There’s another thread going about Joseph Audio Pulsar speakers which I did not want to derail, but it is showing up some common logical fallacies and dead ends I wanted to talk about.
As anyone who has read my posts knows, I’m a huge proponent of DIY for speakers and cables especially. Not that I think you should only go with DIY but because the more audiophiles who can build their own we have in the community the less snake oil gets spread around as fact and there’s less worshipping of the price tag as the almighty determiner of speaker performance.
The myth I want to talk about is kind of related. It is the idea that we should value speakers based purely on driver cost. JA’s Pulsars suffer from this because they seem to use off the shelf components, in very nice cabinets, with perfectly executed crossovers. The thing that I don’t understand are buyers who look at driver cost, and say "well, these speakers should cost no more than x amount, so I’m not buying them... "
I call hogwash. Speakers are more than a collection of parts. They are curated components brought together by a designer and manufacturer. Those same people who are likely to engage in this behavior:
Can’t actually design a speaker themselves
Would NEVER build a DIY speaker even as a complete kit because it doesn’t have a brand, nor would they buy an assembled DIY speaker.
Would probably go with a speaker with in-house drivers which have an even higher markup
May not have very good ears anyway
My point is, knowing the price of the parts does not make you at all qualified to judge what the final price should be. That is, fairly, in the hands of the market, and it doesn’t actually make you a better listener or more informed buyer. I would argue you end up buying speakers for brands with even more of a markup and more likely to have questionable performance.
It’s perfectly reasonable for a manufacturer to charge for parts, and skill. So, yes, talking tech and drivers and crossover components is always fun, but please stop evaluating the price of finished goods until you’ve attempted at least designing one pair yourself.
And again, DIY is a lot of fun, and if you want to go that way, you should, but let’s not denigrate high value, high quality manufacturers and delers by reducing them to part assemblers any more than you'd judge a restaurant based on the cost per pound of chicken.
I don’t see anyone suggesting the equivalent voodoo with the JA speakers. But the fact you are referring strictly to parts comparisons is I think to miss the point many are making in this thread.
Speaker designers end up voicing speakers in their own way - whatever parts they use. Given this, we may find ourselves really liking or preferring the way one speaker is voiced over another.
I’ve heard and auditioned a great number of speakers, many of which use proprietary drivers, or more expensive drivers than the JA speakers.But for whatever reason I just preferred the sound of the JA speakers. I did not hear that particular nature of "quietness/black background/complete lack of grain" in any of the other speakers that I hear every time I listen to the JA speakers. Their voicing seem to capture a wonderful combination of clarity, lack of etch along with a warmth voiced in to the sound so it still retains a really human, organic quality. If I heard those qualities to the same degree in some other speaker, it would be on my list. But I didn’t hear it, no matter how much more expensive the other speaker parts were.
Not saying the JA speakers are objectively better of course, just that they had a distinct sound to my ears that I preferred.
Because so much of the secret sauce of speaker design is in the crossover and other choices that create the voice of the speaker, pointing to the mere fact that another company - Ascend Acoustics - makes a box using more expensive drivers in no way guarantees those who like the JA sound would like the sound of the AA speakers "better."Parts quality alone doesn’t guarantee this. The speaker designer may use similar drivers, but the sound will end up reflecting the specific goals/taste of the designer.
I wish someone would start a speaker co. invest in the tech to develope their own drivers, build quality custom cabinets and then design and bring to market a speaker that sounds better than the Pulsars and sell them for the cost of materials. I’d jump at such a bargain. It would be a good run for audiophiles while it lasted! Which wouldn’t be very long.
Ascend Acoustics sells a 2-way monitor with the Seas flagship diamond tweeter and Excel woofer and sells it for less than the retail price of the Pulsars
That seems to contradict what was said earlier by @soix
A manufacturer who sells through a dealer network needs to charge about 4x (or even more) the cost of the product to cover his fixed and variable costs and still make a decent profit.
Hi Gang, The cost of the Seas Diamond is $6,800 for a matched pair (only sold in pairs), and I think people are misreading that as the price of the speakers. Can anyone point me to the price of the actual Ascend speakers?
JA at Stereophile did a _terrible_ job of reviewing the Crystal Cable Minissimo Diamonds which are $20k.
But again, we are weighing the cost of the steak, instead of thinking about the satisfaction of the meal. I’ve heard plenty of diamond and Be tweets I thought were crap sounding. No one is here talking about B&W and how much they overcharge for their drivers, because no one has any idea how much they cost. Same for Focal.
Measurably, and audibly, the quality of "custom" or in house drivers is an absolute crap shoot. But hey, the price is hidden. It’s like eating a rare dinosaur. Well, it’s $55,000, and I don’t know what the meat costs, but others say it’s good ...
So again, as a DIYer, and audiophile, I think these are nonsense ways to evaluate speakers.
If this is you, then go eat at Burger King every day, and stand outside a nice steak restaurant and tell the diners they are being overcharged.
@kenjit -- Ascend Acoustics sells direct, not through a dealer network.
@wildfoxinn -- I don’t even see a model like that on the Ascend Acoustics website, so not sure what speaker your referring to. But anyway, there absolutely is some voodoo magic in the Pulsar -- it’s the infinite slope crossover. It’s patented, so in fact other manufacturers can not duplicate it. And a lot of us think it is precisely the crossover that does indeed make the Pulsars, and all other JA speakers, uniquely special. The fact that they’ve piled up a bunch of very positive reviews, measure very well, and have tons of fans and owners all attest that there are lots of things special about them.
Pricing differences between the Pulsars and these mythical AA speakers is apples to oranges, and the AA speakers, if they even exist, would have to double in price to sell through dealers. And BTW, there are a ton of variables in how a speaker ultimately sounds, and drivers are only one.
So you can GUARANTEE the Pulsars would lose in a head-to-head against these mythical AA speakers can you? Did you hear both back to back in the same system? If not, your opinion is worth precisely zero here. And I highly doubt you did unless you owned both or brought the AA speakers to a JA dealer. And even if you did manage to hear them in the same system, which I HIGHLY doubt, we all hear differently and value different things. So don’t come riding in here on your high horse (and 26 posts) and think you can guarantee anything to anyone here. That is just ignorant and hugely arrogant.
I’m a fan of Ascend Acoustics too, so by all means please reveal which magic speakers you’re referring to here. Now back to my bolognese.
BTW, here’s a complete list of AA speakers from their website:
Stereo Pairs
Code Name Price 9HT20SBM2 HTM-200 SE pair $298.00 Add One To Basket 9CB17SBM2 ** Sale: CBM-170 SE pair $298.00 Add One To Basket 9CM34SBM2 CMT-340 SE mains $568.00 Add One To Basket 9SRM1PB2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, piano black $763.30 Add One To Basket 9SRM1NT2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, natural $720.80 Add One To Basket 9SRM1PPBS ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair B-Stock $678.40 Add One To Basket SRT2 Sierra Tower pair $1,998.00 Add One To Basket 9SRM1SE2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, satin espresso $720.80 Add One To Basket 9SRM1SC2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, satin dark cherry $720.80 Add One To Basket 9SRM2PP Sierra-2 pair $1,448.00 Add One To Basket 9SRLPP Sierra Luna pair $1,148.00 Add One To Basket
Yeah, you’re right. From your completely uninformed and ignorant reading of a simple graph, you obviously have nailed it. You can now build your own Pulsar on the cheap. Oh, but then there’s this:
From Jeff Joseph as of today:
“The filters we use are asymmetrical, there is a very steep slope on the woofer and a gentler slope on the tweeter. This infinite slope topology differs from conventional filters in several ways. The implementation is not as steep as our earliest designs, because I found this to be the best sounding trade off of filter q and driver integration.
Compared to slow slope filters, ours confines most of the overlap between the drivers to below the crossover point, where wavelengths are longer. This prevents the lobing effects of wave interference. The speakers balance through crossover remains intact along a broad vertical axis.
The other major benefit is that we can derive the full benefits of using metal cone woofers because the special filter effectively suppresses the high frequency ringing the stiff cones exhibit. A second order filter wouldn’t come close to doing that. ( the metal woofers are typically +13 dB at the hf breakup frequency relative to their usable output, and a 2nd order filter only rolls off at 12dB per octave)”
@kenjit — does that answer your question?
How you gonna replicate this without violating a patent? Best of luck with that buddy! Just go home and lick your ill-informed and ignorant wounds. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and no basis for your claims, and if you try to come back at this in any misinformed way, I will have Jeff come back and smack down any other uninformed and misguided crap u try to lay down. Live in ur own silly world dude.
The performance of a speaker depends on the parts. All things being equal, better drivers gives more power handling more dynamics less distortion and more detail. If youre paying 8000 bucks on a pair of speakers which uses drivers costing a couple hundred bucks then obviously most of the money is not going into the product youre buying. Youre getting less bang per buck.
All the excuses cited about the rent, running costs is hogwash. I want my money being used maximally on the product not on running costs, which doesnt benefit me. Its funny how nobody has mentioned greed and profit as if theyre not factors that determine the price. If I pay 8000 bucks then i want my moneys worth. if not, its overpriced simple as that.
Its a fallacy that buying a commercial speaker means its designed by an expert that knows what theyre doing. Hogwash. They dont know how much baffle step compensation is needed or preferred they dont know whether you prefer an infinity slope or linkwitz riley or bessel, theyre just guessing. Theyre just designing a product that appeals to as many audiophiles as possible to maximise sales. Diy is one way to avoid all that and design a speaker that is customised to YOUR preferences, room acoustics and music. Saving money is a byproduct.
I ask because I had a pair of Ryan Audio R610’s that were great...actually they were better than great and very well reviewed. Ryan Audio makes all of their own drivers in house and I believe they also make their cabinets and binding posts. Amazing build quality. I believe they retail for around 2k a pair.
But as much as I liked them I also have a pair of speakers that were designed with off the shelf drivers and cabinets. They retailed for about $2500 a pair and they are immensely better than the Ryans (to me) and cost a a bit more. I have compared them to many other 2-way speakers including one of my all time favorites Proac Response 2.5’s and they are better, especially the bass. They are the speakers I have always judged other speakers by within that price range. In fact I would spend twice as much on a pair if I had to. The secret sauce is the crossover. The question is am I a sucker? Am I getting ripped off because the designer spent less on parts?
I have become very good friends with the speaker designer through the years and he is now retired. I recall a conversation we had where he told me that even though he kept his costs low and sold his speakers at a relatively low price, the best year he ever had making speakers netted him a measly profit of around $30k.
youre asking the wrong person. Running a business whether its selling steak or speakers is about profit however my goal is not profit its perfect sound.
On the way to finding them, I was listening to speakers in the $10-20K range - that was my dream budget, and I liked Vandersteen Quattro speakers a lot, but not enough to spend that kind of money on them. Likewise with every other speaker I could find in the range. They just weren't right to *my* ears.
Oh, and by the way, years ago I used to try to build speakers. Here's what I learned about that: Drivers matter. Cabinets matter. Wiring matters. Components (resistors, capacitors) matter. Crossover design matters. Porting and port size matter vs. sealed box. How much 'stuffing' you put in the box matters.
But what really matters is how one puts all of those variables together. You can't figure it out with just crossover math and frequency response of individual drivers. It takes work. And time, lots and lots of time. I quit the hobby eventually, because though I'd come up with some *good* sealed box speakers (using Dynaudio woofers and Eton tweeters - and don't ask me how many tweeters I burned through to get there) that made me happy, I couldn't make them great. No matter what I tried, I couldn't make them even close to great. Yes, I experimented with Focal and ScanSpeak drivers (and I liked both), but I always came back to the Dynaudio / Eton combination for sealed box and Focal/ScanSpeak for a ported box. And they were good. But just good. Dammit.
Frustrating.
Years later, I happened to read the review of the Pulsars in Stereophile - now I take S-phile with a grain of salt - but I liked the look of what Jeff Joseph was doing with that tweeter (not dissimilar to the Eton) and the box shape and size and the unique woofer and thought - I'll find out about and maybe try these! I called and luckily managed to get hold of Jeff himself. He listened politely while I explained why I was calling and a little about why I was interested in his design. He told me a little about his own experiences and how he got started. Then he kindly offered me a set to audition in my home (no dealer near me). He needed to put them together and voice them and then test them, so it would be a couple of weeks. But I could return them if I didn't want them and he'd give me my money back. All of it.
When I heard them, brand new, I knew I was listening to art.
Yes. Art. No way were they going back.
Once they broke in, even more so. To me, they sound like I could never even imagine my designs should have sounded, so I can't say they were where I thought I was heading when I was building. (Actually, the tweeter performance is pretty much what I was expecting/hoping, but the overall combination is brilliant.) They're great speakers. I don't think I need better speakers.
And you know what else? I think they're way under-priced for what they do.
My advice to kenjit - stop wasting your time trying to get something for nothing. If you don't think (if you ever bother to actually listen to them) they are worth the price, don't buy them!
(I'll bet you haggle with artists trying to sell their own work on the street too. How much did that paint & canvas cost you?)
@kenjit - It was a long time ago. I've thrown out and/or given away my books on the topic and all of my notes, but from memory, I was building mainly LR-1, LR-2, and one or two LR-3-type designs. I experimented with Butterworth, too. Sloped cabinet faces, etc.
@woodrum you need to try active. To do a dozen passive crossovers would require dozens of parts and endless soldering. with active you can do it all from your armchair.
@kenjit - That easy these days, is it? Be that as it may, I'm done with all of that (and my wife was done with all of the parts laying around). Besides that, I'm really very satisfied with the Pulsars that I have in my current listening space.
And here we have the majority of the lack of understanding : @Kenjit has no idea how to make a passive crossover and believes active are the only way to go. He has no idea how to make one that sounds good, or how those subtle choices can alter the entire speaker's character.
The truth is that the majority if DIY speakers and kits use passive crossovers. While active and DPS crossovers are fun, they have their own list of issues. Like, why bother buying a $2k DAC when you are going to AD/DA the signal again after? Not to mention noise and distortion that can be added in that chain.
Then there's the amplifier issue. You need at least 2x as many amps. So getting the same quality amp you became an audiophile for takes 2x as much.
Also, I've seen plenty of DIY active crossovers that were configured as absolute garbage, and the user used DSP eq to bang it into submission.
If that's good enough for Kenjit, that's just fine. Really, Kenjit enjoy what you have, but it is by no means the holy grail for all listeners.
Ha! Big +1 to Eric, and another +1 for starting this thread, which is doing a great service in exposing the wackos in this awesome hobby and also uncovering how ridiculously hard it is to actually develop and successfully market a speaker in today's uber-competitive market. I also eagerly await what speakers @kenjit listens to. His own design? I think not.
Regarding Ascend: I've only found information about a custom build, but no actual prices.
There appear to be threads which misquote the tweeter price ($6,800/pair) as the speaker price. I think this caused a great deal of confusion.
It is unclear to me whether they were done for a client, or as a proof of concept to evaluate the quality of the performance vs. the Raal ribbons.
Raal makes amazing ribbons and transformers behind them, by the way, so at any price, they are tough to beat.
In any event, the idea that throwing a diamond tweeter in a speaker and therefore it will be better than those with less expensive parts is utter nonsense. Crossover, cabinet design and personal taste matter. I know lots of people who would take a thousand dollar tweeter and make it sound like crap. :)
yep , a good friend built his Speaker cable to save $3 and they sound like it DIY speaker wire is great just never listen to a manufactured wire. let's get that right
Remember the Masking tape mod, as well as the duct tape speaker stabilizers help with the coat hanger cable holder trick all play into the magazine rack diffusor .
Every cable made is a DIY that works or does not. When they work the owners do the smart thing and purchase tooling and machines that make production faster and cheaper..
As for DIY speaker building. The problem with 99% of the group is they don’t build for high end goals and use high end amps and equipment as benchmarks.. they are in the belief Crown amps are the grail .. Quality caps and x over parts cost more than most of these thinkers complete system. Let alone Foil or Litz Inductors
I do think one can build a hell of a pair of DIY speakers but at a damn share more expensive cost than most DIY think. MDF is Garbage as is Baltic birch. Look to resin based products (panzerholz, Tankwood, ) 3/4 inch fiber re inforced . 16 layer Piano tuning board blanks.. All of these are extremely costly $900 a sheet but your cabinet is 50% of the sound . Shitty cabinet and you could use Rolex drivers and get bad sound !
If you use Crown amps you are not using that gear !
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