What do expensive speakers sound like?

[izeek]

i go to the audio shows in my area when i can. a couple years ago, i heard my favoritest song, summer madness-kool and the gang, on a 1m system. dont remember the names much. it did have some humongous ass speakers and dagostino amps. whooooiiieee!
i almost wet my pants they sounded sooooo good. the bass unit was about 6ft tall and the mid/high unit a bit taller. omg, the sheer scale of sound! the literal "i hadn't heard that before in the song" thing!
ive heard several others but none as good as that. i need to go through my pics and find it.
at the last show, i heard some 10k volti luceras. i was thoroughly impressed. my fav vs some 50k ones. wish i had 10k laying around. first speaker ive neard that would make move away from jbl. did "pretty bright light-rsd " some serious justice. and "glory box from john martyn" was seriously sublime.
also, going to audio stores helps. i realize my pedestrian system is really pretty good. id have to spend 5k+ on speakers alone. twice what mine cost to make it worth it.
sooo, hit the shows and stores, and have fun. the shows can be overwhelming with 7-8 floors of gear. you will almost not be able to see everything. hot tip, take a break or two to reset your brain.

 

[Cogito]

Often times, they sound a lot like the inexpensive ones...

 

[Purité Audio]

Often times, they sound a lot like the inexpensive ones...

Often they are far worse than inexpensive ones, price is ( sadly) no measure of quality.
Keith

 

[NicC]

Headphones are a "different experience" than speakers in a room but you can get very good sound (perhaps unbeatable sound) for a few hundred dollars.

I meant to ask you, to save me some time, what headphones are you referring to? Mine will need replacing one day.

 

[Bjorn]

Often they are far worse than inexpensive ones, price is ( sadly) no measure of quality.
Keith

In it's even the case with speakers from the same brand and in the same line.

Both Dynaudio and Adam made AB comparisons at hifi exhibitions between their satelite speaker and their flagship floorstanding model. In both cases everything apart from more and lower bass, completely collapsed when going to the big floorstander.

Why? Because the bigger speaker introduced a lot of polar lobing, and phase issues the small satelite had much less of. It was quite humorous to experience, but not sure how many noticed it since eyes are often used more than ears.

 

[Purité Audio]

Neither are ( anywhere near ) my favourites, Dynaudio’s latest measured by Paul Miller,

Dynaudio Contour 20 BE standmount speaker Lab Report

Measured on the 28mm Esotar 3 tweeter’s axis, the Contour 20 Black Edition shows a gentle decline in output from 1kHz to the 3.6kHz crossover all the way up to 12kHz above which the treble recovers its ‘bite’ [see Graph 1]. These features largely account for the very acceptable ±2.45dB and...

www.hifinews.com

Keith

 

[Bjorn]

Neither are ( anywhere near ) my favourites, Dynaudio’s latest measured by Paul Miller,

Dynaudio Contour 20 BE standmount speaker Lab Report

Measured on the 28mm Esotar 3 tweeter’s axis, the Contour 20 Black Edition shows a gentle decline in output from 1kHz to the 3.6kHz crossover all the way up to 12kHz above which the treble recovers its ‘bite’ [see Graph 1]. These features largely account for the very acceptable ±2.45dB and...

www.hifinews.com

Keith

And they get the outstanding hifi-news product banner.

 

[kemmler3D]

You'll need more than a quote from a buddy to defend this. It's almost certainly wrong.

BOM is parts only, not the cost of assembly or anything else, so depending on the car it might be plausible. I don't know much about cars or wholesale pricing on car parts though.

It depends heavily on industry but 20% of retail being spent on marketing in consumer goods is not abnormal.

 

[Snickers-is]

What is high end? Some features that I believe is mandatory for this:

- Active design with time alignment between drivers
- A vertical directivity that minimizes reflections
- Avoidance of floor bounce (a lot more detrimental than what most believe)
- A cabinet that greatly minimizes diffraction
- Crossover far outside the sensitive area (also often overlooked by most)
- Driver placement that doesn't cause lobing, especially in higher frequencies
- Cabinet without audible résonances
- High capacity and extends low
- A uniform horizontal directivity in the most sensitive area (higher treble is far less important than midrange)
- Low intermodulation distortion

In other words, there are hardly any high end speakers in the market

Why do you ignore most of these in your own design?

And what about other factors that through research has been deemed very important for perceived sound quality?

 

[Mort]

Why do you ignore most of these in your own design?

And what about other factors that through research has been deemed very important for perceived sound quality?

No need to encourage. I ignore.

 

[Penelinfi]

Listened to some kind of expensive Focals. Nice big room with some treatment. Not a bad sound , didn't do the bass I like though likely room size related.

Sonus Faber - Refined version of coloured speakers; also didn't seem to have deep bass and lacked the clarity

B&W 804 d4. Can be turned up loud. B&W tuning but more refined than lower end models I've heard. Hard to judge as in an open area.

Generally, a good accurate speaker should just sound like the music; not necessarily like a live band in your room, but good reproduction.

Perhaps the expensive speakers handle loud volumes better and gives a "bigger" kind of sound. I think many times this comes because they are in larger rooms too.

You can get the clarity, bass, loud enough from a decent pair of EQ'd headphones in my opinion; Eg Audeze.
What you won't get is the spacial cues or physical impact.

 

[Penelinfi]

I’m certainly learning a lot reading all the replies. I find it interesting and value each one of them. I’m sensing that if you travel far enough along the curve of diminishing returns, you can experience something extraordinary. I appreciate now that designing a big driver that sounds good, can last for years and doesn’t distort is not a cheap exercise. And of course to fetch premium price, a company is virtually obliged to make the exterior match the cost. And of course provide expensive cables that can carry the premium sound. Wink wink. One of the first things I learned on ASR was about cables. Thanks for the discourse everybody.
Actually, now that I tried to make a joke of it, I need to ask, do such massive speakers require heavier gauge wires or such?

The most power hungry things in your home, run off those standard power cords attached to them. So you should be alright up to 2400W continuous power.

 

[Penelinfi]

What is high end? Some features that I believe is mandatory for this:

- Active design with time alignment between drivers
- A vertical directivity that minimizes reflections
- Avoidance of floor bounce (a lot more detrimental than what most believe)
- A cabinet that greatly minimizes diffraction
- Crossover far outside the sensitive area (also often overlooked by most)
- Driver placement that doesn't cause lobing, especially in higher frequencies
- Cabinet without audible résonances
- High capacity and extends low
- A uniform horizontal directivity in the most sensitive area (higher treble is far less important than midrange)
- Low intermodulation distortion

In other words, there are hardly any high end speakers in the market

What is the sensitive area though? Some manufacturer crosses below 1600Hz because it's harder for human to detect phase there. Other people say you should not have any cross in 300Hz to 5000Hz. And what of speakers that cross in sensitive area with excellent phase, dispersion and frequency response?

 

[Bjorn]

What is the sensitive area though? Some manufacturer crosses below 1600Hz because it's harder for human to detect phase there. Other people say you should not have any cross in 300Hz to 5000Hz. And what of speakers that cross in sensitive area with excellent phase, dispersion and frequency response?

The absolutely most sensitive area is approximately in the 2500-3500 Hz. But anywhere close to this is very audible as well IMO.

Personally I never cross over over higher than around 700 Hz for the best result, and with large horn speakers or other speakers where distance between drivers are far apart it needs to be lower for the best result IMO. Getting it down as low 300 Hz isn't necessary/beneficial the way I see it, and which is based on a lot of experiments with various speaker designs.

With coaxial drivers it's different of course but they have their own issues.

 

[Penelinfi]

What makes it audible though? Assuming phase, FR and dispersion are quite balanced?

Otherwise, you can still have issues with a full/mid range driver changing characteristics over that range.

 

[Bjorn]

What makes it audible though? Assuming phase, FR and dispersion are quite balanced?

Otherwise, you can still have issues with a full/mid range driver changing characteristics over that range.

There's superposition between drivers. Lobing is the result of very gross superposition, but it's still audible without lobing due to driver interference.

It effects areas like coherency, size of image, and "softness" or listening fatigue.

I believe this one of the major reasons why so many like certain characteristics of a full tone electrostatic speaker.

 

[Snickers-is]

The question of crossover point depends on the types of drivers, the physical configuration and the type of crossover.

 

[Penelinfi]

There's superposition between drivers. Lobing is the result of very gross superposition, but it's still audible without lobing due to driver interference.

It effects areas like coherency, size of image, and "softness" or listening fatigue.

I believe this one of the major reasons why so many like certain characteristics of a full tone electrostatic speaker.

I guess we're getting into "can hear it but it can't be measured" territory with this. A large electrostatic speaker still has radiating surface at varying distances from the listener by it's physical form.

Of course, there's also the dipole radiation from ES speaker

 

[RickS]

The OP’s question has limited relevance aside from some shared experiences that are likely to vary significantly. Maybe it could be improved, so am open to suggestions. Otherwise, seems it has a short shelf life.

 

[NicC]

Hiya RickS. I’m relatively new on ASR and learning lots. My post definitely had limited relevance, it was quite specific the information I was seeking. I was beginning to form a picture that very expensive speakers were a waste of money with diminishing returns and all that, so I was wanting to hear from people who have heard some, and indeed a few members mentioned there was a big difference between the very expensive speakers they heard and, for example, a good measuring, more-modest budget pair. I just needed to know if people were ‘crazy’ for spending ridiculous amounts of money, or if they were getting ‘crazy-good’ speakers. It was bugging me. Seems the latter is true. The luxury market for speakers is similar to many other luxury products. There is high quality there and premium experiences to be had. I mean, otherwise it’s non-sensical. And non-sensical things…well, they bug me I appreciate receiving the answer to my question. I find this site is good for no-nonsense, direct responses. I’m happy for it to be deleted now, to save space. In fact, I think all of my posts are just questions, that have been answered to a great deal of satisfaction They can go too.