What makes an expensive speaker expensive

I think most would agree that you can get some great sound for under say 5k or 10k, but you can get better to much better sound if you can afford to. Bass....clean and true is what costs the most.  Once you start adding built in subs and carbon fiber or other exotic materials, plus the labor as well as the R&D, then the price goes up accordingly.  Many companies will just set a price point that is way more than the speaker is worth or costs to make just because they can. They will market the heck out of them until they get a cult following.  Then they just use that to market and grow their base.  Great business if you can get away with it and there are plenty of companies who do this.  I think the real test though are the ones who have been around for ages and ages and have a great rep for giving you more than you expect in whatever your price range is.  There are a handful out there still who continue to do this, even as they hand the keys over to their kids.  I personally love to support those companies be it speakers or electronics.  JMHO

true, it depends on the speaker and it's design.  I asked Richard Vandersteen about this yesterday and he said that another reason a speaker can go from 600k to 100k is the amount sold.  If you have a speaker that you design and you will only be able to sell a handful, then you have to make up the R&D, overhead and marketing costs on fewer speakers, so the price will go up accordingly.  He had much more to say, but this was one of the big things I took away.

I would have to say the single biggest determinant of speaker price is price the market will pay which maximizes the rate of return on the capital of the speakers builder.  If it is not, it should be. This does not necessarily have any correlation to R&D, distribution or material costs.

Watts, everything is involved.  All the the topics we covered so far are a huge part of it.  Yes, market price matters, however what Richard said about going from 600k to 100k is a huge determinant.  If a manufacturer wants to do R&D that they will trickle down to their other lower lines, then they can make the assumption that at 600k, they'll sell only 3 for the year, but if they go 100k, then they can sell 50 for the year.  That would be what you are talking about I assume?  The market at 600k will relate to 3 sales and that's what the market allows, but at 100k for the same thing (economy of scale) then you sell 50.