I think it's quite obvious what I responded to;
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...r-driver-expensive.414264/page-6#post-7722618
followed by
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...r-driver-expensive.414264/page-7#post-7722714
Maybe its a language thing. To summarize...
The answer to the OPs question has been answered.
Add marketing/A&P spend to the Demand function under "etc." or as an indirect input of "tastes & preferences" if you want
Since the OP's question has been answered, I asked a question regarding WHY a particularly soft dome tweeter would sound better than another. Profiguy had some good insight.
Since you work with driver manufacturers, comparing premium sound quality tweeters (not a budget tweeter to a premium tweeter), why do you think a specific tweeter A sounds better that a specific tweeter B? (And presumably someone can't just replicate tweeter A easily.) Maybe my example of Morel Supreme vs Scan-speak Revelator was a bad example, pick whatever you want.
^This is true.
The answer to the OPs question has been answered.
Add "economies of scale" to the Supply function under "etc." or consider it included in technology if you want
Add marketing/A&P spend to the Demand function under "etc." or as an indirect input of "tastes & preferences" if you want
Since the OP's question has been answered, I asked a question regarding WHY a particularly soft dome tweeter would sound better than another. Profiguy had some good insight.
Since you work with driver manufacturers, comparing premium sound quality tweeters (not a budget tweeter to a premium tweeter), why do you think a specific tweeter A sounds better that a specific tweeter B? (And presumably someone can't just replicate tweeter A easily.) Maybe my example of Morel Supreme vs Scan-speak Revelator was a bad example, pick whatever you want.
@A4eaudio You had mentioned the Morel TSCT1044 / 1104 soft dome -
Its likely the overall most accurate soft dome available to date while still being musically engaging and having a well rounded character of its own. "Accurate" sounding drivers tend to be boring to listen to, but (as with other cheaper Morel domes) the general recipe of design they use lends to a harmonically rich sounding soft dome that doesn't smother the fine details. I heard the TSCTs a few years ago in a 2 way MLTL with an Audax HM210C0. Its the only 28 ish mm soft dome which mates seamlessly with an open weave carbon fiber cone.
The Audax 8 is a rare breed of driver, as it uses very little resin to stabilize the CF cone as some other composite cones use. This allows for a very open, detailed sound without the typical plastic cone breakup resonances up top. You get that wide banded, controlled and softer breakup of a paper cone which seems to be a trademark of the better Audax woofers.
The Morel TSCT blends perfectly with this Audax and it can deal with a relatively low crossover while being able to play quite loud without any hint of strain. Another big bonus, its cheap to repair if you get too greedy with the volume - a new dome asy is only about $50 and thats also for a vented Ti VC former. Little tip - you can use this specific replacement dome on an MDT32S motor. Makes a big difference and is a great upgrade.
Its likely the overall most accurate soft dome available to date while still being musically engaging and having a well rounded character of its own. "Accurate" sounding drivers tend to be boring to listen to, but (as with other cheaper Morel domes) the general recipe of design they use lends to a harmonically rich sounding soft dome that doesn't smother the fine details. I heard the TSCTs a few years ago in a 2 way MLTL with an Audax HM210C0. Its the only 28 ish mm soft dome which mates seamlessly with an open weave carbon fiber cone.
The Audax 8 is a rare breed of driver, as it uses very little resin to stabilize the CF cone as some other composite cones use. This allows for a very open, detailed sound without the typical plastic cone breakup resonances up top. You get that wide banded, controlled and softer breakup of a paper cone which seems to be a trademark of the better Audax woofers.
The Morel TSCT blends perfectly with this Audax and it can deal with a relatively low crossover while being able to play quite loud without any hint of strain. Another big bonus, its cheap to repair if you get too greedy with the volume - a new dome asy is only about $50 and thats also for a vented Ti VC former. Little tip - you can use this specific replacement dome on an MDT32S motor. Makes a big difference and is a great upgrade.
The Morel MDT30 also should be mentioned. Its alot of tweeter for the money and its a very honest sounding soft dome with that seemingly limitless Morel dynamic range. Its not the cheapest soft dome in its class, but its worth every penny being so easy to integrate and cross over. It just sounds great without any drama, fuss or fabricated, fake sounding top end. Morel knows their stuff with soft domes.
The MDT30 specs don't look that great on paper, but the sound is just right, correct and well balanced. Its a little warmer sounding than a ScanSpeak 2904-9500, but trades little if any detail and can deal with a bit more dynamics.
The MDT30 specs don't look that great on paper, but the sound is just right, correct and well balanced. Its a little warmer sounding than a ScanSpeak 2904-9500, but trades little if any detail and can deal with a bit more dynamics.
@Arthur Jackson used the Morel TSCT1044 / 1104 as the basis for his question in post #1. He did not pick it randomly, if you sort tweeters from highest price to lowest at Parts Express it is the highest priced (granted its a pair) and if you sort from lowest price to highest the GRS 1TD1 (Arthur's other tweeter) is the cheapest.
I don't know whether Arthur knew how good it supposedly sounds or not. I know two people who have used Morel Supreme tweeters and say they are the best tweeters they have heard. (These two people have heard quite a few tweeters.) I bet they sound great...I will never know because the income in my demand function D=f(price, income) is too low!
From the discussion regarding supply and demand:
I don't know whether Arthur knew how good it supposedly sounds or not. I know two people who have used Morel Supreme tweeters and say they are the best tweeters they have heard. (These two people have heard quite a few tweeters.) I bet they sound great...I will never know because the income in my demand function D=f(price, income) is too low!
From the discussion regarding supply and demand:
- This tweeter is made of silk, glue, copper, aluminum, neodymium magnets, etc. It is NOT $404 apiece due to rare raw materials.
- I believe they are made in Israel which looks to have comparable prices to Europe/Denmark which would put labor costs higher than drivers manufactured in China or Indonesia.
- They would be in high demand if demand is highly correlated to the desire for good sound quality
- It does not appear that they would be in high demand because they actually sound bad but marketeers have tricked all of the ignorant consumers
- I have no idea what the capacity/scale of Morel is relative to Scan-speak, Seas, SB Acoustics, etc.
You write this down as a statement, but I don't know if I fully agree with that statement to begin with.
Also the word "better" is rather vague at best.
The question on itself seems offtopic, so I will let the topic starter decide where to go with this.
Not exactly why tweeters sound different from one another but its from a manufacturer standpoint and the choices/compromises to be made.
https://purifi-audio.com/blog/tech-notes-1/the-purifi-tweeter-project-part-1-15
Its worth the read if you are truly interested IMHO.
Cheers 🍻
https://purifi-audio.com/blog/tech-notes-1/the-purifi-tweeter-project-part-1-15
Its worth the read if you are truly interested IMHO.
Cheers 🍻
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$74.98US+maybe$10? If there was shipping in '19.
$69.78 now, 500 or more.
https://www.parts-express.com/Peerless-DA32TX00-08-1-1-4-Corundum-Dome-Tweeter-264-1678
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In the 90s I designed speakers at Jensen OEM. I was the lead acoustical engineer on projects for Honda, Mazda, Ford, Acura and Chrysler.
I’m a high end audiophile at heart, but I found the challenge of making a $4-7 speaker sound good extremely stimulating. I also learned a ton about acoustics, modeling and measurements.
Punch list of factors that affect the cost of a speaker - and why the price range from cheapest to most expensive can be 100X and more:
1 - Tooling. The cost to make one brand new tool for vacuum forming, injection molding, casting etc can range from a few thousand dollars to six figures. Low end speakers usually use 100% existing parts where the tooling has already been paid for. But in the high end, the designer’s dream is to make something bespoke, radical and special. Amortizing the cost of a $25,000 mold or die into a part that only ships a handful of units per month is pricey.
2 - Special features. At Jensen 30 years ago, it cost around $4-5 to make a 16cm full range car speaker and that was with the most ordinary, off the shelf parts available. Totally boring generic everything. As soon as you start asking for…
-Bumped back plate
-T-shaped pole piece
-Copper cap
-Cast frame
-Magnetic shielding
-Under the cone lead termination (as opposed to “through the cone” with holes punched in it and leads feeding through)
-Exotic cone materials
-Beads of glue to add stiffness to the surround, or parts of the cone
-Special ribs on the cone
-Underhung voice coils
-Neodymium magnets
-Waterproofing or environmental considerations
-Copper Clad Aluminum Wire
-High temperature voice coil formers like Kapton
-Features for venting the voice coil
-Cosmetic features
The cost starts shooting up, up, up. Also consider the extra hand operations for assembly, not just the materials.
3 - Excellent Engineering. Do you want…
-Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the cone vibrations
-Finite Element Analysis or COMSOL models of the magnetic system
-Super high Xmax
-Constant inductance across range of voice coil travel
-Extra consistent compliance of suspension
-Ability to withstand large amounts of heat, power, excursion
…If so, the fixed engineering cost of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars of R&D expense has to be amortized into the small volume of speakers made every month.
Given what I just described above, is at all surprising that a Purifi woofer costs $600-$700 USD or that an Ellipticor tweeter costs a similar amount? (Oval voice coils… NOT easy to pull off. Think about expansion and contraction as the coil heats up and cools down. How does it retain its elliptical shape?)
That’s on the supply side
Then there is the demand side:
4 - 80/20 Power Curve. I wrote book on the Pareto Principle called 80/20 Sales & Marketing as well as a paper in Harvard Business Review, and it’s essentially a law of physics that:
1/5 the people will spend 4X the money. Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. (It’s a fractal law of nature.)
So for every 1000 people who will buy a $10 tweeter, 200 will pay $40 for a better one, 40 will pay $160 for an even better one, and 8 will pay $640 for an even better one.
1 or 2 will spend more than $2000.
This is "The Law of the $2700 Espresso Machine." For every 1000 $5 lattes sold, Starbucks is almost certain to sell one gleaming stainless steel espresso maker. I have an 80/20 GPT tool that runs the calculation for you here.
This is technically termed a Power Law Distribution and again it’s practically a law of physics in any system where positive feedback occurs. It’s why we have rivers and lakes and avalanches and sand dunes.
Any audiophile knows the $40 tweeter doesn’t have to be “four times better” than the $10 tweeter; in fact everyone knows it’s not. It’s more like 50% better. And the $160 tweeter is maybe 50% better than the $40 tweeter.
This is also the law of diminishing returns:
If you want to buy a speaker that is (for real) +/-3dB from 40Hz to 20KHz, that's not terribly hard to pull off.
If you want the same speaker to be +/-2dB across the same range, the price just doubled.
If you want the same speaker to be +/-1 dB across the same range, the price just quadrupled - again.
If you want the same speaker to be +/-0.5 dB across the same range, the price just 10X'd - again.
There’s no subjective measurement for how much “better” it is, the only measurement is the buyer’s willingness and ability to spend money.
I’m a high end audiophile at heart, but I found the challenge of making a $4-7 speaker sound good extremely stimulating. I also learned a ton about acoustics, modeling and measurements.
Punch list of factors that affect the cost of a speaker - and why the price range from cheapest to most expensive can be 100X and more:
1 - Tooling. The cost to make one brand new tool for vacuum forming, injection molding, casting etc can range from a few thousand dollars to six figures. Low end speakers usually use 100% existing parts where the tooling has already been paid for. But in the high end, the designer’s dream is to make something bespoke, radical and special. Amortizing the cost of a $25,000 mold or die into a part that only ships a handful of units per month is pricey.
2 - Special features. At Jensen 30 years ago, it cost around $4-5 to make a 16cm full range car speaker and that was with the most ordinary, off the shelf parts available. Totally boring generic everything. As soon as you start asking for…
-Bumped back plate
-T-shaped pole piece
-Copper cap
-Cast frame
-Magnetic shielding
-Under the cone lead termination (as opposed to “through the cone” with holes punched in it and leads feeding through)
-Exotic cone materials
-Beads of glue to add stiffness to the surround, or parts of the cone
-Special ribs on the cone
-Underhung voice coils
-Neodymium magnets
-Waterproofing or environmental considerations
-Copper Clad Aluminum Wire
-High temperature voice coil formers like Kapton
-Features for venting the voice coil
-Cosmetic features
The cost starts shooting up, up, up. Also consider the extra hand operations for assembly, not just the materials.
3 - Excellent Engineering. Do you want…
-Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the cone vibrations
-Finite Element Analysis or COMSOL models of the magnetic system
-Super high Xmax
-Constant inductance across range of voice coil travel
-Extra consistent compliance of suspension
-Ability to withstand large amounts of heat, power, excursion
…If so, the fixed engineering cost of 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars of R&D expense has to be amortized into the small volume of speakers made every month.
Given what I just described above, is at all surprising that a Purifi woofer costs $600-$700 USD or that an Ellipticor tweeter costs a similar amount? (Oval voice coils… NOT easy to pull off. Think about expansion and contraction as the coil heats up and cools down. How does it retain its elliptical shape?)
That’s on the supply side
Then there is the demand side:
4 - 80/20 Power Curve. I wrote book on the Pareto Principle called 80/20 Sales & Marketing as well as a paper in Harvard Business Review, and it’s essentially a law of physics that:
1/5 the people will spend 4X the money. Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. (It’s a fractal law of nature.)
So for every 1000 people who will buy a $10 tweeter, 200 will pay $40 for a better one, 40 will pay $160 for an even better one, and 8 will pay $640 for an even better one.
1 or 2 will spend more than $2000.
This is "The Law of the $2700 Espresso Machine." For every 1000 $5 lattes sold, Starbucks is almost certain to sell one gleaming stainless steel espresso maker. I have an 80/20 GPT tool that runs the calculation for you here.
This is technically termed a Power Law Distribution and again it’s practically a law of physics in any system where positive feedback occurs. It’s why we have rivers and lakes and avalanches and sand dunes.
Any audiophile knows the $40 tweeter doesn’t have to be “four times better” than the $10 tweeter; in fact everyone knows it’s not. It’s more like 50% better. And the $160 tweeter is maybe 50% better than the $40 tweeter.
This is also the law of diminishing returns:
If you want to buy a speaker that is (for real) +/-3dB from 40Hz to 20KHz, that's not terribly hard to pull off.
If you want the same speaker to be +/-2dB across the same range, the price just doubled.
If you want the same speaker to be +/-1 dB across the same range, the price just quadrupled - again.
If you want the same speaker to be +/-0.5 dB across the same range, the price just 10X'd - again.
There’s no subjective measurement for how much “better” it is, the only measurement is the buyer’s willingness and ability to spend money.
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That was exceptional, thank you very much. Actually that was my basic overly simplified understanding. I only disagree with the last frequency response example because that’s not the only parameter, but I get your point. If you want certain design parameters met, then there is a cost. Which is why I’m often confused by many loudspeakers offered as high end or top of the line, they often don’t have the best frequency response. Some are really ragged! I’m guessing they offer good sound or good design options for the system designers.
I would also like to thank A4eaudio for the economics lessons. Your patience is remarkable in this day of instant on line character assassination, many of the readers should go back and read those posts again. Economic supply and demand is every bit as real as the 80/20 power curve and F=MA.
I would also like to thank A4eaudio for the economics lessons. Your patience is remarkable in this day of instant on line character assassination, many of the readers should go back and read those posts again. Economic supply and demand is every bit as real as the 80/20 power curve and F=MA.
I think we should also mention something called open tooling here.
It's essentially a set of driver parts that can be picked off the shelf and mixed & matched. Basically like Lego bricks.
Some very high-quality brands use this method.
Sometimes, the only difference between a poor-quality speaker driver and a good one is how the iron part is milled and optimized. Since both are custom milled (which isn't always the case), they cost the same amount.
Many other options just cost a few cents or a couple of bucks at most.
However, in the bigger picture, these details might not be very significant. As I mentioned earlier, if you produce enough, these costs become negligible.
Ultimately, if the buyer believes something is worth a certain amount, you can charge that amount.
Often, this perceived value doesn't align with reality.
The key factor is whether the manufacturer has the resources and funds to produce and sell in large quantities. This often allows them to make higher profits from the same products sold at the same price.
Once consumers have a fixed perception of cost and quality, it can be quite challenging to change that.
This is also the untold comprise you pay for letting one driver doing such a wide frequency range.
As soon as you split that up, not only costs will go down, but relative performance will go up.
Ever thought about the idea that some products are just actually not all that great in sense of performance and acoustics?
Which in the end is just a bummer.
Believe me when I say that my hopes were high for certain drivers, but in the end it was quite the disappoinment.
Uhm I believe you mean Omega not Rolex.
And w Omega, they are now introducing limited runs based on their solid movements.
That's not true.
Your 'bright' school kid isn't going to be anywhere near the machine that has the high tolerances.
In terms of speakers... think about it. There are a finite companies that make the specialized paper, coatings, etc...
They aren't large and are not pumping out a huge number of unit. (There are economic factors like cost of materials, holding costs, and then supply vs. demand.
Then there's the R&D, costs of setting up limited production runs, etc...
Even costs to doing computer modeling.
And to your point. Waste. Suppose the machine depositing material on the paper doesn't have an even coating. You may not see a difference, but during the QA process, the cone doesn't pass. that's going to be waste. Do you remember 5.25" floppies? They were sold as either single sided and double sided. The only difference was that the second side didn't pass quality control. So hobbyists would buy notch cutters so they could use both sides. Sorry for the example but that was one that I was familiar with.
I’m not sure where you live but high school kids in America have access to programs where they make very precise high precision parts. https://www.butlertech.org/program/precision-machining-3-year-program/
My point is that today it’s not hard to find a precision parts manufacturer, and many high school vocational programs have access to top notch equipment. Sure it takes some skill and experience to completely machine a part from scratch but the VocEd kids know the principles, programming, and the math involved. It’s not nearly as difficult as it was in the olden days with analog equipment and a 20 year top machinist.
I've toured a Big 3 transmission manufacturing facility and they had high precision robotic equipment doing the manufacturing and precision laser equipment monitoring the tolerance. The human (who may have had a two year degree) monitored the laser measurements. I'd think (but could be wrong) that these tolerances are more demanding than a Loudspeaker
I can perhaps find a more accurate "definition" with more words in the litterature... i'm biased by a recent reportage with schizophrenic artists that were explicating their feelings and life thru their graphical work and their relation with others. Some doctors and reseachers were studing the illness of these artitsts, their explanations were very detailled and documented but in the experimental field, it won't match an encyclopedic explanation.
It is just hot knowledge and cold knowledge, i often find it unproductive to confront them.
Of course "the work" of their "own made" surrounds technology make the driver a bit more expensive. at "the start up"
And also the good characteristics that their drivers have,and the quality,
But it isen´t diamonds and "rocketscience" ,surrounds are a molded rubber mixture, where the mold is "expensive" to produce...but then ?
Im sure Purifi will tripple the sale, if it was slightly lower prices.
Because as it is now, they are not particularly affordable