Grimm Audio LS1BE- why so expensive?

[DanielT]

The concept of a wide baffle is a very good one. In the case of the Genelec 8361, they are also wide loudspeakers pushing down the need for baffle step correction = more headroom.

The looks of GRIMM is also good, its kind of an elegant loudspeaker .

Regarding wide baffle, Heco are popular:

6moons audioreviews: Heco Direkt

 

[Ilkless]

As a DIYer I did something along these lines years back--predating Grimm's L1.

As an ex-owner of kit speakers, why are DIYers so insistent on comparing apples to oranges (complete turnkey product)?

They charged what they did at the start because that was what people were willing to pay, there was nobody integrating that into a single package, the tech involved cost a lot more back then (especially so because most of it was custom - D/A, servo circuitry, not off the shelf, though amps are nCore). Since then things like the Hypex Fusion amps+DSP have made integration a lot cheaper.

Then when it came to the LS1Be second-gen product, of course, they couldn't charge any lesser than they did.

 

[mightycicadalord]

As an ex-owner of kit speakers, why are DIYers so insistent on comparing apples to oranges (complete turnkey product)?

They charged what they did at the start because that was what people were willing to pay, there was nobody integrating that into a single package, the tech involved cost a lot more back then (especially so because most of it was custom - D/A, servo circuitry, not off the shelf, though amps are nCore). Since then things like the Hypex Fusion amps+DSP have made integration a lot cheaper.

Then when it came to the LS1Be second-gen product, of course, they couldn't charge any lesser than they did.

It helps shed some light on just how not special a lot of speakers are.

 

[fineMen]

There are a few loudspeakers out there thats better than the studiomonitors used. ...

In post

• #38

I asked for the specifics. What do "better" speakers do better? Could that have been had by other means right in the studio, e/g a slightly different timbre, dynamic expansion (as they do with "remastered" today)?

Reiterated the logic, because it seems to be (very) hard to acknowledge:

sound engineer optimises the sound of a recording, judging the result over his monitors, hence sound over his monitors is optimal
deviations from the studio sound, even if more 'neutral' whatever, necessary degrade the sound
and so must be considered less true to the art
and hence worse, not "better"

Back to the Grimm's in particular. What exactly does is do "better"?

I'm talking about what comes out, not what goes in as new technology (which isn't that fresh to begin with)

 

[DSJR]

$30k may seem a huge amount for people here (same with the JBL 4367 comments I've contributed to), but to see what the UK has to offer in high end speakers - PMC Fact Fenestrias at £57k or so, Dynaudio Confidence 60 at £36,500, Kudos Titan 808's(apparently never measured in development but that's second hand info) at £28500 - not sure if this includes passive crossovers. I'm not mentioning the larger KEF and B&W models and maybe the Grimm's are online ordered rather than via a dealer (who's going to want at least 40% of the retail price methinks).

Keith, the big ATC's may well be coloured to you, but back in the day I could go to a live gig or concert and play well recorded music of the same genre at home and never felt the need to 'compare the sound,' unlike many 'HiFi' speakers and systems which always sounded 'different' and usually worse to me! Just sayin' guv'nor... I like the Harbeth XD series, but they're a much smaller style of presentation at a not (at all sadly) small price and not comparable in this company..

Maybe the US market is different. I envy the larger rooms so many of you seem to have (with often rather cheaper house prices as well so less of a mortgage burden?)

 

[Inner Space]

sound engineer optimises the sound of a recording, judging the result over his monitors, hence sound over his monitors is optimal

Your logic fails, because of this common amateur misunderstanding. The engineer uses his monitors (sometimes several different) as a forensic tool to establish a master that he judges will sound acceptable over the huge range of consumer equipment and use cases. He will definitely not judge the result to be optimal on any one individual speaker model. That would be a bad mistake, resulting in a record that would sound poor 99% of the time.

The point of using the best possible domestic loudspeaker is to not bottleneck the sound you get out of the provided recording. Ideally all chains (including the macro chain from studio to home) should get better and better from beginning to end, as noise and distortion, etc, are cumulative.

 

[DWI]

That's not true even billionaires are concerned about prices and don't spend their money foolishly
The real question is @$30K are they good value, what else can be had at that price that is better than them, and what can be bought that is as good for less money (I suspect that's the DD 8C)

I wouldn‘t generalise about billionaires. One unbearable ex-friend who was probably into 9 figures came to the U.K. and spent half an hour telling me the rental cost of every item of furniture in his house down to the last cent and never failed to mention how he worked in his father‘s video rental store in Queens. An old friend I saw on Saturday who is probably approaching 10 figures, if he wanted an audio system he would just ask his housekeeper to get it sorted. He wouldn’t be going online and checking prices, or even asking. It would probably end up being done by an architect or interior designer. He’s just the same guy as when we met 30 years ago and he had no money, just now time is more important to him than money.

Personally, I think the real questions would more likely be what they look like, how they sound and how convenient they are to use. Like many people these days, there is a strong design element in our house and speakers had to fit in, my wife chose them and she didn’t look at the price. Thankfully they were affordable and perform very well. I considered the Kii3, I heard them at a local store, I liked 5he DSP, but she refused to consider anything on stands. I bought a car as well at about the same time, but as I get no pleasure from driving and prefer to use public transport, the car cost less than the speakers and I argued over the price of the car for a week. It was the absolute cheapest car I could find for the specification I needed. It was not made by Topping, but if Topping made a car that’s what it would look like.

The Grimm are a superb design and how they look is of great value to many people and I can fully understand those people buying them for that reason. The same goes for a lot of hifi.

 

[DWI]

Don't fully agree. I mainly listen to acoustic music (classical and jazz) which are much less processed in the studio. My yardstick for assessing speakers is the degree to which they fool my brain into thinking I'm witnessing a real acoustic event taking place in the listening room. Some speakers do that much better than others.

Me too. Agreed. Live classical music (15 Biber Rosary sonatas tonight) can be fatiguing. I prefer listening at home to be less fatiguing. Most consumer speaker engineers know that.

There are a few loudspeakers out there thats better than the studiomonitors used.

I have considered studio monitors and they have never been my choice. 25-20k hz and 115db are not my preference. I've listened to $100k speakers with that performance and lasted 10 minutes.

 

[fineMen]

Your logic fails, because of this common amateur misunderstanding. The engineer uses his monitors (sometimes several different) as a forensic tool to establish a master that he judges will sound acceptable over the huge range of consumer equipment and use cases. He will definitely not judge the result to be optimal on any one individual speaker model. That would be a bad mistake, resulting in a record that would sound poor 99% of the time.

The point of using the best possible domestic loudspeaker is to not bottleneck the sound you get out of the provided recording. Ideally all chains (including the macro chain from studio to home) should get better and better from beginning to end, as noise and distortion, etc, are cumulative.

Thank You for that. Yes I am an amateur. And of course You know.

With this notion You stated here the market is kept open for literally (!!) everything, the usual less ingenious, but just wacky designs included. The choices of both, customer and studio believer are matter of indisputable taste. I would call this "the circle of confusion" that is needed to take advantage of people's uncertainty with audio technology since nearly a century. "Take this over the other, pay more for less, our's is better than the other's! We have cables with wheels attached!"

But!

I think the spinorama came to the rescue.

Again: what does the Grimm's LS1 do differently than any other, specifically? Compared to today's standard with Genelc, JBL, Neumann etc., what does it do better? What would justify four time the expenses, in numbers a plus of 21,000 dollars. Enough to feed an US family a year, or even two?! Just the extra expenses alone.

Please tell what the advantage is, not what goes in as fancy tech, but what comes out, for the entitled music lover *G*

( Me thinks, with all the disposable income flying around here, we should start a thread on optimising speakers for use on Mars. You know, the thin atmosphere, low temp ... but low light will intensify stereo impression ... )

 

[peanuts]

the outdated linkwitz orion is a better speaker than this, and it also has a tweeter that can handle the low crossover this 8" excel woofer needs (1.4khz) i cant imagine dxt or a berylium version doing that.
i see they also use the same seas subwoofer driver as the lx521. you can get thoes speakers completed from linkwitz.com at a more reasonable price.

 

[Ilkless]

the outdated linkwitz orion is a better speaker than this, and it also has a tweeter that can handle the low crossover this 8" excel woofer needs (1.4khz) i cant imagine dxt or a berylium version doing that.
i see they also use the same seas subwoofer driver as the lx521. you can get thoes speakers completed from linkwitz.com at a more reasonable price.

DXT can do 1.5kHz LR2 (see Mark K's ER18DXT DIY design). He stress tested the DXT up to 105dB before settling on that crossover. Don't see why a steeper slope wouldn't work just fine at 1.4kHz.

 

[SimpleTheater]

Again: what does the Grimm's LS1 do differently than any other, specifically? Compared to today's standard with Genelec, JBL, Neumann etc., what does it do better? What would justify four time the expenses, in numbers a plus of 21,000 dollars. Enough to feed an US family a year, or even two?! Just the extra expenses alone.

The big item you are missing is "near field" vs "far field". I would whole heartedly agree with you if you are listening near field to just pick up the most expensive Genelecs you can afford and be done with it. I don't think there is a better near field speaker.

Far field is a whole different story (not that Genelecs aren't good for far field, like the 8361A's), but far field changes a lot of things.

• Size of your room. How loud can they go before distorting?
• Style of your room. Are you OK with adding a couple of subwoofers to help out on the extreme low end, or is that not an option?
• Room acoustics - rooms are all different, from RT60 decay to absorption. Some speakers will simply sound better than another in one room, and vice-versa in another.
• Imaging - how big is that sweet spot where you still get the stereo effect of sound right in front of you, off to the left or right?

All of that said, I'd go with the Genelec 8361A's for $10k, two Genelec 7382A subs for $21k and be done with it. These Grimm's couldn't compete with that at the same price. I'd also sleep well at night knowing I just gave a retailer $10k in profit, so they could feed their family for a year.

 

[fineMen]

The big item you are missing is "near field" vs "far field".

Despite our agreement that there are other options, what exactly makes the LS1 a "different" speaker? O/k, the looks, but ... it reminds me of a ancient boys toy. Straights that could be stapled into one another, giving kind of a 3D-skeleton, and then You could clip in panels section by section. Very nice indeed, I loved it so much! But this is a speaker.

You mention near/far field. What does the Grimm's do in this respect? Regarding its technical merits I didn't get a single answer yet

Are we actually talking about "high end" aka "audiophile" stuff, which doesn't need, by its very definition, any justification other that people buy it? As the pinnacle of "preference" in the Olive's metric sense?

 

[DWI]

All of that said, I'd go with the Genelec 8361A's for $10k, two Genelec 7382A subs for $21k and be done with it.

If I brought those coffins into my house my wife would be done with me, and after removing the drivers she'd have the boxes to bury the body.

Google Genelec 8361A and Genelec 7382A, click on images and then ask yourself why you don't see them used in domestic settings.

 

[fineMen]

...

Are we actually talking about "high end" ...

We do (quote from https://www.grimmaudio.com/pro-products/pro-loudspeakers/pro-ls1be/ ):

"Our flagship product LS1be takes the LS1 performance to the next level ... exclusive component selection and decided on silver power supply wiring for the finishing touch."

Touch the the power wiring as to jump to next level?

It really looks nice!

 

[DWI]

"Our flagship product LS1be takes the LS1 performance to the next level ... exclusive component selection and decided on silver power supply wiring for the finishing touch."

You could get an editing job with Russian TV. In full, plus the bits you missed.

Our flagship product LS1be takes the LS1 performance to the next level. Our aim was to improve transparency even further by focussing on “authority, control and flow”. To achieve this we worked on lowering distortion and extending the linear audio band. We added a new Beryllium tweeter, which was co-developed with Seas. It extends the frequency range and has 9 dB less distortion than our original tweeter. Furthermore we lowered jitter, improved the power supplies, employed some exclusive component selection and decided on silver power supply wiring for the finishing touch.

 

[Pearljam5000]

The big item you are missing is "near field" vs "far field". I would whole heartedly agree with you if you are listening near field to just pick up the most expensive Genelecs you can afford and be done with it. I don't think there is a better near field speaker.

Far field is a whole different story (not that Genelecs aren't good for far field, like the 8361A's), but far field changes a lot of things.

• Size of your room. How loud can they go before distorting?
• Style of your room. Are you OK with adding a couple of subwoofers to help out on the extreme low end, or is that not an option?
• Room acoustics - rooms are all different, from RT60 decay to absorption. Some speakers will simply sound better than another in one room, and vice-versa in another.
• Imaging - how big is that sweet spot where you still get the stereo effect of sound right in front of you, off to the left or right?

All of that said, I'd go with the Genelec 8361A's for $10k, two Genelec 7382A subs for $21k and be done with it. These Grimm's couldn't compete with that at the same price. I'd also sleep well at night knowing I just gave a retailer $10k in profit, so they could feed their family for a year.

What makes the 8361 less good for Fairfield than the LS1BE?
I mean their woofer is bigger, they have a mid driver which Ls1 lacks and same size tweeter?

 

[SimpleTheater]

What makes the 8361 less good for Fairfield than the LS1BE?
I mean their woofer is bigger, they have a mid driver which Ls1 lacks and same size tweeter?

Nothing. Like I said in my post, I'd get the 8361's.

 

[SimpleTheater]

You mention near/far field. What does the Grimm's do in this respect? Regarding its technical merits I didn't get a single answer yet

I haven't heard the Grimm's. You'd have to A/B them yourself to get an answer beyond marketing mumbo jumbo.

 

[HammerSandwich]

The looks of GRIMM is also good, its kind of an elegant loudspeaker .

Yes, that's a good word. People should check the Grimm's user manual for unboxing & assembly. It is an incredibly polished package, and I don't mean just the speaker.

Asking how a Grimm justifies its cost over a cheaper, but still very good, speaker is akin to asking why anyone would pay for an iPhone or Porsche. None are high-value to the utilitarian buyer, but the market's broad enough to include other factors.