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What budget speakers you like to see reviewed?

tktran303 said:
@Floyd Toole

I’m probably not the only one who’s wondering why all these speakers from the likes of SONOS, Apple, UE are selling so well. And why a “portable Bluetooth” or TV Soundbar speaker is the defacto standard when consumers are buying speakers.

TVs got better- smaller lighter clearer higher resolution better colours even cheaper. I mean you and I owned a CRT, and I wouldn’t trade any of the modern OLEDs or high quality LCDs with an old CRT.

When and why do you suppose these battery powered speakers entered and ate up the market? I understand them and sound-bars…kind of; good enough quality for most use cases. And pound for pound or litre for litre better than any boombox from C20.

But how do you convince someone that a Revel Salon 2 or 3 is worth buying over a JBL Charge 5 or a pair of Partybox1000? Apart from looking like a nice of furniture? One of the hi-fi reviewers thinks that to “save hi-fi”, it should move into the category of luxury goods. But the engineer in me loathes that.

Why should good thoughtful design be tarted up and a zero added just to sit at the table with luxury wristwatches, pens, cigars, handbags, cognacs, perfumes and wines. Thank goodness Harman was acquired by Samsung not LVMH!

But perhaps the marketplace has already voted; it’s like asking people to go back to listen to lossless audio or CDs when they’d voted that MP3 or lossy streaming was good enough (or preferred). Convenience over excellence.

The spinorama, which is what get our crew here excited, is certainly not enough.

Or maybe Interior Designers Killed the Loudspeaker Star
Click to expand...
In my interpretation I think this is more about ease of setup and appearance/space issues. People don't understand audio very deeply, they'll take whatever they get sold on as long as it's not silly expensive and supposedly offers various supposed multichannel experiences in a small conveniently located sound bar. "Ignorance is Bliss" as the saying goes, people just don't know any better. To be honest, a multichannel proper speaker setup is probably a little bit daunting to decide on & then to setup - most people probably don't even know where to start. To me, the challenge for the progress of good sound is to really try to make good multi-channel audio easy to understand, easy to market, easy to setup......but you'll always be left with the fact that good quality multi-channel means taking up more space at least, so there's aesthetic and "logistical placement issues" in the room. There's probably a good case for really good 2-channel sound being implemented in everyday TV/movie sound, but then again for movies a reasonable & old 5.1 channel AVR with corresponding satellite speakers and included subwoofer can be really convincing in my experience if properly level matched for all speakers and distance/time matched for all speakers to the listening position. So, thinking about it, in reality this last option of just having all your little satellite speakers time aligned & level optimised for the listening position is probably more than good enough for almost everyone, it's quite impressive - it's what I did with my parent's old Onkyo 5.1 system (with the help of UMIK & a laptop to time align & level match to listening position). But for 2-channel music listening it surely helps to have some good speakers & room correction. In contrast I think properly setup mediocre 5.1 surround is extremely convincing for movies. Soundbars though I imagine are rubbish (albeit no experience in them) - but goes back to the convenience/time/setup/space issues I mentioned earlier). People don't know any better, they don't want setup hassle, and they don't want speaker placement hassle and speaker space issues & ugly speaker positioning (& expense) - too many barriers unless they see the light through experience with some minimally to properly setup home movie rooms.
 
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No one (relatively) knew how to program the VCR or use DOS.
Maybe they’re what floorstanding speakers like the Revel Salon 2 or JBL M2 are.
MS-DOS era behemoths. Not DOS1.0, but 6.0 with a good shell like a Xtree Gold or Norton Commander.
And maybe technically superior like S-VHS but too expensive.
And still complicated for general consumers.

Do I plug in the red wire here or the black wire here? Why are there 2 wires for 1 speaker anyway?

Maybe Steve jobs was right when he realised that not everyone should be a computer scientist to use a computer. 3 button mouse were too complicated so we’ll release a 1button mouse. Apple didn’t really hit their stride until the release of the iPhone, even though they has been working hard and long at GUIs for DECADES, like the Newton.

Maybe speakers are at their infancy. We’ll still all waiting for speakers to measure the room acoustics properly, figure out where the owners have plonked them, talk to other speakers to figure out how many others there are, set themselves up in terms of delay and bass management and positioning. I mean we now have everything we need like wifi, lipo batteries, SOCs, object oriented audio streams to make it happen.

Owners don’t need to know if there’s 1 speaker or 12.3.6 and if there are playing stereo or multichannel.

Who even needs complicated signal and power cabling and silver discs anyway?
 
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tktran303 said:
No one (relatively) knew how to program the VCR or use DOS.
Maybe they’re what floorstanding speakers like the Revel Salon 2 or JBL M2 are.
MS-DOS era behemoths. Not DOS1.0, but 6.0 with a good shell like a Xtree Gold or Norton Commander.
And maybe technically superior like S-VHS but too expensive.
And still complicated for general consumers.

Do I plug in the red wire here or the black wire here? Why are there 2 wires anyway?

Maybe Steve jobs was right when he realised that not everyone should be a computer scientist to use a computer. 3 button mouse were too complicated so we’ll release a 1button mouse. Apple didn’t really hit their stride until the release of the iPhone, even though they has been working hard and long at GUIs for DECADES, like the Newton.

Maybe speakers are at their infancy. We’ll still all waiting for speakers to measure the room acoustics properly, figure out where the owners have plonked them, talk to other speakers to figure out how many there are and set themselves up accordingly like object oriented audio. Owners don’t need to know if there’s 1 speaker or 12.3.6 and if there are playing stereo or too-many-channels. No need to worry about signal or power cabling.
Click to expand...
(Ok, but lots of words & dubious uninteresting analogies)
 
Never underestimate the power of progress, young Padawan.

It’s probably coming.
#WISA3.0
 
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somebodyelse said:
You could always read Post #1
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Screenshot_20230417_000509_Chrome.jpg


*Thinking*
No definite number
 
 
Zek said:
View attachment 280503
Click to expand...
THIS!

I may differ on what line I draw for the category "budget". I might allow up to $500 for a pair!... or perhaps even, arguably, as high as $1000... but above $1000 is definitely not what I would consider a budget set of speakers....
 
Good point, though perhaps if it tested well, it could be had at a good price on the used market.
 
SacreDro said:
500-2000$
Click to expand...
See that's where I disagree.... 99% of the people I know, would never even consider a set of speakers costing more than $1000...

To them that would already be "high end luxury"

People are "upgrading" to $100 google speakers.... and perhaps even stretching as far as a 2nd one for stereo (that makes it US$200....)

Look at Bose - for what most people think is a pricey but reasonable option....

What is "budget" to an afficionado, is pricey luxury audio to most people.

For my mum, a $400 soundbar with "subwoofer" provided a massive upgrade for her TV....

Look at market segmentation... "budget" has got to be part of the mass market... not "budget for audiophiles"

Ideally we can strive to find speakers that meet both the mass market "budget" criteria, and the audiophile acceptability critieria.

Things like the Gallo Nucleus Micro spheres, with their TR1 subwoofer, as a combination, provide really excellent value for money performance.

A lot of the best budget options are speakers that many of us use as near field desktop monitors.... yes they typically need subs to go full range - but a lot of them fit into a truly tight budget, while providing a more than reasonable level of performance.

Another example - PSB Alpha Intro... (I don't think they are available any more.... but there are equivalents)
 
nat1 said:
KRK GoAux 3/4 would be interesting to look at as a comparison to other tiny high performance monitors like the Genelec 8010A and iLoud offerings. The GoAux 4 has built in ARC and is supplied with a microphone like the iLoud MTM.
Click to expand...
Yep. these ones, GoAux 4 in special could be a something interesting for the general public as is a renowned brand and a product aimed for every kind of listener.
preview.jpg
17745226_800.jpg
 
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i love this line of review because its always illuminating to see what companies can do with so little money

BUT its always a bit detached from a non US audience because what the US has access to would be not what the EU or non US audience has access to.... we will largely never see Cerwin Vega here (not that we want to but you get the point)

eg. we see some stuff from Mission that gets down to $200 usd but is it represented in the US?

my sort of preference is towards 6" plus drivers in a vented box... these give a good fist of most types of music without a sub and will suffice for most duties

i also feel kind of like... where the chinese at? most of our cheap speakers are made in china but there's no domestic brand... except maybe Edifier and they are largely disappointing to me.
 
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