ascend sierra tower with raal or Focal Aria 936

Yeah, I am surprised a lot. I don't value the opinions of total stranger all that much. The entire reason a professional review is worth selling ads and magazines is because those writers are continuously building a body of work that gives the reader an impression of what the writer is hearing and the reader can make personal estimations of the review based in their own impressions of the some of same gear reviewed. I've read plenty of amateur opinions accompanied by pics of their listening room repeat with big glass display cases, discombobulated architecture and room arrangement, and speakers jammed against a wall 4 feet apart, and there they are gloating about the awesome sound. One well written review tells me more than 1000 amateur opinions in a forum. 
A lot of companies sell factory direct with 30 day in-home auditions. That jazz makes me scratch my head. How do you break in a brand new speaker and tweak the room to their quirks in a month? A pair of Focal 1008Be, same price as Aria 936's take at least a week of 24/7 use before they're worth listening to. And what do you do with the third or half of the used speakers people send back? Are you really saving money when you have to throw away or deeply discount a significant portion of your production? Is their product really so good 2/3rds of the people who hear them simply must own them? I don't think such a product exists! I'm sure Focal never sees the kinds of returns Ascend sees, nor do they loose the money. 

Contuzzi,

1) I am not assuming anything.  They don't need to make as much on each pair of speakers because of what I've previously outlined.  


2)  The difference with Focal is, they have the manufacturer  -  wholsaler -  retailer chain.  They cost more because of this, and their marketing/ad costs.

213runnin: amazingly, you still don’t get what I’m saying.

Can you prove to me somehow that Ascend is passing on the savings of not going through a dealer network, not dealing with advertising cost, etc?

The internet direct brands want you to have that impression, but it makes no sense for them to do so. Did you just completely ignore the point I made about Emotiva and SVS earlier?

”they don’t need to make as much”  – spoken like someone who has no idea how a successful business works.  They will and should sell for as much as
they can get based on the perceived and actual value of the product.  Again, refer to my SVS and Emotiva examples that you seem to have ignored.

"They don’t need to make as much" is simply referring to what their costs are. Costs per unit, when one doesn’t have marketing, advertising, and a B&M chain to support, costs per unit are far less. So they don’t have to charge as much to attain a margin of 100%, or whatever they need to cover material and parts costs, salaries, utility bills, and a healthy profit. Typical margin for a company like Focal is probably over 300%.   That is, Focal would sell a given pair of speakers to a wholesaler (that cost them 1,000 to manufacture) for probably around 2,000, or 100% margin.  The wholesaler would sell to the retail shop at a profit, then the retailer sells to you at a profit, for a total margin of the original cost to Focal of easily 300%.

This is just simple economics, obviously you were not a business major. Don’t worry about it, you’re not the type of person who would understand examples like Emotiva and SVS, and how they have built up their brands, and changed their approach.

Please explain how they changed their approach to offer the same stuff for the same price but adding a gigantic margin for dealers off the top.  Oh, and the fact that they now advertise all over the place.  Explain it.