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Cheap drivers in high end monitors / speakers

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Pearljam5000

Pearljam5000

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Hilarious. How do you know that Genelec will be around in 10 years? The list is long of companies that were thought to be unbreakable.

There's a chance Genelec will still be around in 10 years more than 95% of other pro audio companies, even if they don't their monitors last for 20 or 30 years lol.
 

Ericglo

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There's a chance Genelec will still be around in 10 years more than 95% of other pro audio companies, even if they don't their monitors last for 20 or 30 years lol.

They probably will be around, but it is no guarantee. How many people thought Samsung would buy Harman?

Your seem to be upset in your OP about off the shelf drivers in high end speakers. I liken it to the small car companies like Caterham etc.
 

maverickronin

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Hilarious. How do you know that Genelec will be around in 10 years? The list is long of companies that were thought to be unbreakable.

There's no 100% guarantee with anything but Genelec is a lot more likely to be around in 30 years than Barefoot, D&D, or Kii.
 

617

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$100 for a midrange is already a significant way down the path of diminishing returns. I'm not even sure I can think of a midrange driver that costs more than $100 that performs better than the best midrange drivers I know of that cost under $100. At least not when it comes to typical sizes/applications.

For top-performing drivers that will be asked to reproduce low bass at high SPLs, the costs tend to be a little higher.

I think this needs to be highlighted. You can spend a but more on an accuton or maybe an illuminator but within some sensible bandwidth it's not outperforming the ne123/149. You might get slightly lower distortion but smaller bandwidth.

The most pricey esoteric midrange is probably the big ATC some which is unremarkable in most respects other than high output.

Woofers are more interesting. A 'high end' 7 inch unit might be 200 dollars, but two 40 dollar 8 inch units will blow it away for bass applications.

Monitors should be expensive because of performance and most important, verifiable accuracy. Drivers aren't what you're paying for. If you want a lot of technology and know how in a monitor, get the genelec coax. If you want fancy drivers, get a Wilson or Sonus Faber.
 

HooStat

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Also keep in mind how expensive it is to have a stock of additional drivers for support reasons (i.e., failure or other warranty-related problem).
 
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Pearljam5000

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Maybe they buy/ produce them on demand instead of keeping a huge stock of them just sitting for years in a warehouse?
 

Jdunk54nl

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Maybe they buy/ produce them on demand instead of keeping a huge stock of them just sitting for years in a warehouse?

I don’t think you understand how speakers are made and the process behind the manufacturing....it’s not that simple....
 

andreasmaaan

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Woofers are more interesting. A 'high end' 7 inch unit might be 200 dollars, but two 40 dollar 8 inch units will blow it away for bass applications.

This is of course true, but in reality the market puts great pressure on loudspeaker manufacturers to keep enclosure sizes to an absolute minimum. Particularly in the case of passive speakers, but to a lesser extent also in the case of actives, the overall size of the loudspeaker will place a hard limit on how many/how large the woofer(s) can be. This means that most commercial speakers are limited to one small-ish bass driver. Whereas $15 or $20 can buy you a midrange driver with 80% of the performance of the best on the market, this is just not the case for a small woofer that needs to handle bass and work in a small enclosure, and certainly not if you want the driver to handle the midrange as well.

Monitors should be expensive because of performance and most important, verifiable accuracy. Drivers aren't what you're paying for. If you want a lot of technology and know how in a monitor, get the genelec coax. If you want fancy drivers, get a Wilson or Sonus Faber.

Well put :)
 
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restorer-john

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They don't compete with digital watches, just like CD players don't directly compete with turntables.

CD came to market, competed with turntables and within 5 years wiped them out. It is by far the most successful and profitable physical music carrier ever.
 
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Pearljam5000

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Yeah but I'm talking about today's market, when someone buys digital or analog in audio or watches they pretty much know the difference
 

restorer-john

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Yeah but I'm talking about today's market, when someone buys digital or analog in audio or watches they pretty much know the difference

Yeah, one tells the time with perfect, unflinching quartz accuracy and the other is a fashion statement or jewelry piece.

No sensible people buy a turntable for the best reproduction in the home, they buy them because they are flawed, but still a whole lot of fun playing records and poking around trying to extract the most they can from a century plus old mechanical reproduction system.
 
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Pearljam5000

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Some people still claim vinyl sounds better than even hi-res digital files.
 

restorer-john

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Back in the 1970s, Philips OEM drivers were used in heaps of brands, right from cheap DIY designs, right up to expensive brand names. Peerless was also used across brands and also Seas. The same drivers you could buy in an electronics store for not much money, ended up in very expensive speakers. I know, I pulled out tons of them over the years.

The highly respected and reviewed American made DCM Timewindow used Philips bass and treble drivers in the first run and Philips bass Vifa treble in the Timewindow 1a.

In the 1980s, Foster (Japan) made drivers for everyone, as did many others. Sony made many of its own drivers, in their own plants, but Pioneer also made some drivers for Sony, Sony made drivers for Akai. Foster made for Akai. It goes on and on.

It's hardly a recent revelation that inexpensive drivers are used in high priced speakers. It's all about the implementation and what works.
 
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restorer-john

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Some people still claim vinyl sounds better than even hi-res digital files.

Vinyl can sound fabulous. And when it does, I think to myself, if only all records sounded this good, the compact disc would have never succeeded. But the record buying public were completely and utterly sick to death of overpriced, noisy, warped, distorted, crackling garbage that had been foisted upon audiophiles and normal listeners by record companies who just didn't care.

Compact Disc highlighted everything vinyl at the time did wrong. Not the turntables, they were at an absolute technological peak, it was the crap software. Deliberately poor quality.

Vinyl took its buyers for granted- a very fatal mistake, and people jumped ship so fast and in such numbers, the game was over.
 

RayDunzl

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Compact Disc highlighted everything vinyl at the time did wrong. Not the turntables, they were at an absolute technological peak, it was the crap software. Deliberately poor quality.

Now we have deliberately poor quality CDs instead.
 

FrantzM

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Hi
OT
Good day to you people! That a thread veers from its subject is common in Internet fora, this thread is no exception. It's time to cast away the tendency to reject young companies on the pretext, that they are likely no to be around in the next few years. It is a complex issues but if people followed this logic there wouldn't be Samsung, LG, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Google, Facebook or Genelec ... etc... The strength/performance/reliability of the products and the company management will determine its longevity, hence success on the marketplace. It's time to stop knocking Dutch and Dutch or Topping (among many others) on those premises. It (almost) behoove us, the enthusiasts, to sustain such companies based on merits , thus insuring their deserved success/longevity.
 
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