Well, My efforts are humble after reading Sean's post. Geeez Sean, no wonder you don't spend money on Speakers!!! I'm keeping quiet around you from now on.
I've kept to basically the same recipe for some time now. A 2 1/2 way system that is easy to add a sub. I am not smart enough to design and so I engineer back from what I think is a good product. For the most part you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Its a nice compromise system for most folks (not that I move many) and the average room size and it sounds nice too. Takes a lot of tweaking to get one right. With bi-amping makes nice music - pretty nice w/o bi-amping too.
Agree totally with Sean's last paraagraph. A duffer like me can make nice stuff just by using quality parts that the industry fails to use.
I would be very interested in hearing other's thoughts as to why this is the case because usually the upgrades do not have to cost that much. Is the overhead so high that they have to use the cheap caps and coils & drivers even on some pricey stuff? Are they trying to protect the market pricepoint, That is, if they put some better parts in speakers @ 3,000 price point(wouldn't cost that much to do with volume,huh?) it would sound so good that the 10k price point would be all but ruined?
I compare it to cooking (also love to cook.) Best ingredients and it's easy to be a pretty good chef. If you cook at home you can tailor to your taste at a small (really small) fraction of the cost.
Which brings me to a last point. I had a hearing test with an audiologist friend. Got to talking. He says ears aren't to much different than eyes and lots of folks probably hear music very differently and could almost use sonic "glasses" or corrections at certain Hz (hearing aids are to crude for this). This is especially true as you get a little older. He showed me some charts how hearing "dips" at certain frequencies with his patients and one of his points was that most folks go undiagnosed. Now I know why there are so many disagreements about what sounds good. We are all hearing different things!
Think there is a market for designer custom speaker making at the high end w/ a hearing test as the first step? I think this could have gone only before the .com bubble burst. Kind of hard to resell that speaker eh?
Sincerely, I remain
I've kept to basically the same recipe for some time now. A 2 1/2 way system that is easy to add a sub. I am not smart enough to design and so I engineer back from what I think is a good product. For the most part you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Its a nice compromise system for most folks (not that I move many) and the average room size and it sounds nice too. Takes a lot of tweaking to get one right. With bi-amping makes nice music - pretty nice w/o bi-amping too.
Agree totally with Sean's last paraagraph. A duffer like me can make nice stuff just by using quality parts that the industry fails to use.
I would be very interested in hearing other's thoughts as to why this is the case because usually the upgrades do not have to cost that much. Is the overhead so high that they have to use the cheap caps and coils & drivers even on some pricey stuff? Are they trying to protect the market pricepoint, That is, if they put some better parts in speakers @ 3,000 price point(wouldn't cost that much to do with volume,huh?) it would sound so good that the 10k price point would be all but ruined?
I compare it to cooking (also love to cook.) Best ingredients and it's easy to be a pretty good chef. If you cook at home you can tailor to your taste at a small (really small) fraction of the cost.
Which brings me to a last point. I had a hearing test with an audiologist friend. Got to talking. He says ears aren't to much different than eyes and lots of folks probably hear music very differently and could almost use sonic "glasses" or corrections at certain Hz (hearing aids are to crude for this). This is especially true as you get a little older. He showed me some charts how hearing "dips" at certain frequencies with his patients and one of his points was that most folks go undiagnosed. Now I know why there are so many disagreements about what sounds good. We are all hearing different things!
Think there is a market for designer custom speaker making at the high end w/ a hearing test as the first step? I think this could have gone only before the .com bubble burst. Kind of hard to resell that speaker eh?
Sincerely, I remain