High End Speaker Prices

Adding to this... I work for a very high end luxury wine producer we have a wine that sells for $425 per single bottle, and we're launching a new one in 2017 that will retail for $600-800 per bottle.

It's a different market and mentality, and different metrics need be applied. Something a this level is ultimately worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and the best wines are from a small plot of land that can't be reproduced anywhere else.

FWIW - our cost of goods is btw 21-23% of retail.

I've always felt that extreme high end speakers should always sound great since the designers aren't restricted by cost…the genius is in lower cost stuff where designers have to really think about what's important and come up with something sounding great anyway (and they do, thank you Alan Yun). Great wine makers do this also, if sometimes inadvertently. Note that that small plot of land for the exclusive wine could also produce wine that sucks in a bad year, so it's not necessarily always a plot specific pricing scenario, unless it is. Or isn't. Or something.

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.

Big prices should mean big high quality speakers.

Smaller speakers are fine too but when the price of a small speaker gets too off the charts that's when I start to wonder if it's a good investment no matter what the "build quality".

Of course many live in tight quarters especially in cities so it's not so big a problem to find good quality speakers up to the task.

But if the buyer is happy in the end it's all good.

10-02-15: Johnnyb53
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.

I certainly agree that physics dictates that to achieve the dynamic headroom and room-filling bass of live music, you need a large amount of cone area. But that is only part of the story. The magnetic flux, heat dissipation & excursion rate of the driver play an important part in how much air it can move, whilst the lightness and stiffness of the cone balanced with the right amount of damping are important for dynamics and transients. Indeed the excursion rate of the Magico S7's voice coil is measured at 15-mm linear movement and produces clean and undistorted sound pressure levels up to 120dB @ 50Hz/1-meter. And the S7 is running 3 x 10" bass drivers.

Both line source and point source speakers have their pluses and minuses. Building a line source with the quality of drivers used in the S7 for example would be tremendously expensive, and unnecessary imho. We're already talking about a 300lb speaker capable of frequency response from 20Hz - 50kHz. Bob Carver's speakers achieve similar frequency response and SPL's, though the question of which loudspeaker has more accurate and coherent sound staging and imaging & is more musical are the more important considerations.

Then there is that hard to define thing I call "havingness". The feeling a particular product gives you just by owning it. One thing is for sure, there is room enough in this hobby for all budgets and opinions which are as wide and varied as the number of loudspeakers out there.