Very solid. In fact I wish I had made a pair of universal boxes years ago so I would have been living with all the benefits of upgradable speakers in the years since. But back then I used panel speakers.

If anyone has ideas for such a box or knows of a ready made one, send me a PM!

I'm sort of hoping to go this way for my study system. The primary bass cabinets will be designed for 1 driver unit (probably 10" volt as I have those) only so as to best match the thiel-small parameters but the mid and tweeter section will be designe dto be as flexible as I can as these are not so sensitive to box volume and the final volume can be tweaked a little by adding items inside the cabinet to reduce it. I'm thinking of a box with a removable front baffle so that only teh baffle needs making for different drivers and similar to something like this method.

 

[Nativebon]

Very happy with my speakers at the moment, but if I do upgrade in the future would definitely be DIY.
Better parts better everything, and relatively better performance compared to mass produced one's.

 

[Ethos]

What an interesting idea - a universal box! Perhaps available in 3 sizes to accomodate different scale speakers? That said, my sample of the speaker brands I saw on display at The Audio Lounge earlier today showed a huge disparity in box design! They had Spendor with their vintage style enclosures with thin walls that are meant to contribute to the sound, ATC with the curved walls, YG with the thick Aluminium based design and Avant Garde!

Fully agree about the box being a significant determinant of the sound quality - I recently put in Dynaudio in-wall speakers into my new home theatre system and rather than putting them into the wall, I created a rectangular MDF box (technically 4 boxes) on the wall to frame the TV and installed the 3 front speakers into that. I just take issue with paying silly money for the 6 layers of automotive gloss etc...

The cost of the box definitely has me thinking about going back to panel based speakers - where you'd imagine more of the budget is going towards the components.

 

[Rayymondo]

I recently put in Dynaudio in-wall speakers into my new home theatre system and rather than putting them into the wall, I created a rectangular MDF box (technically 4 boxes) on the wall to frame the TV and installed the 3 front speakers into that.

Sounds interesting. Pictures please . Maybe post in the "From your listening chair thread" on this very forum.

 

[Ethos]

It's just raw MDF just now - will post once it looks a bit nicer!

 

[tuga]

It would be nice to have a "universal speaker cabinet" with a removable front, which could take all kinds of different speaker units and crossovers. That way you could keep the boxes and just upgrade the units. This would reduce wastage from all kinds of redundant speaker boxes which just go to landfill. I'm surprised no enterprising company has used this idea. Just needs a really good medium sized box, well damped and good looking with curved sides.

I'm really tempted to make such a box, though it would be a lot of work. One way of doing it would be to fasten the front on with 19" rackmount frames so you would screw on the front with the usual M6 rackmount screws. Very solid. In fact I wish I had made a pair of universal boxes years ago so I would have been living with all the benefits of upgradable speakers in the years since. But back then I used panel speakers.

If anyone has ideas for such a box or knows of a ready made one, send me a PM!

Different drivers require a different box volume. But if you were to make the volume adjustable then it might be possible to use one box with different drivers. You'd also need an interchangeable panel for the different ports.
And you could use Class D amp packs and electronic crossovers to make things even easier.

 

[Lawrence001]

What an interesting idea - a universal box! Perhaps available in 3 sizes to accomodate different scale speakers? That said, my sample of the speaker brands I saw on display at The Audio Lounge earlier today showed a huge disparity in box design! They had Spendor with their vintage style enclosures with thin walls that are meant to contribute to the sound, ATC with the curved walls, YG with the thick Aluminium based design and Avant Garde!

Fully agree about the box being a significant determinant of the sound quality - I recently put in Dynaudio in-wall speakers into my new home theatre system and rather than putting them into the wall, I created a rectangular MDF box (technically 4 boxes) on the wall to frame the TV and installed the 3 front speakers into that. I just take issue with paying silly money for the 6 layers of automotive gloss etc...

The cost of the box definitely has me thinking about going back to panel based speakers - where you'd imagine more of the budget is going towards the components.

You can't really assume that a panel speaker would sound better than an equal cost dynamic speaker due to the lower cabinet cost, as the driver technology is so different their costs are not directly comparable. The sounds are subjectively very different as well making any comparison meaningless beyond your own preference.

 

[awkwardbydesign]

For example, and in terms of fit and finish, these Audio Notes are nothing short of ‘Exquisite’!

Nah, the blue cones clash with the veneer.
Edited; couldn't spell clash.