Audiotroy is exactly right.
Take a speaker like the KEF LS50. If you're not making bass a major priority, that speaker represents overwhelming value. What direct-to-customer speaker maker is designing any of their products using computation fluid dynamics on super-computers with drivers tailored for the individual application? None. Companies like KEF, Focal, B&W, Paradigm, Magico, and others who operate vertically integrated businesses have tremendous engineering tools at their disposal. The kind of engineering they're capable of concentrating on a project IS the value you're buying, even if the actual cost to create the product isn't equivalent to some guy in a steel pole building scraping his concepts together using AutoCAD and some simulation software. It costs companies like Focal, B&W, and Magico next to nothing to implement nuanced alterations to the drivers to better optimize them for a specific application. Nobody buying drivers off the shelf is getting that kind of service from their supplier for a negligible cost. Wilson is known to buy incomplete drivers so that they can do those more nuanced modifications, and very few are going to that length. You look at a company like Tekton and they can't even promise you what components your crossover is going to be made out of!
Being able to put your product physically into a market place is a significant accomplishment, and in this particular business, is required because of the nature of the product and business. These are luxury products and I think most of us are expecting a luxury buying experience. Ordering something on the internet with a generous return policy is NOT a luxury buying experience. Buying my Focals was, without a doubt, a luxury buying experience.
Take a speaker like the KEF LS50. If you're not making bass a major priority, that speaker represents overwhelming value. What direct-to-customer speaker maker is designing any of their products using computation fluid dynamics on super-computers with drivers tailored for the individual application? None. Companies like KEF, Focal, B&W, Paradigm, Magico, and others who operate vertically integrated businesses have tremendous engineering tools at their disposal. The kind of engineering they're capable of concentrating on a project IS the value you're buying, even if the actual cost to create the product isn't equivalent to some guy in a steel pole building scraping his concepts together using AutoCAD and some simulation software. It costs companies like Focal, B&W, and Magico next to nothing to implement nuanced alterations to the drivers to better optimize them for a specific application. Nobody buying drivers off the shelf is getting that kind of service from their supplier for a negligible cost. Wilson is known to buy incomplete drivers so that they can do those more nuanced modifications, and very few are going to that length. You look at a company like Tekton and they can't even promise you what components your crossover is going to be made out of!
Being able to put your product physically into a market place is a significant accomplishment, and in this particular business, is required because of the nature of the product and business. These are luxury products and I think most of us are expecting a luxury buying experience. Ordering something on the internet with a generous return policy is NOT a luxury buying experience. Buying my Focals was, without a doubt, a luxury buying experience.