What makes an expensive speaker expensive


When one plunks down $10,000 $50,000 and more for a speaker you’re paying for awesome sound, perhaps an elegant or outlandish style, some prestige ... but what makes the price what it is?

Are the materials in a $95,000 set of speakers really that expensive? Or are you paying a designer who has determined he can make more by selling a few at a really high price as compared to a lot at a low price?

And at what point do you stop using price as a gauge to the quality? Would you be surprised to see $30,000 speakers "outperform" $150,000 speakers?

Too much time on my hands today I guess.
128x128jimspov

Showing 2 responses by emailists

Well I do know a little about TAD, which at over $40k for a floor stander seems expensive . I believe TAD/pioneer spent over 3 million in r&d on the reference speaker line, so that must be factored in, but something tells me a lot of mass market gear and plasma tv’s underwrote some of that.

but I do see pricing on some speaker lines where a slightly larger cabinet and 1 extra driver of another model doubles the price, which makes me wonder.  Or a driver upgrade that raises the price 20 or 30k
Jafant I suspect you may have heard them in a non optimal set up. Also they can image narrower than other speaker setups, due to being coincident point source.   I remember when the q1 was introduced going to hear the demo on some unfamiliar spectacular audiophile tracks and thinking wow my CR’s don’t image like this. But then I asked for 2 standard tracks (a bill Evans and a Rickie Lee jones) and was surprised they didn’t sound very good. On my system and hour later those same tracks had so much inner detail they sounded like audiophile recording.

That being said, after hearing a few Raidho’s at a show 2 or 3 years ago I felt they had more upper frequency air than the TAD’s. Rather than ditch them I added ’stat supertweeters and subs. (which I do now sell as well, BTW)
I hear live acoustic music from up close often (and even a friend singing along to my system). On good recordings it can be shockingly close, even though my system may not tick every audiophile box, and may not be the system of choice for large scale orchestral works.