Major speaker companies capabilities versus the underdog small companies with fewer resources.

[Doodski]

In discussion of speakers it has come to my attention that there are small companies offering competing speaker products. What is the difference between a major player with the technical resources and professional staffing? How can they compete as a underdog? Do they actually compete and sound better than the major players products? What is the experience of our speaker guru/experts here at ASR in their competing with the majors.

 

[restorer-john]

Plenty of smaller operators start out with excellent credentials, qualifications and a passion for creating better loudspeakers. What many of them don't have is a good handle on running a profitable business for the long term and being able to adapt and grow.

I remember plenty of locally grown loudspeaker brands here which flew high for a short time and crashed hard, always blaming everyone but themselves.

The big brands didn't become big brands without diversifying, acquiring talent, other brands, better manufacturing techniques etc. It takes many years to become a "major player". And even then, many of them collapse or shrink due to an inability to see what's coming, refusing to adapt or simply are badly managed, with too many people riding the gravy train.

Some are happy to offer a small range of bespoke products that offer great value. Some want to make a month's salary from every sale.

You will always get better value (long term and short term) from a company with access to low cost manufacturing, ability to buy in huge numbers and doesn't place all their eggs in the loudspeaker basket. Look at Yamaha- you can get a state of the art TOTL passive loudspeaker, designed with every bit of engineering chops thrown at it, for how much in the US, under US$10k. The NS-5000. Full 5 year warranty, parts available for probably 25+ years and a service network than cannot be beaten. We know that $10k is cheap. We aren't paying for sole access to their huge anechoic chamber, or the CNC gear, the factories or even specialist engineers- they are already paid for and on the payroll.

One guy screwing overpriced Purifi drivers into a box he has made by somebody else can't compete with that.

 

[mglobe]

In discussion of speakers it has come to my attention that there are small companies offering competing speaker products. What is the difference between a major player with the technical resources and professional staffing? How can they compete as a underdog? Do they actually compete and sound better than the major players products? What is the experience of our speaker guru/experts here at ASR in their competing with the majors.

Not sure what your definition of a small company is, but you could argue at Kii, Dutch & Dutch, March, Ascend, Buchardt are all small, and it terms of building speakers that measure well, they are doing quite well. Maybe I'm off on what your definitions is. Magnaplar and Vanderstein come to mind also. Neither are particularly loved here, but both have been around for quite some time.

https://www.spinorama.org/scores.html?quality=High&sort=score&count=1000

 

[FrantzM]

Hi.

It's complicated...
Some smallish companies produce very good speakers e.g Philharmonic Audio,
Some (relatively ) small companies produce objectively good to great speakers... Kali Audio, Dutch & Dutch, Ascend
Not so small (Genelec) 60 Millions Euros of annual revenue but still not a major big, doing the same ... their speakers are consistently among the very best reviewed here
Focal JM Lab with revenues around 150 Millions Euros, produce it seems some good speakers.. and some not so great too..
Rather big companies producing seriously good speakers.. e'g Neuman owned by Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co. KG, with revenues around 600 Millions Euros
Huge conglomerate with annual revenues larger than some countries .. Revel thus Harman owned by Samsung, yep, $240 Billions... in 2021 ...producing speakers of quality Revel, JBL and some turds(JBL too ) ... yep..
It's a spectrum ...
...
OTOH
Technology has made it easier to produce great speakers ,for those with the requisite knowledge and experience and, savoir-faire. You can buy online good measurement microphones for less than $500 (Earthworks M23, etc) or around $100 (miniDSP-Umik-1) or even ... like Behringer ECM-8000 that was on sale for less than $30 a few months ago.. There are even some services that calibrate these against a laboratory reference ... for a fee, of course. quite modest I believe that Spectrum-Labs measure your microphone for around $55 per microphone.
And there are software ... Some are free.. REW.. And there is MATLAB, not always free but.. affordable, to a "normal" and sole individual working in a "normal" job ...
And there are now things that are a bit more sophisticated and costly but still at the level of a startup such as Klippel.. True $100,000 is not chump change but .. you won't need to build million dollars facilities anymore ... You garage will be enough for accurate measurements of your prototypes.

As for the warranty... a different debate. It supposes at least that the company will be there when the warranty is invoked.. Bigness is not a guarantee against disappearance ...
So...

Complicated and .. a great time to be an audiophile...

Peace.

 

[JAJDACT]

I have owned speakers from bigger brands like KEF,Klipsch,Revel,JBL,and from smaller companies like Ascend,CSS Audio and Philharmonic. Some of those I had in the same room for comparison. Majority of the time I preferred the smaller companies speakers and it wasn't really close. The build quality and attention to detail of the Ascend and Philharmonic speakers was very good and the sound quality and tonal characteristics are great,the only thing I could really complain about is that the wide dispersion pattern of the Ascend and Philharmonic speakers isn't always preferred for some rooms and material. It just depends on what you want/like,but objectively speaking they make really good speakers overall.

I do appreciate the engineering and design of the Harman brands and KEF,but one of the things I absolutely despise is the dealership model that they use for distribution. I understand why they do it but the listed MSRP is never the "actual" price,it's almost like car shopping in the US. The markup is ridiculous and there is always someone getting a better deal than you did. You have to shop around and haggle through floor salesman or by private messaging online dealers to see what they really sell for or wait for the generic holiday sales every year,unless you're financially stable enough to not care what it costs then it doesn't really matter.

 

[Oddball]

A trick question, and not well defined. Both small and big companies make great or not so great speakers.

 

[Doodski]

You have to shop around and haggle through floor salesman

For some this is a dreaded operation. I used to give all my customers what was called the minimum sale price and that price was what the gear sold for during the big Christmas and super sales. I did that so that nobody undercut me and so that my customers did not pay more than the super sale prices. Speakers have good margins so I was never one to refuse a competitive offer or give out the sale prices because I was making enough moola even at those sale prices. To expect the customers to pay full pop I thought was simply being greedy.