Speaker manufacturers or box manufacturers with off the shelf drivers?


This is nothing new, it has existed for decades.  There are several good makers of speakers that make their own drivers and those that build boxes and put ScanSpeak or some other "purchased" drivers in their boxes.  

This is not ment to be demeaning or a put down, it is more of a question.  With so many speaker "builders" using off the shelf drivers...is this simply a "high-end" version of Radio Shack or are these legit high-end products? 

 I do not know if other manufactures sell their drive units to box manufacturers....


whatjd
This is fascinating.  I am a small speaker manufacturer and drivers to me are one of the thing that stressed me less.  There is a lot of work that goes into choosing the right driver in terms of testing with your cabinets and materials but there are lots of bigger manufacturers that use stock drivers that make AMAZING speakers.  
To name a few, Wilson (small mods in some cases) Avalon, Marten, Joseph Audio  all use stock drivers.  These guys make some of the best products in the world and they use stock drivers from Scanspeak, Eton and Accuton, Accuton and SEAS from the companies above. 
I have been told that Revel has since moved production internally but the drivers in The Performa3 line were SB Acoustic when it launched.  Doubt this?  I still have a pair from years ago with SB drivers in them.  The tweeter had a waveguide designed by Revel.  That was what made it their own.  
There are crappy speakers out there and you can spot them and avoid them.  Check out this series of articles from audioholics:

https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/high-fidelity-loudspeakers 

See links at the bottom of the page for other relevant topics like this one on the explicit elements of a driver:

https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/loudspeaker-drivers

in the series they touch on all aspects of speaker design other than utilization of exotic cabinet materials (aluminum, fiberglass, carbon fiber, stone, etc...) but those materials are clearly superior to MDF based on guiding principles outlined in this series.  
I will admit that i designed my products so that if Audioholics took them apart, they would be pleased with what they found.  
Good luck to you in your shopping.  
Most of the speakers I have owned and liked, with one exception, make their own, especially Magnepan.  The only speakers I have owned with off the shelf drivers were Dahlquist DQ-10,  

I am sure if I were to start a "speaker company" tomorrow, it would be easiest to build a box and use some ready made dynamic drivers. 


It's mostly about economy of scale and available resources. Most speakers companies are small compared to main steam manufacturing. It's impractical for most speaker companies to build drivers in house especially when considering they use eight to ten unique drivers in their lineup. Furthermore, the skill-set and tool-set are somewhat different. There are people and companies that can do it all but that's rare and usually yields expensive drivers and products. Every manufacturer has vendors. No speakers company makes everything. It's much more expensive building your own drivers, unless you can build and sell many thousands of them, than buying from a vendor.

We are a small speaker company that decided to design, develop and build drivers for our own use. We build our own AMT drivers. It was a major investment in many ways. We went through the process because we wanted something very specific which didn't exist. We have had seven speaker companies (4 well known) contact us about using our AMT drivers. We politely declined because we don't want to be a driver vendor.

As with most things, it's more about good design and implementation than the actual parts. Aluminum, wood, MDF, carbon, carbon fiber, concrete, gold, unobtainium, plastic, plywood or whatever all have their place with their own properties. Anyone stating one material is better than the other without showing multiple materials optimizes for that specific application is engaged in marketing. Cost is part of the equation.

There are some brilliant speaker designers that can build excellent speakers using off-the-shelf parts at many price points. Buy what sounds best to you. What's inside the box is secondary.
 What's inside the box is secondary. ?  Not all speakers are boxes.

Magnepan, Quad, Martin Logan and others.  But if a person wants a box with Scanspeak or other "of the shelf" drivers...that is good for them, it does help for making many more choices.  I guess we could talk about the crossover components, but that would also be secondary.