Speakers are the most important part of a system. They will determine the over all sound and image capability of the system but it comes down more to speaker type. Going from one dynamic tower speaker to another in around the same price range does not get you very far. People who keep jumping from one loudspeaker to another are simply not entertained by what they are hearing. You always have to move up market but not necessarily all that far and there are serious values out there. My absolute favorite loudspeakers cost $50K. It boggles my mind why anyone would pay $250K for a Wilson. If I were given a pair I would sell them immediately. I have had the same loudspeakers for about 20 years and will keep them until I can go for the $50K versions. IMHO they are better than anything out there other than the $50K ones. They present me with music the way I want to hear it. Other speakers do not. Not they they are not fine speakers. They are just not for me. So perhaps the problem is that many people do not really know what they want to hear and keep searching. To them I have to say, listen to live music, acoustic live music, the real instruments. Classical, Jazz and folk. If a system can fool you into thinking you are at one of those venues it will play electrified R+R just fine.
Speakers Don’t Matter As Much As We Think They Do?
When discussing how best to invest money into your system, it’s very common to hear people say, “Spend as much as you can afford on speakers, and then worry about the other gear because speakers have the largest effect on the sound.”
Now it’s never a bad idea to have good speakers and while I somewhat followed that advice early on, as my system has evolved it seems that I am not currently following that advice, and yet I am getting absolutely fantastic sound. For example as a percentage of my total system cost, my speakers cost 15%. If you include the subwoofers, that price is about 35%.
Early on I was worried I would outgrow my speakers and I’d hit their limit which would restrict sonic improvement potential as I upgraded other gear but that hasn’t been the case. With each component upgrade, things keep sounding better and better. The upper limit to speakers’ potential seems to be a lot higher than previously thought as I continue to improve upon the signal I send them and continue to improve system synergy. If you send a really high quality signal to a pair of speakers and get synergy right, they will reward you in spades and punch well above their apparent weight class.
One thing that may be working in my favor is that I’ve had these speakers since the early days of building my system so literally everything down to the last cable has been tuned to work in synergy with these speakers. Had I upgraded my speakers mid way through, I would have undone a lot of the work that went into the system in terms of synergy.
Has anyone else had a similar experience with their speakers? Does anyone have any extreme percentages in terms of speaker cost to system cost like 5% or 95% and what has been your experience?