It is aggravating not being able to quickly and easily find the price (even the MSRP) for a speaker. I have my price range ($4K to $8K) that I'm willing to spend, so don't waste my time telling me the virtues of some B.S. high tech reason a speaker is better than sliced bread if it retails for $20K. At least let me shop apples to apples when I'm looking in my price range. The same goes for those willing to spend that $20K. They don't want to be bothered wasting time looking at $8K speakers.
Yes, sometimes I find ballpark prices on reviews, but if those reviews are 3 or 4 years old you can bet the prices listed aren't correct anymore after all the inflation.
And then there are speakers that are at the end of the life, but were reviewed well such as for example the JBL L100 Classic which is being superseded by a "MK. II" version at a higher price. The L100 Classic was often on sale for 20% off.
Given the markup of speakers with a dealer network, it almost pushes you to consider only those who sell direct or even DIY if you have the time, equipment, and space. But then we all lament not finding brick and mortar stores near us to be able to hear speakers and amps and DACs before we buy.
shy about prices
I assume a lot of you are in the industry and maybe you can answer this: why is it so hard or impossible to get pricing info for speakers?
I received a lot of suggestions for my speaker list to include more brands and I tried. I lookup up the company homepage, I searched for pricelists, however out of date, I emailed the company - nothing. Why are companies "hiding" the prices of their products they intend to sell?
This is not a generalization, I don’t mean to conflate companies with user-friendly and informative web sites (~30%) with the mystery ones (~20%). And the rest (~50%) are OK/could be better.