That would be an even better thing.
The shills (or more likely, sock puppets) are always amusing.
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GR Research
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The shills (or more likely, sock puppets) are always amusing.
Busted!
Almost all would claim they "think" they can hear a difference. After the test they will claim you cheated them as they didn't think you would be so low as to only let them listen to cheap 16ga wire (common lamp cord) with no changing to the high end 12ga mega buck wire. So again, it was the testers fault that the persons tested failed miserably. It is always the same answer. The test is the problem, not the listener!
I've always gone my gut when dealing with people. If my inside say walk away I do. After watching his videos I determined it's for entertainment purpose only. I asked him once if he thought there where any speakers that come from the factory that didn't need upgrades. He named two and someone commented below me that he had input on the design of those two.
Steve Dallas
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Speaker wire can (and does) have varying amounts of resistance, inductance, capacitance, interference. Those can work together to create LCR filters which cause them to act as tone controls. Most speaker wire avoids this by being heavy enough gauge and otherwise decent enough for the application, but some manufacturers leverage those properties to make them sound "warm, detailed" etc. I have no idea why anyone would want to use cables as tone controls, but I am nowhere near that mindset. The point is, cables CAN and DO sound different based upon those properties. But, most run-of-the-mill wire sounds transparent. In modern times, one has to work at selecting wire that creates LCR filters with enough significance to impact frequency response (and pay a high price for that inaccuracy).
Even worse, many listeners claim cables influence soundstage, impact, pace, timing, resolution, texture, and other imaginary metrics. And, they justify it by buying into exotic insulation (skin transients!), twists, and other silly stuff. How one argues with that nonsense is beyond me. It is futile.
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audio2design
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How? Ignorance.
Yup!
What puzzles me about this video; is it really the case that the components of a $4000 speaker from Revel only cost a few dollars? Even if you take into account research, marketing, etc.: what is the point of paying so much money for it? (Serious question from me as a layman, sorry).
If you go to, say, Madisound and have a look, the retail price of a ceramic composite cone woofer is about $100 each (starting). Beryllium tweeters are about $300 each. So not a few dollars.
But a bookshelf speaker in the top product range of a company that offers multiple ranges of similar speakers is not going to have a killer "price-to-performance" ratio.
moonlight rainbow dream
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To give you the economicist's answer... things are actually worth whatever amount somebody is willing to pay for it.
To give a layman answer, go order the components and try to recreate the speaker and you will quickly find out for yourself how much workshop space, labour, skills, time and equipment it takes to build something that is at the level of execution of the Revel speaker. Lots of people do DIY great sounding and great looking speakers, but they A) don't have to pay themselves for the time and effort B) derive pleasure from the process and C) kiss all resale value goodbye.
I've only watched a few of his videos, but something stuck out in all of them. This random dude on YouTube who is trying to sell upgrades rips manufacturers by telling us how cheap their parts are. Little internal bracing, limited absorption, crappy capacitors, etc.. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here listening to a pair of KEF Q150s (he has upgrades for them) that sound amazing and were designed by a large company that has been in business for 60 years with dozens of credentialed engineers on staff. Come on man.
I think the real puzzle there is that Revel performed double blind controlled testing of speakers before releasing them. Here we have Danny modifying them without a single listening test -- sighted or otherwise -- stating his improvements made them better. If it is all about the "ear," they why is he not using it when he is making drastic changes to the speaker?
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I don't think that's it. I have a pretty good idea of the production cost for the Revel. Chinese factories are very efficient, and the crossover board supplier (I use the same one) also provides excellent value. The difference comes in overhead and research, and distribution, which probably dwarfs the production cost. I don't know of any other company out there with Revel's commitment to research.
moonlight rainbow dream
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I think that we are making the same overall point. The creation of a speaker (nor any product) is not encapsulated by a list of parts with corresponding prices. It was brought into being by a structure of production that spans time, space, and human effort and ingenuity. You highlight the research component, but I'd imagine that seeking out, dealing with, and doing QC with a Chinese factory is an entire job in of itself. How much is that work worth? I was trying to get the OP to re-orient their thinking in terms like that.
Anyways, this entire topic is a bit moot because of this. What we're doing is akin to somebody complaining about the price a painting sold for because he tallied up the cost of oil paints, canvas, etc. and things aren't adding up.
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I'm a professional economist, so i'm pretty familiar with diminishing returns of various sorts and the efficiency of markets. My only point is that the production side of the speaker biz doesn't account for most of the time and effort of large speaker manufacturers. That's not a negative comment, just a fact of life in the speaker biz.
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I just saw a video this fellow Danny made basically saying that there is no one out there that has good enough "room" to test his speakers. That reviewers needed to come to his house and listen in his "room" and he would school them on hi fi. This man said this and called out Gene from Audioholics. It's a really, really bad trainwreck of a video. Gene made a response to it. This guy may be able to make crossovers and upsell a few bad speakers but he is extremely arrogant and obviously very insecure people are going to want to verify his kits.
Same mechanisms here. The price of a painting is determined by what people are willing to pay for the ownership. It is not determined by usefulness, in terms of productivity. The pay-back of ownership is nil. One hopes that the 'market' will hold. (I'm times in that 'market' and know how, e/g artists eagerly manage their 'market value'--lots of kinky activities the layman doesn't know about. It makes up to 95% of the artist's daily work.)
That said, where is the ingenuity, why is that kind of useless exclusivity product made in China?
Btw, I do like GR's approach to repair bad product. The expensive parts allow to generate profit from the intellectual effort. It would be fair to ask for a certain price for the doing, and write another separated bill for the parts. I think that would solve the apparent problem with GR.
So do i. Sometimes he doesn't even attempt it. He had a pair of ATC SCM19 v2, didn't even try to fix them.
What is this problem exactly? He takes cheap speakers, changes the network and presents different FR graphs. Now, i can live with that. I can see people that want to give this a try, for a few bucks.
I don't like his binding post or cable crap, but not everyone has to be a saint in all regards to be appreciated i think. Just a guy, people, just a guy.
Yep, these expensive parts generate the profit. First he had to insist to sell his expensive parts to make some profit from his work with not-so-well-designed speakers.
Then later, I assume, selling expensive parts became a no-brainer. Even for better speakers, like the Revels as a questionable upgrade. If that's the case, no good.
An utterly honest approach would be to sell the re-design of an x-over on one bill, and bill parts of reasonable 'quality' separately. So people would be able to decide themselves, if they want to pay extra for magic spells.
I suppose so, in an ideal world that would be the case.
I wish people would just add that snippet to any discussion of his stuff, and look to his crossover tuning more. I believe he did some solid improvement work with some very cheap speakers. Usually discussions degenerate too fast into his cable delusions stuff.
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