Poll: What % of your system investment is in your speakers?

[Frank Dernie]

My take on the audiophile publication ethic is moderately priced speakers and wildly expensive electronics. It kind of makes me think of photographers who buy low end bodies and pro lenses because the glass has better resale value.

Here in the UK it used to be recommended to pay the most for the source, followed by amp, followed by speakers on the premis that information lost at the beginning can't be put back later. With the arrival of digital the audible information is all retrieved and low distortion speakers are rarer than low distortion amps, nevertheless I still think some amps which drive a 8 ohm power resistor well fall over when driving variable reactive loads, ie almost all speakers so.
HiFi News reviews do measure speaker distortion at 100Hz, 1kHz and 10 kHz at 90dB/1m. Whilst there have been some low distortion speakers around for decades (Yamaha NS1000M was 0.3% / 0.1% / 0.1%) there are not many, and that is before the effect of dispersion is taken into account.
Obviously efficient speakers are likely to have lower distortion at 90dB at 1m, Klipsch La Scala 0.1% / 0.2% / 0.2% compared with Rogers LS3/5a 1.7% / 0.5% / 0.9%! Though the waterfall plot ofn the La Scala shows a very slow "stop" as with all horns and very uneven FR.
No inexpensive speaker is particularly good, The ATC active SCM100 is 0.2% / <0.1% / 0.1% but £36,083...
The inexpensive Fyne Audio F301 (Fyne Audio is the phoenix rising from the ashes of Tannoy) gets 0.6% / 0.6% / 0.6% at £250 for example.
Mind you there are expensive ones that aren't that low distortion as well:
Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo gets 0.2% / 0.6% / 0.1% for £159,999 and the Wilson Sasha DAW is 0.1% / 0.4% / 0.3% for £39,998 and Wilson Alexia 0.2% / 0.8% / 0.4% for £64,998 for example, this level of mid range distortion is surely not good.
The highly regarded Revel Performa F228Be gets 0.6% / 0.1% / 0.1% for £10,000 here (if you can find a dealer) though. and the Kii 3 gets 3.4% / 0.1% / 0.4%.

I don't find any inexpensive speakers with much less than 0.5% distortion in the mid range, and far more in the bass.

 

[Aprude51]

Yes, that's what many audiophiles & shops have recommended as long as I can remember (a few decades): spend the most money as far upstream as possible. This never made any sense to me (the photography analogy would be expensive bodies with cheap lenses, which doesnt make sense either). I think it stems from the days before digital, when spending big bucks on a turntable, cartridge & head amp was necessary to get decent sound. The difference between a $100 and $1000 turntable is easily and obviously audible. Not so with a DAC. So nowadays that advice makes even less sense, when a couple hundred bucks gets near reference quality DAC, that is more transparent than most of the mics and mic preamps used to make the recordings we listen to.

It remains a fact that most of the distortion we hear is coming from the speakers & room. That, combined with the different shape of the diminishing returns curve, says spend most of the money on the speakers & room treatment.

I have been surprised by how common that advice is in the more “tweako” corners of the internet. It’s often explained by the meaningless statement “garbage in garbage out”.

Makes sense that it could be a holdover from the purely analog days...

 

[Rja4000]

Well...
First, do you consider the amp ?
Active speakers should be, wait... >80% of your total ideal system cost.
For passive, you'd need 30% amp, 50% speakers and then the rest.
And, in the rest, you'll find the room eq.

Ok, that's all theory.
My main system, I paid 40% of normal price for the speakers. So 2k€ for a 7k€ system (that was worth >11k€)
My second system, 66% went for passive speakers.
My third... well... How to say? How do you count the 40 channels digital mixer in there? I paid a bargain for the pair of Genelec 1032A...
My fourth, same than second.
And the fifth, passive speakers count for around 66% again.

 

[mkawa]

i have a theory that you could replace everything before the power amp in most audiophile systems with a 300$ ipad's headphone out and they wouldn't notice. i'm not talking ABT here. i mean just replace it all; let them see it, whatever. when i was much younger i used to constantly read these audiophile rag reviews that were like "XXX bargain product compared well to my system that costs as much as a small car! but of course my main system is far superior flowery language flowery language."

bam, ipad. i dare you to find a substantial difference.

i also think it is a generational thing. mixed mode VLSI has made most older audio technologies wildly obsolete. the democratization of bandwidth has made music ownership a bit pointless. and extremely good simulator software has made good-enough loudspeaker designs easier and cheaper to design than ever. also, often ignored, but equally important to loudspeaker design has been a number of revolutions in injection molding of metals and other exotic materials to extremely high accuracy for very low prices. it has also helped with speaker cabinets, as you can now shoot ABS + GFxx housings in space optimized nonlinear shapes that can form the outside of or provide internal corrections to driver enclosures.

democratization of processing power has also made signal processing trivial. that deserves so much more space in this post, but there you are.

basically, the world has changed radically, but audiophiles haven't.

 

[digitalfrost]

So get this. I only ever used PCs as source for my hifi. Which is like a bulky equivalent to an iPad. The first stereo I got was from my grandfather, some bulky 70s equipment, I'm talking way larger than the 19" form factor used today. It used DIN connectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector.

That made me buy my first soundcard, made by ESS nonetheless. I mostly used it for games, having music on your PC was not really a thing back then. Then came MP3. I got shit in Hifi Forums in early 2000s when I said I never owned a CD player. Still haven't bought one.

I run my vinyl setup through my PC though.

 

[mkawa]

i have some artists that i like who prefer that people listen to their vinyl releases, so somewhat ironically, i've purchased their vinyl pressings at shows, but sadly, i've never forked out for a turntable...

the other day i found out that even my 13 year old niece has a turntable and an OG cassette tape walkman. in my naivete i asked whether she needed a phono preamp for her birthday and my brother said "no, it has usb out"

i offered to send her a pair of mdr-v6s for her birthday and left it at that.

 

[MRC01]

i have a theory that you could replace everything before the power amp in most audiophile systems with a 300$ ipad's headphone out and they wouldn't notice. ... bam, ipad. i dare you to find a substantial difference. ...

I've done that and I can hear the difference. Blind testing is an essential part of how I evaluate audio gear. Whether those differences are substantial is a different question and a matter of opinion. The average Joe might not differentiate a 1959 Chateau Margeaux from a $20 red from the local store, and even if he could tell them apart he might not call the difference substantial. However, the average Joe isn't buying the Chateau Margeaux! If we found some rich bloke who was buying the Chateau Margeaux and he couldn't tell it apart from the local red, we would have a good laugh at his expense. Yet if he could tell them apart, it would be presumptuous of anyone to tell him the differences weren't substantial. He obviously thinks they are worth the price.

However, I agree with the premise behind your proposition, which is that digital makes it less necessary to spend big bucks on whatever is upstream of the power amp. Especially when using some of the reviews & measurements published here as a guide.

 

[digitalfrost]

i have some artists that i like who prefer that people listen to their vinyl releases, so somewhat ironically, i've purchased their vinyl pressings at shows, but sadly, i've never forked out for a turntable...

Since I've always been a PC guy, I pirated quite a lot in my youth. When I started earning money, I bought CDs, but I just ripped them to PC and put them in a box behind the couch. Some time later, I was able to download the FLACs before the time the CD arrived at my door. I still have some CDs in original packaging, since it was not necessary to even get them out of the plastic. That was very unstatisfying.

Eventually I started buying vinyl, and once I got to a certain number, I tought I should buy a turntable. It was a fun experience, but really if you value your money, vinyl is bullshit. I mean I like the experience. But compared to digital, it's not really worth it.

 

[mkawa]

everything vinyl that i have was recorded by phil elvrum, who used to record masters his masters using a completely analog chain. when i was a kid listening to his early albums, i couldn't afford vinyl, so when i started going to his shows again recently, i picked up whatever vinyl he had on him.

my girlfriend has some grimes vinyl because it's more fun to buy vinyl merch.

regardless, when it comes to spending money on audio equipment, bottom line is better loudspeaker design and implementation kills it every time. that said, loudspeakers and headphones have gotten _so much better_ over the years that it's a bit frightening. i remember staring longingly at the magnepan website. now i'm not entirely sure if the company still exists, as their one or two advantages over loudspeaker boxes are almost gone..

 

[direstraitsfan98]

For me, My amp, pre, dac, and cabling represent 8.8% of my systems cost.

 

[MRC01]

... loudspeakers and headphones have gotten _so much better_ over the years that it's a bit frightening. i remember staring longingly at the magnepan website. now i'm not entirely sure if the company still exists, as their one or two advantages over loudspeaker boxes are almost gone..

It's true that everything, both electronics & speakers, has improved over the years. Yet Magnepans still do exist and they're still great speakers, both subjectively and objectively. My 20-year old 3.6/R measure within 2 dB of flat from 30 Hz to 20 kHz with distortion at -40 / -50 / -60 dB in the bass, mids and treble, with a nice flat group delay curve. However, they require a lot of power, have limited SPLs in the bottom octave, and being dipoles require a good sized room with careful setup.

You can find speakers having similar measurements for a similar price, so the Maggies aren't as unique as they were 20 years ago, but they're still among the best, for people who like clean sound and can live with their limitations.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Yet Magnepans still do exist and they're still great speakers, both subjectively and objectively. My 20-year old 3.6/R measure within 2 dB of flat from 30 Hz to 20 kHz with distortion at -40 / -50 / -60 dB in the bass, mids and treble, with a nice flat group delay curve. However, they require a lot of power, have limited SPLs in the bottom octave, and being dipoles require a good sized room with careful setup.

https://www.hifinews.com/content/magnepan-magneplanar-207-loudspeaker-lab-report

 

[Frank Dernie]

Eventually I started buying vinyl, and once I got to a certain number, I tought I should buy a turntable.

I am intrigued as to why you bought them if you didn't have a turntable.
My local dealer told me lots of the people coming into his shop to buy LPs don't have a turntable and never play them so would you be so kind as to tell me why?
If I buy anything in his store it is used CDs, the LPs are way too expensive (particularly since I bought most of mine new between 1966 and CD coming out in the '80s).

 

[SDC]

4367 with wxa50. Listen using airplay and youtube. No problems so far. I like the LR balance control through Yamaha app

 

[digitalfrost]

I am intrigued as to why you bought them if you didn't have a turntable.
My local dealer told me lots of the people coming into his shop to buy LPs don't have a turntable and never play them so would you be so kind as to tell me why?

As I said, buying CDs was very unstatisfying as I didn't really need the CD, most of the time I already had the music. So was buying digital albums. Pay money, get an email, yeah whatever. An LP is something nice to look at and have in your hands.

 

[Absolute]

Disregarding room, about 95%.

There seems to be somewhat of a consenus here that frequency response and dispersion in speakers are the only significant factor for sound quality, and that any cheap box is about as good as it gets as long as this criteria is met.
What about other things like timing, power compression, distortion, box resonances, diffraction, lobing, driver decay etc?

My opinion is that good speakers are cheap, but really good/great speakers are both big and expensive by necessity. Am I wrong?

 

[BillG]

My opinion is that good speakers are cheap, but really good/great speakers are both big and expensive by necessity. Am I wrong?

What would you consider to be expensive?

 

[Eurasian]

https://www.hifinews.com/content/magnepan-magneplanar-207-loudspeaker-lab-report

Wow -- that is very poor performance. You would think that pair matching could be significantly better even if in room FR is terrible.

 

[Willem]

Of course, distortion etc also matters. Timing is an unscientific concept, however, so you can ditch that. I agree that good speakers have become a lot cheaper, but that really good speakers are still expensive. But I also think that if you can afford them, they are worth it. They do indeed make the biggest contribution to the sound.
I want to add one thing, however, and that is that even though electronics can be transparent for only little money, there is a level below which this cannot be achieved. From time to time we see people here asking about ultra cheap chip amps, and those are a waste of money. My hunch is that at the bottom end traditional AB amplifiers such as the Yamaha AS301 (275 euro, with phono and digital inputs) represent just about the cheapest that it is sensible to spend money on if you want transparent power and practical connectivities. Speakers are a far less global market so what makes sense in one country does not necessarily make sense in another, and certainly not another continent. But as a pleasant example of how far we have come: I recently bought a set of beautiful white lacquer Q-Acoustics 3010 speakers for our bedroom system for only 165 euro for the set, and I was pleasantly surprised, even if they sound quite a bit more veiled than the expensive Harbeth P3ESRs in my study. The Harbeths would be perfectly happy with the Yamaha amp, however, even if the more powerful AS501 may be preferable for these inefficient speakers.

 

[BillG]

But as a pleasant example of how far we have come:

A bit more plain looking, but top notch for the pricing, the Infinity Reference series - any/all of them. The few media outlets and individuals I know of that have conducted performance measurements on them all praise them. Another nice thing about them is that they frequently go on sale at 50% off...

https://www.infinityspeakers.com/reference-series-home/

P.S. I running the 162s in a desktop-bedroom set up and love them.