Pulsars and the Mythical Armchair Speaker Maker

Big +1 @erik_squires and well said.  You could give me and Mario Battali the same ingredients to make a bolognese sauce, but does anyone think they'd prefer mine?  Ha!  Would you pay more for Mario's sauce?  I know I would if I really want to enjoy my dinner at a high level.

You're paying for knowledge, expertise, development time and costs, manufacturing labor, shipping, warranty, and the final results of all of this.  Like Erik said, the market will be the the fair and final arbiter of price and the success of the product.  As far the Pulsars, given their popularity and positive reviews, I think it's hard to make the case it's overpriced.  Also, Silverline's newest version of the SR17 is a similar product in that it uses premium drivers, a well-designed crossover, and a nice cabinet.  And guess what?  It's priced right in the same range as the Pulsars.  That, to me, is indicative of a competitive market at work and fair pricing.  Also, you have to factor in that companies like these are small, boutique manufactures and sell in much smaller numbers than the big guys, so their costs per unit are naturally going to be higher.  But they still have to compete with the big guys so they're still limited at how much they can charge. 

The only caveat I'd say is the direct-sale model where the dealer markup can be avoided.  Yes you could potentially get more value buying this way -- assuming you can find a speaker you really like -- which is tough because there's nowhere to hear them.  But that's a different business model and has downsides of its own. 

Some of you seem to be implying some of these speaker manufacturers price their products agregiously and at whatever they want like they're monopolists.  The competitive market would weed this behavior out rather quickly.  And I highly doubt Jeff Joseph and Alan Yun are driving around in Ferraris -- that'd be the cable manufacturers.  Save your ire for them. 

They’re struggling. Why? Brand recognition.

@erik_squires -- Yup, that may be the biggest problem with the direct-sale business model.  It's a real uphill battle for them.  

Never heard of Taylor.  Did you mean Tyler?  Heard nothing but good things about Fritz speakers.  Thought I remember reading he uses a series crossover?  Or am I just making that up?  Why are series crossovers so infrequently used BTW?

So why cant you take a mid priced speaker costing say $500 a pair and instead of using drivers that cost $50 a piece, use state of the art drivers costing $300 a piece? that would still only be $250 more per driver which means $1000 more than the basic cost of $500. Itdoesnt come to $10,000 does it?

Clearly we’re dealing with 10 megabytes of RAM here. I explained this to you in the prior thread to this one, but you apparently just can’t wrap your head around it. A manufacturer who sells through a dealer network needs to charge about 4x (or even more) the cost of the product to cover his fixed and variable costs and still make a decent profit. Your example makes no sense. If a speaker has two $50 drivers, he’d have to charge $400 just for those, which would leave him $25 for both the crossover and the cabinet if he’s setting a retail price of $500. And if he used drivers that cost $250 more each, that would raise the price by an additional $2000 just for the drivers alone. Add a much heavier, better braced, and more attractive cabinet and a better crossover with much more expensive parts, and sure, that speaker could easily and justifiably reach $10,000.

Many of these high end speakers are nothing more than basic mdf cabinets using higher quality drivers.

That’s just simply not true of high-end speakers. Any manufacturer who puts in the time, effort, and expense to design and build a high-end speaker is not just going to slap it into a simple MDF cabinet. They’re going to carefully custom design and build a cabinet that complements the other components, damps unwanted resonances, and helps achieve the overall sound he’s looking for. This is just something you’ve made up in your own mind to try to support your extremely flawed reasoning.

Even the ones that dont use mdf, are not demonstrably vastly superior to mdf. A cheap speaker uses no brace whereas a more expensive speaker uses a single brace. So for a tiny bit of mdf youre paying thousands of dollars more. Every speaker should be braced. It costs nothing to add a piece of mdf inside the cabinet during assembling.

Where is your proof of this ridiculous statement? Talk to Wilson or Rockport and they’ll be able to explain to you in great detail why they don’t use MDF and why their complex cabinets are significantly better -- and they can likely give you measurements to back up their claims. You’ve once again greatly and incorrectly oversimplified speaker cabinetry to try to support extremely flawed thinking.

You seem to think this this is a commodity business. It is NOT. You can’t build a good high-end speaker and just slap on a 25% markup and stay in business. I doubt any of this will find it into your brain as it didn’t last time, so peace out.

This could go on forever. I’ve decided to not continue banging my head against this ignorant, uninformed, and irrational brick wall. In fact, we’d probably have an easier time explaining these simple concepts to an actual brick wall. Me, I’m gonna take the time I would’ve wasted here and do something productive like learn how to make a good bolognese sauce.

Ill just end with this...@kenjit, do you even realize that between this and the prior thread there's not one audiophile here who agrees with your point of view?  Doesn't that say anything to you at all?

"after all, it’s not easy banging your bleeding heart against some mad bugger’s wall."
- Pink Floyd

For instance, one could go to a butcher shop and buy a prime grade cut of steak, go home and fire up the grill,

I’ll just stop you there. I went to a respected butcher and bought some beautiful prime rib eyes, fired up the grill and still ended up with mediocre steaks. In the end, no matter whether it’s food or cars or anything else, it’s all about knowing what the hell what you’re doing in the end -- and the all-important final result. If I want a transcendant cuilinary experience, I’m paying a premium because I am NOT going to create that myself. Some things are just worth paying for!

Here’s another apt analogy. If you’re going skydiving and some guy offers you a half-price deal because he’s only charging you for parts plus a small premium but has never gone skydiving before, would you do that or would you pay more and go with an outfit that’s experienced and has done hundreds of successful drops with no fatalities? Yeah, I know I bowed out of this thread, but I had some downtime as my bolognese sauce is now simmering for a couple hours.

It may look like it, but it's not.

@kenjit -- Ascend Acoustics sells direct, not through a dealer network.

@wildfoxinn -- I don’t even see a model like that on the Ascend Acoustics website, so not sure what speaker your referring to. But anyway, there absolutely is some voodoo magic in the Pulsar -- it’s the infinite slope crossover. It’s patented, so in fact other manufacturers can not duplicate it. And a lot of us think it is precisely the crossover that does indeed make the Pulsars, and all other JA speakers, uniquely special. The fact that they’ve piled up a bunch of very positive reviews, measure very well, and have tons of fans and owners all attest that there are lots of things special about them.

Pricing differences between the Pulsars and these mythical AA speakers is apples to oranges, and the AA speakers, if they even exist, would have to double in price to sell through dealers. And BTW, there are a ton of variables in how a speaker ultimately sounds, and drivers are only one.

So you can GUARANTEE the Pulsars would lose in a head-to-head against these mythical AA speakers can you? Did you hear both back to back in the same system? If not, your opinion is worth precisely zero here. And I highly doubt you did unless you owned both or brought the AA speakers to a JA dealer. And even if you did manage to hear them in the same system, which I HIGHLY doubt, we all hear differently and value different things. So don’t come riding in here on your high horse (and 26 posts) and think you can guarantee anything to anyone here. That is just ignorant and hugely arrogant.

I’m a fan of Ascend Acoustics too, so by all means please reveal which magic speakers you’re referring to here.  Now back to my bolognese.

BTW, here’s a complete list of AA speakers from their website:

Stereo Pairs

Code Name Price
9HT20SBM2 HTM-200 SE pair $298.00 Add One To Basket
9CB17SBM2 ** Sale: CBM-170 SE pair $298.00 Add One To Basket
9CM34SBM2 CMT-340 SE mains $568.00 Add One To Basket
9SRM1PB2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, piano black $763.30 Add One To Basket
9SRM1NT2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, natural $720.80 Add One To Basket
9SRM1PPBS ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair B-Stock $678.40 Add One To Basket
SRT2 Sierra Tower pair $1,998.00 Add One To Basket
9SRM1SE2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, satin espresso $720.80 Add One To Basket
9SRM1SC2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, satin dark cherry $720.80 Add One To Basket
9SRM2PP Sierra-2 pair $1,448.00 Add One To Basket
9SRLPP Sierra Luna pair $1,148.00 Add One To Basket

Yeah, you’re right.  From your completely uninformed and ignorant reading of a simple graph, you obviously have nailed it.  You can now build your own Pulsar on the cheap.  Oh, but then there’s this: 

From Jeff Joseph as of today:

“The filters we use are asymmetrical, there is a very steep slope on the woofer and a gentler slope on the tweeter. This infinite slope topology differs from conventional filters in several ways. The implementation is not as steep as our earliest designs, because I found this to be the best sounding trade off of filter q and driver integration.

Compared to slow slope filters, ours confines most of the overlap between the drivers to below the crossover point, where wavelengths are longer. This prevents the lobing effects of wave interference. The speakers balance through crossover remains intact along a broad vertical axis.

The other major benefit is that we can derive the full benefits of using metal cone woofers because the special filter effectively suppresses the high frequency ringing the stiff cones exhibit. A second order filter wouldn’t come close to doing that. ( the metal woofers are typically +13 dB at the hf breakup frequency relative to their usable output, and a 2nd order filter only rolls off at 12dB per octave)”

@kenjit — does that answer your question?

How you gonna replicate this without violating a patent?  Best of luck with that buddy! Just go home and lick your ill-informed and ignorant wounds. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and no basis for your claims, and if you try to come back at this in any misinformed way, I will have Jeff come back and smack down any other uninformed and misguided crap u try to lay down. Live in ur own silly world dude.

Repeat from my prior post...

"after all, it’s not easy banging your bleeding heart against some mad bugger’s wall"
- Pink Floyd

Ha! Big +1 to Eric, and another +1 for starting this thread, which is doing a great service in exposing the wackos in this awesome hobby and also uncovering how ridiculously hard it is to actually develop and successfully market a speaker in today's uber-competitive market.  I also eagerly await what speakers @kenjit listens to. His own design? I think not.

@wwoodrum -- No. He probably thinks they sound better than Pulsars.  And that's ok, as long as he stops posting. 

I know lots of people who would take a thousand dollar tweeter and make it sound like crap. :)

Hey, I could pull that off!!!  I have to say that wildfoxinn tripped my BS meter pretty hard.  Not sure he'll be back.