Did I Expect too much?

@larryi 

I own a pair of Excaliburs with the AER BD 3. Sounds great. Have you heard the AER BD 5?  I would be too scared that I would get the upgrade itch, but could never see myself spending that kind of money on a speaker. Of course, perhaps I can wait long enough for my hearing to decrease just enough to not be able to hear the difference between the BD 3 and BD 5 lol

No difference with the auto manufacturing industry.  They make huge profits between what it cost them to make the cars (materials, labor, etc.) and what they ultimately charge for them.  It's called..........."Capitalism."   Ultimately, it's up to the consumer to figure out what's a scam and what's not.  Happy listening.       

@dseltz 

Are the AER BD 5s really 36,000 Euros?  I don’t see me parting with that kind of long coin.

I suspect a $6 binding post is a perfectly good quality binding post.  A Cardas binding post is 10x the cost.  It should sound better.  For me $15k is a large sum of money to spend on an audio component, but in today's market it won't buy SOTA parts.

If they are only using $6 binding posts (probably have ferrous materials, which would go a long way to explain why the Cardas sounded better), I would be very dubious as the the quality of the crossover components used. 

After all, those a much less visible So if they are going to skimp anywhere, using inferior caps, coils and resistors is very likely. 

And talk about an area in the execution of building speakers that can make a big difference! 

A friend and I used to have a cottage business upgrading speakers. When we came across a speaker that had good engineering, but budget execution, just swapping caps and coils made a pretty obvious improvement.