I work in manufacturing. The sheer availability of affordable CNC processes throughout is remarkable. Not that this has much to do with the audio field, but as to mention how widely available technology is these days, with things like 3D printers being already available for private use, as an example. When you look at the basic physical construct of a speaker driver, the basic principals of which are actually pretty old, How can any company not hit a home run there, especially with all of the knowns of what actually makes a good speaker.
These days, one should be able to use the best wire for the coils, get high quality crossovers built in bulk overseas for pennies on the dollar to their spec, and the shaped plastics/composites should be a no brainer. Even the top name welding equipment I use now has electronics mostly made in China. I realize much of the cabinetry that houses some of these speakers that cost thousands of dollars has to be expensive but, once they get their particulars with the functional performance nailed down, are we really just buying expensive cabinets wrapped in exotic hardwoods? So, are they selling cabinets or speakers, when it comes right down to it? Everything else such as holes drilled, and maybe threaded for the fasteners is surely jigged where it doesn't take a cabinet craftsman to assemble it. I can teach high school kids to assemble what I make after I build the jigs. After that, I get paid for watching them and keeping an eye out with quality control.
Now I can see if some artisan is hand hammering the basket for the drivers and tuning them like one might a steel drum, but I don't think that's what's really going into these products. One could argue that we're paying for the R&D, but again, a lot of this can be figured out with a computer.
Now, I have been involved with bringing products to market. Even when we manage to keep our production and materials costs low, there are a butt load of parasites that need to get paid, especially if the patent process is involved. We can make a product that costs us 50 cents a unit to produce, and by the time the packaging and distributor (monopolies) networks get theirs, this 50 cent product now has to sell for 20 dollars in order for us to profit 50 cents. So what is it we are actually buying?
I grant that I may be way off base here, which is why I ask dumb questions. But I am not seeing anything in a pair of speakers that can cause them to be worth 10-20k dollars. 5 or 6k? I'm seeing expensive cabinetry, more than anything else that has not been discovered already.
