Bargain Speakers

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I was reading a review on the Revel Salon 2, and the guy says that these speakers are actually a "bargain"!

$22,000 is a bargain?

I also read on the Linkwitz Lab website that the $9,200 Orion (if bought 100% from Wood Artistry + shipping/insurance) would have cost "over $25,000" if they were mass-produced and sold in stores?

So that made me think about how much the Salon 2s actually cost. Like $7K??

So if they cost $7K to make and sold for $22K, that doesn't sound like a "bargain" to me.

And if I were selling the Orions, I would say that these speakers are retailed at $25,000, but they're on sale for "only" $9,200.

 

[sholling]

When you live in a $25M mansion, drive a different $500k car on odd and even days, and live on Maine lobster, wagyu beef, and Dom Perignon then $22k Revels are a screaming bargain compared to the neighbor's $200k NBS 2.1 system. For the rest of us $22k is hardly a bargain.

I forget what rag I subscribed to several years ago (I stopped reading after 2 issues) but they couldn't be bothered with speakers that cost less than $20k. It must be nice to be filthy rich.

 

[psbfan9]

Justify, rationalize,...

I'm trying to justify spending over $500.00 for speakers.........

I think people buy those speakers just to feel important when they tell other people they paid $22,000.00 for those speakers.

 

[highfigh]

I was reading a review on the Revel Salon 2, and the guy says that these speakers are actually a "bargain"!

$22,000 is a bargain?

I also read on the Linkwitz Lab website that the $9,200 Orion (if bought 100% from Wood Artistry + shipping/insurance) would have cost "over $25,000" if they were mass-produced and sold in stores?

So that made me think about how much the Salon 2s actually cost. Like $7K??

So if they cost $7K to make and sold for $22K, that doesn't sound like a "bargain" to me.

And if I were selling the Orions, I would say that these speakers are retailed at $25,000, but they're on sale for "only" $9,200.

If that $7K was only for materials and labor, who paid for the building, machinery, tools, test equipment, building maintenance, admin, insurance, advertising, design time and equipment? How many drivers and crossovers were tested and rejected? Were the drivers made specifically for these speakers? Should the company make a profit, or sell them at their cost? Should the next step in the supply chain make any money? What about the retailer? What about parts set aside for warranty claims? They have to do that, too. Granted, they're all JBL drivers, but they still need to be made according to spec, so they perform at the same level as the original parts.

 

[KEW]

When it comes to the ability to "pay every bit as much as you want", audio has few equals. However, about any hobby does a damn good job of it. Look at cameras or bicycles. Some of the components for bicycles are jewelery, plain and simple.
The damning thing about audio is you can easily pay extra for nothing or an actual decrease in performance!
With cameras or bicycles you are paying for measurable performance improvements (perhaps only a few mg of weight savings in a bike component), but with audio you can pay two to five times as much for speakers that sound worse or you can pay 100 times as much for cables that add nothing. I wonder why equivalent situations don't exist in other hobbies (there probably are some - I just can't think of any).

Depending on the person/magazine that did the review, perhaps they were so impressed to hear an actual improvement in sound quality from the added cost of the Revels that they considered them a real bargain!

 

[InTheIndustry]

I was reading a review on the Revel Salon 2, and the guy says that these speakers are actually a "bargain"!

$22,000 is a bargain?

I also read on the Linkwitz Lab website that the $9,200 Orion (if bought 100% from Wood Artistry + shipping/insurance) would have cost "over $25,000" if they were mass-produced and sold in stores?

So that made me think about how much the Salon 2s actually cost. Like $7K??

So if they cost $7K to make and sold for $22K, that doesn't sound like a "bargain" to me.

And if I were selling the Orions, I would say that these speakers are retailed at $25,000, but they're on sale for "only" $9,200.

I'm sure, without question, that the Salon 2 costs far far less than $7K to actually physically produce from a raw materials stand point. The most expensive singular part of that speaker is the cabinet (as can be true with a lot of different speakers).

As far as the Linkwiz speaker costing $XX or $YY.... Uhhh, surrrrrrrre. These guys market to people all day who want to read graphs and feel "smart" about audio. That’s their niche. Part of that sales process is showing a HUGE MSRP (in theory) and then a "LOOK... What a deal!" price. This hooks the guys drooling at $20k+ speakers all day who couldn’t possibly spend that…. But then entices them to save up or splurge on a $9,000 model. I’m not saying the Linkwitz is a great deal or a bad one, just that they believe (or want someone to believe) that it is. And maybe that is indeed true? It’s improvable.

It’s kind of funny to me that real manufacturers get blasted for marketing jargon all the time on here… and I mean venomously blasted…. Yet because Linkwitz markets to the DIY crowd and knows how to pull on their heart strings well, that’s all perfectly acceptable. Linkwitz is making their business by preaching to the semi-DIY choir.

They can say their speaker should cost $1,000,000 dollars MSRP and it would be impossible to dispute. Boy, for a bunch of people interested in provable scientific facts there sure are a lot of people out there susceptible to marketing and sales jargon.

The bottom line is: In business, something's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. People pay $20,000 for the Salon 2..... and a lot less than that for a Linkwitz. If Linkwitz could figure out a way to charge more and reliably get it.... They would. That's business. I promise you they are making $1000s on their $9,200 speaker as it is. And, being a really small company (compared to a Harmon Group Co. like Revel), that's probably fine for them.

As far as something being a bargain or not, that's in the eye of the beholder. Those speakers might be considered a bargain in the market space of the price point they're at. It's asinine to take the word "bargain" and apply it to every speaker ever produced at any price point and in every situation. Perhaps the reviewer had heard some $40,000 speakers and thought the Salon 2 was much better or just as good at half the money. That would make them.... a comparative BARGAIN.

 

[InTheIndustry]

When it comes to the ability to "pay every bit as much as you want", audio has few equals. However, about any hobby does a damn good job of it. Look at cameras or bicycles. Some of the components for bicycles are jewelery, plain and simple.
The damning thing about audio is you can easily pay extra for nothing or an actual decrease in performance!
With cameras or bicycles you are paying for measurable performance improvements (perhaps only a few mg of weight savings in a bike component), but with audio you can pay two to five times as much for speakers that sound worse or you can pay 100 times as much for cables that add nothing. I wonder why equivalent situations don't exist in other hobbies (there probably are some - I just can't think of any).

Depending on the person/magazine that did the review, perhaps they were so impressed to hear an actual improvement in sound quality from the added cost of the Revels that they considered them a real bargain!

The video side of CE is far far worse than the speaker industry in terms of performance increase per dollar.

 

[InTheIndustry]

I'm trying to justify spending over $500.00 for speakers.........

I think people buy those speakers just to feel important when they tell other people they paid $22,000.00 for those speakers.

Perhaps you are prejudging people who buy speakers like that to make yourself feel better about your decision/situation. People in audio develop an inferiority complex faster than in any industry I can think of. Rationalizing your situation by associating to & then putting your needs/wants/ability to purchase on other people will close your mind to a lot of great products in this hobby.

Remember, what is good for one may not be good for every/anyone else.

 

[Pyrrho]

I'm trying to justify spending over $500.00 for speakers.........

I think people buy those speakers just to feel important when they tell other people they paid $22,000.00 for those speakers.

If you are trying to justify spending over $500 on a pair of speakers, I recommend that you go to a dealer who sells some interesting speakers that cost $1-2k, and listen to them side by side with those $500 speakers that you think are all you need. I like Magnepan, but you may prefer something else.

In general, the higher you go in price, the less improvement you get for your money. Thus, the difference between a $500 speaker and a $2k speaker is likely to be greater than the difference between a $2k speaker and a $3.5k speaker. Of course, you can get a bad deal at any price, so it is not always a matter of price. And once one gets up to $22k, any more is going to be different, and may not be better at all.

 

[3db]

I still wonder about these speakers priced into the stratosphere and the true maufacturing cost of these speakers. The analogy I see here is to the upscaled Oppo player by Lexicon. Before all you road warriors hop on my previous statement about the Oppo, I'm not inferring that the truly expensive speakers are clones of another cheaper speaker. However, my lines of thoughts are those;

1.) There are only so many driver manufacturers and alot of these drivers end up in the megabuck speakers. They may be modified versions of what the companies usually stamp out like the drivers PSB uses in their lines as an example. Is it that these mods are truly that much more expensive to produce? I'm inclined to think economies of scale and themore one produces, the cheaper they get to a point.

2.) For companies that do develop their own drivers, I can see that being an expensive venture. However, these companies are here to survive and the lower end series of a manufacturer inheret the drivers from the more expensive series so that the manufacture gets more cost recovery from having designed and built the driver in the first place. Again, the cost of building these drivers starts to go down from a volume perspective.

3.) Passive Crossovers.. The components used in the crossovers of megabuck speakers are no different from the components used in their cheaper lines or are they? I would like to get my mits on a few crossovers and explore this a little more. Does an inductor or a capacitor in a crossover now cost 300x times as much because the materials used to build them are from rare earth metals? Or, are the tolerances of the materials used tighter because of QA? Do the tighter tolerances drive the cost of components that much?

4.) The cabinet....maybe this is where some of the costs go. Some of these megabuck speakers look like high priced furniture..hand rubbed finishes and all.

If that $7K was only for materials and labor, who paid for the building, machinery, tools, test equipment, building maintenance, admin, insurance, advertising, design time and equipment? How many drivers and crossovers were tested and rejected? Were the drivers made specifically for these speakers? Should the company make a profit, or sell them at their cost? Should the next step in the supply chain make any money? What about the retailer? What about parts set aside for warranty claims? They have to do that, too. Granted, they're all JBL drivers, but they still need to be made according to spec, so they perform at the same level as the original parts.

.

Those costs you are addressing are applied to all speaker manufacturers of any cost and are not special to the megabuck speakers. I can buy into the arguement of the sheer lack of sales of megabuck speakers compared to cheaper alternatives that it may cost more to build and distribute these sepakers. But is that worth the extra money from a performance standard? My gut feel is that these stratosheric prices are artificial for the sole reason of exclusivity only. That's fine for those who need to feel exclusive. But from a hard science perspective, I think these companies are scamming with the high prices.

 

[highfigh]

4.) The cabinet....maybe this is where some of the costs go. Some of these megabuck speakers look like high priced furniture..hand rubbed finishes and all.

Those costs you are addressing are applied to all speaker manufacturers of any cost and are not special to the megabuck speakers. I can buy into the argument of the sheer lack of sales of megabuck speakers compared to cheaper alternatives that it may cost more to build and distribute these speakers. But is that worth the extra money from a performance standard? My gut feel is that these stratospheric prices are artificial for the sole reason of exclusivity only. That's fine for those who need to feel exclusive. But from a hard science perspective, I think these companies are scamming with the high prices.

I would have to agree about the cabinet being the most expensive, especially after the development phase. Unless a manufacturer has well-trained cabinetmakers and facilities, it's just not an efficient activity, especially if the finish requires much more than just spraying or rubbing it on, especially the piano finish.

I also agree that, once speakers reach a certain (not really possible to pin-point) price, they really need to do some 'splainin' in order to justify their existence, IMO. I'd like to hear Wilson tell me why I should spend $200K+ on a pair of theirs. I think part of it may be "gettin' while the gettin's good", too.

 

[Pyrrho]

I still wonder about these speakers priced into the stratosphere and the true maufacturing cost of these speakers. The analogy I see here is to the upscaled Oppo player by Lexicon. Before all you road warriors hop on my previous statement about the Oppo, I'm not inferring that the truly expensive speakers are clones of another cheaper speaker. However, my lines of thoughts are those;

1.) There are only so many driver manufacturers and alot of these drivers end up in the megabuck speakers. They may be modified versions of what the companies usually stamp out like the drivers PSB uses in their lines as an example. Is it that these mods are truly that much more expensive to produce? I'm inclined to think economies of scale and themore one produces, the cheaper they get to a point.

2.) For companies that do develop their own drivers, I can see that being an expensive venture. However, these companies are here to survive and the lower end series of a manufacturer inheret the drivers from the more expensive series so that the manufacture gets more cost recovery from having designed and built the driver in the first place. Again, the cost of building these drivers starts to go down from a volume perspective.

3.) Passive Crossovers.. The components used in the crossovers of megabuck speakers are no different from the components used in their cheaper lines or are they? I would like to get my mits on a few crossovers and explore this a little more. Does an inductor or a capacitor in a crossover now cost 300x times as much because the materials used to build them are from rare earth metals? Or, are the tolerances of the materials used tighter because of QA? Do the tighter tolerances drive the cost of components that much?

4.) The cabinet....maybe this is where some of the costs go. Some of these megabuck speakers look like high priced furniture..hand rubbed finishes and all.

.

Those costs you are addressing are applied to all speaker manufacturers of any cost and are not special to the megabuck speakers. I can buy into the arguement of the sheer lack of sales of megabuck speakers compared to cheaper alternatives that it may cost more to build and distribute these sepakers. But is that worth the extra money from a performance standard? My gut feel is that these stratosheric prices are artificial for the sole reason of exclusivity only. That's fine for those who need to feel exclusive. But from a hard science perspective, I think these companies are scamming with the high prices.

I could not say what the manufacturing costs are, but when buying raw drivers and raw crossover parts, the prices vary considerably. There is one indication of greater expense that is obvious, and that is having greater mass, as that means more materials are needed. And obviously, making something to tighter tolerances takes more care and more expensive equipment. But that probably only gets us up to justifying a few thousand. I think there generally is no justification for speakers costing over $20k.

In the case of my Apogee Stage speakers, there is a very large coil in the crossover, several inches across, and the crossover contains many more components than one typically finds in a cheap two-way crossover. So there is more actual cost to the crossover than is often the case.

Here is a picture of a Stage crossover:

http://www.apogeespeakers.com/projectstech/jeff_blazey/jeffs_stage_crossover_03.jpg

The cardboard with the writing on it covers a large coil.

The Stage, though, originally retailed for about $2k/pair, and, according to what I have read online, quickly climbed to $3k. I do not know the final retail price when they stopped making them. But we are not talking crazy expensive, just more expensive than most people want to spend.


Another thing to remember is that retail price usually involves the manufacturer making a profit, as well as retailers. I would expect actual costs to make are often about 1/4 retail price, but that is a guess (obviously, it is going to vary in practice, and manufacturers who sell direct don't need to include the same profits for retailers in the retail price). But maybe someone with some real numbers will be able to chime in on this, but I doubt it, as there is good reason for a manufacturer to withhold cost information to consumers, as people are often unreasonable and want to not pay what it costs to keep a retail store in business, or for anyone to make a reasonable profit on the process. Also, shipping speakers, particularly large and heavy ones, is also going to add to the expense, sometimes quite significantly. And the shipping of the speakers to the dealer is included in the retail price of most speakers.

With the crazy expensive speakers, I would guess that it is far less than 1/4 retail price to make them, but they probably put "magic" wires and other nonsensical things in so they can pretend one is getting value for one's money.


As for the cabinet costing a lot, I have seen gorgeous speakers at prices that are not insanely expensive. Aurum Cantus comes to mind:

http://www.kellsieavdesign.com/products/Leisure2SE.htm

$1500/pair for the U.S. version (which costs more and is prettier than the "international" version), and they look as beautiful as just about any speaker I have seen at any price. The connections are nicer than on my more expensive Stage speakers, and the finish is nicer as well. They are made in China, and the Stage speakers were made in the U.S., so that probably explains some of the price differences, though one also gets to pay shipping to the U.S. (included in the retail price, as the retail price is what one would pay at a dealer in the U.S.). The Stages sound better, but they are less convenient in many respects, including placement and room required for them, and a 3 ohm nominal impedance. The Aurum Cantus Leisure 2SE (U.S. version) is an easy 8 ohms, normal sensitivity, and a nice compact speaker that takes up far less real estate. The treble, in my opinion, is just as good in the Leisure 2SE as the Stages, but the midrange and bass are better in the Stages.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

The drivers for the Orions cost $1,800.

The crossover costs $800.

The amplifier (recommended one for active crossover/speakers) costs $1,800.

Then you have all the internal wiring and speakon speaker wires and misc. stuff.

Then there is the cabinet.

I'm told that the cabinet, especially if you stain and gloss the finish, can take up to 4 weeks to complete. I guess that is a lot of labor there.

I would like to know how much those drivers for the Salon2 cost?

 

[3db]

I could not say what the manufacturing costs are, but when buying raw drivers and raw crossover parts, the prices vary considerably. There is one indication of greater expense that is obvious, and that is having greater mass, as that means more materials are needed. And obviously, making something to tighter tolerances takes more care and more expensive equipment. But that probably only gets us up to justifying a few thousand. I think there generally is no justification for speakers costing over $20k.

In the case of my Apogee Stage speakers, there is a very large coil in the crossover, several inches across, and the crossover contains many more components than one typically finds in a cheap two-way crossover. So there is more actual cost to the crossover than is often the case.

Here is a picture of a Stage crossover:

http://www.apogeespeakers.com/projectstech/jeff_blazey/jeffs_stage_crossover_03.jpg

The cardboard with the writing on it covers a large coil.

The Stage, though, originally retailed for about $2k/pair, and, according to what I have read online, quickly climbed to $3k. I do not know the final retail price when they stopped making them. But we are not talking crazy expensive, just more expensive than most people want to spend.


Another thing to remember is that retail price usually involves the manufacturer making a profit, as well as retailers. I would expect actual costs to make are often about 1/4 retail price, but that is a guess (obviously, it is going to vary in practice, and manufacturers who sell direct don't need to include the same profits for retailers in the retail price). But maybe someone with some real numbers will be able to chime in on this, but I doubt it, as there is good reason for a manufacturer to withhold cost information to consumers, as people are often unreasonable and want to not pay what it costs to keep a retail store in business, or for anyone to make a reasonable profit on the process. Also, shipping speakers, particularly large and heavy ones, is also going to add to the expense, sometimes quite significantly. And the shipping of the speakers to the dealer is included in the retail price of most speakers.

With the crazy expensive speakers, I would guess that it is far less than 1/4 retail price to make them, but they probably put "magic" wires and other nonsensical things in so they can pretend one is getting value for one's money.


As for the cabinet costing a lot, I have seen gorgeous speakers at prices that are not insanely expensive. Aurum Cantus comes to mind:

http://www.kellsieavdesign.com/products/Leisure2SE.htm

$1500/pair for the U.S. version (which costs more and is prettier than the "international" version), and they look as beautiful as just about any speaker I have seen at any price. The connections are nicer than on my more expensive Stage speakers, and the finish is nicer as well. They are made in China, and the Stage speakers were made in the U.S., so that probably explains some of the price differences, though one also gets to pay shipping to the U.S. (included in the retail price, as the retail price is what one would pay at a dealer in the U.S.). The Stages sound better, but they are less convenient in many respects, including placement and room required for them, and a 3 ohm nominal impedance. The Aurum Cantus Leisure 2SE (U.S. version) is an easy 8 ohms, normal sensitivity, and a nice compact speaker that takes up far less real estate. The treble, in my opinion, is just as good in the Leisure 2SE as the Stages, but the midrange and bass are better in the Stages.

Thanks for agreeing with me.