I agree there are way too many factors for there to be a linear relationship between price and performance. The skill and goals of the designer are certainly very important. I don't know how anybody could get an idea from a show. It takes me a while at home with something to form any sort of an opinion. If I won the lottery I think I'd set up a facility for comparison. I'd buy a whole bunch of speakers and compare them, see if I could draw some good conclusions.
Price vs performance
There is a misconception among audiophiles that price is an indication of performance. However consumers are unaware of the ratio of cost of parts to markup. This ratio varies from one speaker to another.
if a 10k speaker uses 2k on parts and the rest is on markup, and if a 5k speaker uses 4k worth of parts and 1k markup then the costlier speaker is not going to provide better performance. Despite this audiophiles will refuse to believe that a cheap speaker can outdo the more expensive one.
Speaker companies can set whatever price they see fit. Sometimes the price is deliberately elevated to increase the perceived value and performance. It can just be a game of one upmanship. This has nothing to do with the performance of the speaker.
It's not as if ALL loudspeakers on the market are put in one room and listened to and then priced according to performance. What actually happens is audiophiles rate the performance of a speaker based on its price, which is the antithesis of what should be happening.
magazines and reviewers alike commit the same fallacy all the time. They will only ever jokingly compare a magico with say a mid priced B&w. All because of the price difference.
But even if we put all loudspeakers in a room, no two audiophiles would ever agree on the order of the performance anyway. Audiophiles' opinions are therefore unreliable.
Audiophiles use price as an indication of quality because they have no ability to sit in a perfectly designed acoustic environment and then compare every speaker they want to hear and spend weeks or months doing this.
Audiophiles are not in a position to do a blind test even if they wanted to. Instead we only get to hear speakers in extremely poor demo rooms and only for a few minutes under pressure from the salesperson
Revel have been known to do blind tests. I think these tests proved that there was no correlation between price and performance.
Distortion can be perceived as warmth. wider and deeper stereo images can be seen as better even if it's not accurate. Neutrality can be perceived as cold.
In conclusion, audiophiles have no clue how to decide whether what they're hearing is good, bad, accurate, or imaginary.
Price is not an indication.
if a 10k speaker uses 2k on parts and the rest is on markup, and if a 5k speaker uses 4k worth of parts and 1k markup then the costlier speaker is not going to provide better performance. Despite this audiophiles will refuse to believe that a cheap speaker can outdo the more expensive one.
Speaker companies can set whatever price they see fit. Sometimes the price is deliberately elevated to increase the perceived value and performance. It can just be a game of one upmanship. This has nothing to do with the performance of the speaker.
It's not as if ALL loudspeakers on the market are put in one room and listened to and then priced according to performance. What actually happens is audiophiles rate the performance of a speaker based on its price, which is the antithesis of what should be happening.
magazines and reviewers alike commit the same fallacy all the time. They will only ever jokingly compare a magico with say a mid priced B&w. All because of the price difference.
But even if we put all loudspeakers in a room, no two audiophiles would ever agree on the order of the performance anyway. Audiophiles' opinions are therefore unreliable.
Audiophiles use price as an indication of quality because they have no ability to sit in a perfectly designed acoustic environment and then compare every speaker they want to hear and spend weeks or months doing this.
Audiophiles are not in a position to do a blind test even if they wanted to. Instead we only get to hear speakers in extremely poor demo rooms and only for a few minutes under pressure from the salesperson
Revel have been known to do blind tests. I think these tests proved that there was no correlation between price and performance.
Distortion can be perceived as warmth. wider and deeper stereo images can be seen as better even if it's not accurate. Neutrality can be perceived as cold.
In conclusion, audiophiles have no clue how to decide whether what they're hearing is good, bad, accurate, or imaginary.
Price is not an indication.