High End Speaker Prices

09-17-15: Mapman
Quality comes at a price.

...and value is determined by price/per/quality ratio.
The smallest ratio usually best.

Better sound is in the ear of the beholder. Generally the cost of goods for any high end speaker is about 15% of its MSRP. After that, costs can go anywhere. Some high end speakers are embedded with about 40% of marketing and distribution costs. Certainly low volume, like anything else, will lead to higher markups. Hearing is believing.

Adding to this... I work for a very high end luxury wine producer we have a wine that sells for $425 per single bottle, and we're launching a new one in 2017 that will retail for $600-800 per bottle.

It's a different market and mentality, and different metrics need be applied. Something a this level is ultimately worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and the best wines are from a small plot of land that can't be reproduced anywhere else.

FWIW - our cost of goods is btw 21-23% of retail.

I've always felt that extreme high end speakers should always sound great since the designers aren't restricted by cost…the genius is in lower cost stuff where designers have to really think about what's important and come up with something sounding great anyway (and they do, thank you Alan Yun). Great wine makers do this also, if sometimes inadvertently. Note that that small plot of land for the exclusive wine could also produce wine that sucks in a bad year, so it's not necessarily always a plot specific pricing scenario, unless it is. Or isn't. Or something.

Not everyone from those ranks, however, is convinced. Rob Oldfield says he’s become quite used to listening to music on tinny Bluetooth speakers and via his tablet these days. “I don’t see why you’d want to spend this much money on a loudspeaker,” he says with a shrug. “But,” he adds knowingly, “I’m not representative of the whole audio world.”

And that is essentially the difference between audiophiles and the rest of the listening world. Most people form different schemas for live and reproduced music. For reproduced music they make allowances for limited bandwidth, limited dynamics, and intrusive cabinet resonances.

Audiophiles try to get reproduced music to match live music as much as possible, and apply the same standard of sound--more or less--to each.

The article rightly points out that conventional speakers are trying to reproduce the sounds, bandwidth, and room-filling dynamics with a few square inches of diaphragms. When the prices reach $200K and above, it's fair to wonder if they're doing it wrong...

...especially since Bob Carver has come out with a 22-diaphragm, 13 ribbon (per speaker) line source plus powered subwoofer with an 18-60Khz frequency response, capable of 120dB clean peaks, and nearly nonexistent intermodulation distortion. It retails at $15K/pair including sub.

If it's everything that the most recent TAS review claims, this could set a new paradigm for the expenditure required to put the Berlin Phil or Basie Big Band in your living room.

If it could truly do that for $15K, it's sort of a bargain compared to the other methods to achieve that, such as the WIlson XLF and the top line Magico and YG speakers.