This funny

most tweaks and cable claims are just plain marketing hype and a complete sham.

Unfortunately for everyone concerned.

Perhaps, just maybe, collectively audiophiles tend to get what they merit - lets face it, manufacturers are only around if they are sustainably successful! Making & selling beautiful luxurious "eye candy" with run-of-the-mill outsourced mass produced materials/parts is a solid sustainable business model for this industry. The high cost of beautiful cabinet work (exotic veneers) and stunning brushed metal face plates is highly appreciated by everyone, as is the value of precious metals such as Gold & Silver used in cables, as are monsterous technical hyperbole used to create the illusion of exclusive technology from what are largely off-the-shelf parts! High performance and costly but obscure aspects of the design (such as a short voice coil in a long magnetic gap) will only ever be appreciated by a small minority.

That's life! There is nothing shocking about this - it is just the reality of the high end audio market segmentation - no amount of crying or wailing will change this. Hardly anyone wants to plop $20K on a butt-ugly speaker because it happens to sound exceptionally good. It must first and foremost look damned good for that kind of money - sound will be a secondary consideration for most buyers even if they will never admit it (not even too themselves)!

Any speaker a manufacture only has about 1000 to 2000 bucks in drivers and parts for a speaker that goes for 5000 to 10,000, even 20,000 per pair... Exotic crossover components and cabinets cost far more than the driver parts normally. For example some line array speakers that have 20 drivers per side can cost about 10 to 30 bucks a driver, and cost you 20 to 30 grand!!

Speakers are the highest markup of all next to cables.. At least like 400 to 500% from manufacture to dealer alone. I worked for a retailer, we would sell a pair of speakers that were retail for 2500.00 and we paid about 600 to 700 per pair! Lucky if you found more than a 7 or 8 dollar tweeter in them.

Lets not even get started on CABLE markups.. I recently found the Military formula wire that a few hi end companines use, the exact mil spec # etc... I ordered the stuff and made the same exact pair of interconnects and power cables including the connectors for 10 to 15 bucks each! Retal for them with the name brand on them is 600 plus!

In their defense and I guess it has to be, first these companies need to make money, second "R&D" costs, and Third Marketing cost... And fourth how many sales do they actually get on this stuff? Especially with the amount of hi end small manufactures these days.

But there is nothing really "Rocket science" about hi end audio gear in general, there are few proprietary parts and designs however those even though still cheap to produce you will not find the means or materials to replicate them at home.

Funny because we will still have "Audiophiles" listen with the Eyes not their EARS!!

Funny because we will still have "Audiophiles" listen with the Eyes not their EARS!!

That is the whole reason why it makes more sense for a manufacturer to add some nice cosmetic styling and a nice veneer on a speaker rather than throw money into better quality woofers.

For example some line array speakers that have 20 drivers per side can cost about 10 to 30 bucks a driver, and cost you 20 to 30 grand!!

Yes indeed, but it is very comforting for the customer to be able to count the impressive number of woofers for his 20 Grand! Make no mistake about it, even casual non-audiophile friends will almost certainly be impressed by a speaker with 20 drivers per side. (Irrelevant that the drivers might have cost, on average, $20 each.) The same casual friends would probably not even notice a much more ordinary looking speaker with a single larger and slightly more costly $500 woofer, a $500 mid and a $50 tweeter. If you told your casual friends the cost of the ordinary looking speaker they would probably laugh. However, they would not be at all surprised to learn that the 20 driver tower cost as much as 20K becuase it look like it should cost that much!

Perception is everything.