Not everyone from those ranks, however, is convinced. Rob Oldfield says he’s become quite used to listening to music on tinny Bluetooth speakers and via his tablet these days. “I don’t see why you’d want to spend this much money on a loudspeaker,” he says with a shrug. “But,” he adds knowingly, “I’m not representative of the whole audio world.”
And that is essentially the difference between audiophiles and the rest of the listening world. Most people form different schemas for live and reproduced music. For reproduced music they make allowances for limited bandwidth, limited dynamics, and intrusive cabinet resonances.
Audiophiles try to get reproduced music to match live music as much as possible, and apply the same standard of sound--more or less--to each.
The article rightly points out that conventional speakers are trying to reproduce the sounds, bandwidth, and room-filling dynamics with a few square inches of diaphragms. When the prices reach $200K and above, it's fair to wonder if they're doing it wrong...
...especially since Bob Carver has come out with a 22-diaphragm, 13 ribbon (per speaker) line source plus powered subwoofer with an 18-60Khz frequency response, capable of 120dB clean peaks, and nearly nonexistent intermodulation distortion. It retails at $15K/pair including sub.
If it's everything that the most recent TAS review claims, this could set a new paradigm for the expenditure required to put the Berlin Phil or Basie Big Band in your living room.
If it could truly do that for $15K, it's sort of a bargain compared to the other methods to achieve that, such as the WIlson XLF and the top line Magico and YG speakers.