Typical good post by Onhwy61. I agree with your main premise, that you can get excellent sound for $7500, and beyond that the law of diminishing returns kicks in. What you get when you spend the extra money is, IMHO, (i) top quality bass reproduction, although your room may be a limiting factor here, (ii) effortless power, scale and soundstaging for full-scale orchestral reproduction (which will never equal the real thing, no matter how hard we try, but will at least start to hint at it) and (iii) a bit of naturalness, refinement and nuance in the little things that make music more meaningful to you and which just isn't quite all there in the less expensive stuff. That last point is purely subjective in how much it is worth the extra money. Given the many hours of enjoyment I've gotten from my system, it has been worth it to me, but in all likelihood I could live just as happily with the $7500 system, and will probably have to when I retire to smaller quarters.
What Do You Get When You Spend Megabucks?
It's my opinion that you could put together a high quality system for about $7,500 (MSRP). For those willing to spend more, great systems can be put together for $20,000 to $50,000. I don't think anyone could seriously question the overall quality of these latter systems, but they would in no way approach the state of the art. My question is, what's that something extra you get when you're willing to push the limits as to what is possible in home sound reproduction and spend major dollars (say $250,000+) on a single system? Another way of asking my question is, what do $80,000 speakers do that $15,000 speakers don't?
My question is a serious question and I have no ax to grind one way or another. I have significant experience with components that cost in the $3,000 to $15,000 range, but not much with products costing more. I'm very interested in hearing from those people who have made that rather large financial commitment to music reproduction.
My question is a serious question and I have no ax to grind one way or another. I have significant experience with components that cost in the $3,000 to $15,000 range, but not much with products costing more. I'm very interested in hearing from those people who have made that rather large financial commitment to music reproduction.