What is a "high-end" speaker?

[Pearljam5000]

What makes and defines a speaker as
"high-end" vs just good a speaker?
Price?
Performance?
If so, what price? What performance?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Quoting an online dictionary:

High End of superior quality or sophistication and usually high in price.

 

[NiagaraPete]

What makes and defines a speaker as
"high-end" vs just good a speaker?
Price?
Performance?
If so, what price? What performance?

Something you can't afford.

 

[JSmith]

JSmith

 

[sweetchaos]

I think of it like this:
Good, better, best.

High-end is the best performing speaker, regardless of price.

The usual suspects are Genelec, Neumann, Kef, etc.

 

[dtaylo1066]

High-end speaker, high-end automobile, etc.

I think the on-line dictionary noted above is correct. The presumption in the term is that price equates to high performance and elements of sophistication and luxury. ASR is obviously from a measurement standpoint proving that not to be correct.

 

[Jim Shaw]

To me, high-end means too expensive to be a good value. That doesn't mean don't buy it. If your house is suitable for a feature in Interior Design magazine, or your decor would make it to Architectural Digest, high-end is for you.

A caveat: As a metaphor, if you cannot read polyphonic music or play chopsticks, a 9' Steinway and Sons concert grand is high-end; however it makes a nice statement in your parlor and you can invite Lang Lang to a party there. Place it next to your authentic Eames chairs and perhaps a Chagall original oil or two.

Tongue firmly in cheek.

 

[Chrispy]

True hi-end would be performance only but with speakers you also have furniture cabinetry concerns, size, etc. Depends on the combination of aesthetics and performance....both can be high-end but just saying high end doesn't necessarily mean both are in play otoh. Often hi end just means the most expensive, regardless of good aesthetics or performance IMHO.

 

[sam_adams]

High end is the one you want but can't afford.

 

[Beershaun]

True hi-end would be performance only but with speakers you also have furniture cabinetry concerns, size, etc. Depends on the combination of aesthetics and performance....both can be high-end but just saying high end doesn't necessarily mean both are in play otoh. Often hi end just means the most expensive, regardless of good aesthetics or performance IMHO.

I disagree. True high end also necessitates luxury, aesthetics, material quality and workmanship, and exclusivity that would appeal to a "money is not a concern" buyer. Performance Should be part of the equation. So I'd summarize it as a "no compromises or trade offs" type of product where the buyer doesn't care about price.

 

[Chrispy]

I disagree. True high end also necessitates luxury, aesthetics, material quality and workmanship, and exclusivity that would appeal to a "money is not a concern" buyer. Performance Should be part of the equation. So I'd summarize it as a "no compromises or trade offs" type of product where the buyer doesn't care about price.

Suppose, depends on your priorities. None of them are particularly "attractive" in the coffin box range either....veneer differences can be nice if that's your thing I suppose.

 

[captainbeefheart]

These are all text book or ideal definitions I'm reading here with a few funny one liners mixed in.

In today's "audiophile" market the term "high end" only means it's grossly expensive and that's it.

There are plenty of "high end" speakers that do not perform well especially considering the price tag. I agree "high end" should include performance since one is paying a premium but sadly that's not always the case.

Many "high end" speakers look awful to me and I wouldn't buy them even if they were affordable so "good" looks are subjective but "high end" speakers should be constructed with premium materials with attention to detail in the craftsmanship.

At the end of the day "high end" is a barrier separating people by their economic class. It's just a status symbol for extremely wealthy individuals reminding the rest of us "poors" money is no concern to them.

 

[Chrispy]

At the end of the day (for audio) mostly I think of high end as a way for those to spend more money than they should have on stuff they really have no clue about.

 

[DonR]

I usually equate high end with big ego. Makes very little difference what it sounds like as long as other people know you paid a fortune for it.

 

[jhaider]

One saddled with insufferable bullshit marketing twaddle such as “high end.”

 

[Rednaxela]

I’ve always thought of it as the superlative of hi-fi. The latter being for the average Joe (or Jam? ), while high end would be for the true connoisseur.

 

[sdrichard]

I can't believe no one put this in qualitative terms on this supposedly 'objective' or 'engineering' oriented forum.

I would say high end simply means the top 5 or even top 1 percentile. This could be defined by price, or inversely by the number of customer who would buy it, or by a formula that mixes price and target market size. (Obviously, a very small company with no marketing can't be called high end just because they don't sell many units.)

Qualitatively, objective sonic performance is important up to some point. From there, other factors, such as materials, craftsmanship, aesthetics, services become progressively more important. As the price goes further up, other factors such as individualized services and the ability to customize the product will come to play. These factors are probably much more important for high end speakers than anything else in the audio chain, because they are often big and they interact with your room. Heck, even B&O came to my house and put together a pair of Beolab 28 for me, and they don't even break the $20k mark.

All this is to say that, the more high end you go, the more the manufacturer would bend over backward to make you happy.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

This is why I like the term "high-performance" better. It separates the Genelecs, KEFs and Neumanns from the "Weird $300,000 Audiophile Darlings That Don't Measure Well."

 

[Blumlein 88]

Well, it was Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound who coined the phrase. And that phrase leaked into the rest of society for high end clothes and high end cars etc. His idea pretty well matched that of the dictionary entry I posted above. Now he was an all ear subjectivist who didn't know tech stuff. He said high end didn't mean high priced though often elaborate elegant designs would be costly. Starting from such a subjectivist point of view left no where to latch onto reality. In short order expensive with a good story and unusual design became high end which was often divorced from high performance even though HP's original idea in his mind would be only of very high performing gear.

This interview answer by JGH of Stereophile founding explains how all that came about.

Do you see any signs of future vitality in high-end audio?

Vitality? Don't make me laugh. Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel. For the record: I never, ever claimed that measurements don't matter. What I said (and very often, at that) was, they don't always tell the whole story. Not quite the same thing.

45 Years of Stereophile

It was 45 years ago this month that the first issue of Stereophile, just 20 pages in length, went in the mail. It had been founded by one J. Gordon Holt. Gordon had been technical editor of High Fidelity magazine in the 1950s, and was tired of being asked to pander to the demands of advertisers.

www.stereophile.com

 

[sdrichard]

This is why I like the term "high-performance" better. It separates the Genelecs, KEFs and Neumanns from the "Weird $300,000 Audiophile Darlings That Don't Measure Well."

I guess measuring well does not necessarily mean it will sound pleasant. So people sometimes prefer equipment that are 'colored.' I apologize if this has been discussed somewhere (I'm sure it has). But why isn't the Harman curve flat? It sure seems to me that people prefer less than perfect reproduction of recorded sound.