Ever discover cheapo speakers actually sound...

Almarg,

There is another explanation that works too - if the coloration and distortion from the $240 speakers is subjectively preferred to the much better $10K speakers then you have it. After all, hyper compressed rock/pop music may sound more pleasant on a boombox or a car audio system than a revealing system - especially if all that the $10K speakers do is to better reveal distortion on the recording (mechanical distortion from bad speakers is often better to hear than precisely represented electronic distortion from clipped waveforms on a hyper compressed CD - think Metallica!)

Has anyone ever tried 30K speakers driven by, say, 1K of electronics? And if you haven't--anyone willing to send me such speakers? I certainly have the 1K of electronics and it would make an interesting experiment and the results would contribute to the thread.

I gotta say Shadorne if you haven't tried what Pedrillo is talking about and have added as much opinion to this thread as you have you look foolish. How can you presume that he must possibly have something wrong in his system? He did say that an A/B showed that the Merlins are leaps and bounds better. I don't mean to be critical either but I must say I disagree with almost everything you said.

Pedrillo, I know exactly what you are talking about. I've done the same thing before and been amazed at how good a 500.00 speaker can sound on great gear. That same speaker was a real snoozer hooked up to a sub 1000.00 system but when hooked up to my main rig, WOW! I've experienced this more than once as well. I've also tried to drive expensive speakers with cheap gear and there my findings were that it didn't sound good. If I had to choose long term ownership of say a Creek or NAD integrated driving 10K speakers or 10K of amps and preamp driving 500.00 speakers I'd choose the latter.

Oh and yes I do believe that speakers that were sitting around cold and uplayed could improve quite a bit after playing them for a while. I've heard the same thing myself, maybe not quite to the degree that you describe.

I currently have weather-worn Realistic Minimus 7's ($100 retail back in the 1980's) on my deck that sound fantastic these days with my current system....leaps and bounds beyond what they sounded like with much lesser gear that I have used them with over the years.

It shouldn't be that surprising. JBL/Harmon has the resources and expertise to be able to put out a halfway decent product at that price. Depending upon how they chose to voice the speaker it could be non-aggressive sounding and its faults being subtractive in nature. I would think that a well sorted out system would make most low cost, but not cheap, speakers sound pretty good.