These seem a bit pricey $$$

There are many well regarded inexpensive speakers that sell well from Paradigm, Elac, Klipsch, Wharfedale, etc., so the argument that pricing defines quality is ridiculous. 

One should expect more quality and/or quantity of physical product and/or sound when paying more but of course price alone determines only how much you pay.

     Like too many audio companies, these speakers are priced at what the market will bear.  I think B&W makes grossly overpriced speakers.  That is why I have bought used DM2's, DM14's, 1400's. 12's, 1200's, and 17's, along with DM23's as I wended my way to my 803's, which finally are good enough to sell my beloved electrostatics that I bought 30 years ago to replace my Maggies.  Even for the exorbitant price of 803's I have to run subs fro my big room.     If I could afford, or really wanted a Ferrari, I would still buy it used.  
     Imagine what great stuff you could buy for $12,000 if you were on a budget. 
    
    

The price they charge is determined by a lot of factors. There is the R&D- both equipment and time spent. A good speaker designer doesn’t get good overnight. When you pay for the design you’re paying for the decades of experience that comes with it.

The cabinet shape, materials, and finishes can add a lot to the cost of a speaker. Though the raw materials are often the least expensive component the tooling required to make them can be expensive and time spent assembling them can be exorbitant.

The drivers may be nothing out of the ordinary, but even to have a company like ScanSpeak tweak an existing design to meet a manufacturer’s precise spec can’t be cheap.

The advertising and hype (which often is a primary driver of sales) isn’t cheap. Building many pairs to ship off to dealers means manufacturers need to make little to no money on their first run. They need to get them in to the hands of reviewers who can make or break sales. One bad review by a trusted source can kill the whole design, even if the reviewer merely had a bad day or didn’t spend enough time or has an ax to grind.

Buyers like expensive equipment.  An underpriced pair of speakers may well outperform a more expensive pair and suffer for it in the marketplace.  There is no shortage of audiophile gear that has sold successfully primarily because it let the owner tell his friends how much it cost.

Bringing a premium product to market requires taking all of that (and much more) in to consideration. The price reflects the true cost in all aspects- materials, design, manufacturing, advertising, and distribution- as well as market expectation- in order to make a profit. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don’t. If they’re off significantly on any one of their estimations they often lose. The upside is that a minor tweak and a different marketing strategy can let them start all over again with a very similar product. Once they figure out the formula they can try to replicate it. If they don’t figure it out, they die. There are more than a few one hit wonders in the audiophile world.

People spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine. Not me, but some do. Up to them.

I watched the video and was also shocked at the price tag for them. Based on his breakdown of their sound, I’ll stick with my Cornwall IV’s , or my Goldenear Triton 5’s. Steve is one of my favorite reviewers out there. I rarely miss one of his vids. 

Things are worth what a person is willing to pay for them. Is HiFi gear overpriced. Yes, wouldn't argue that. But the difference in time, research and development and material of let's say a $500 compared to $5k speaker is noticeable. Now these high end $20k speakers and up I'll bitch and complain because I can't afford it but if you got the money and can afford it then go for it. In the end find something you like at the price you like and be happy. Don't worry about what others and willing to spend.

I’m reluctant to disparage these speakers without listening first, and, as a retired cabinet and furniture maker, I absolutely loved the enclosure, particularly the crosscut top veneers. Beautiful!! But I am with bigkidz: criticism of the pricing of these speakers is really rich from a website where people routinely praise multi thousand dollar cords and wires when all of our electronics employ sophisticated power supplies to clean up the power from the wall. Getting dirty power into the box through $10,000 power cords is nuts. Same with speaker wires. Interconnects are a different story because good shielding is vital, but that can be done for sums that are paltry compared to some of the prices we see on esoteric brands.

I think everyone has the right to spend their  money the way they want to. If you think a product is over priced don’t buy it but we don’t need to hear the useless comments

Since I'm retired and somewhat on a fixed income - price no mater, does not apply. Value is and actually, has always been important to me. Whether it's audio gear, automobiles, optics or other, to me, there are four parameters on which I base value. Quality of parts and workmanship; level and quality of intended performance; reliability and longevity - all in relation to price and cost of operation, comparison to the price and performance of other competing products. For those who place value on one of a kind or limited productions of anything - value would have a different standard. To each their own, but for me, at $12K, this speaker does not meet my particular standards of value.....Jim

What really astounds me is I receive real estate listings of homes in my area every day and after viewing about 400 homes, I have yet to see two speakers sitting in any room of a house.  They show pictures of expensive entertainment furniture with wide screen TV and no surround speakers.  Are people really satisfied with spending $5,000 or more on entertainment furniture and listening to TV speakers?  This seems strange to me.

No wonder why this industry is doing so poorly.  Who is buying stereo gear after looking at all of these listings?  People living in these homes priced $600,000 to $1.3 million could certainly afford to purchase a sound system.  People must be allergic to music!

In the meantime, stereo equipment manufactures do nothing to advertise their equipment and this entertainment platform.  Where are the direct mail pieces, where are the TV commercials.  Today, they can obtain very sophisticated mailing lists to narrow down their audience.  Once they get traction, they can expand their audience.  I wonder if any of them are doing any advertising other than stereo publications?  People subscribing to stereo publications already have interest.  However, what about those who are not aware of this entertainment platform?  Based on viewing over 400 homes, the numbers do not look good.

@eganmedia:  "Buyers like expensive equipment. An underpriced pair of speakers may well outperform a more expensive pair and suffer for it in the marketplace."  
@rksweet: "People spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine."

Perception rules.  Back in the late 80s a company called PT Aqua Golden Mississippi decided to enter the bottled water market in Indonesia with a strategy to undercut the competition with the lowest price--after a year they had nearly zero market share.  They re-grouped, re-packaged and came out with the highest-priced bottled water and have never looked back--still #1 in market share!

They first listen to it.... Then decide the price. If it sounds great? Then the price can go way up. Some buyers assume that higher price means better sound.

Not all designers work that way. But, some do. Material wise it probably does not warrant the price. It can be marketing and greed in some cases.

I love Steve's reviews but these are a bit over the top for me anyway.  I can buy a lot of quality stereo gear for $12,000.  I trust my ears.

More than half the cost of a commercial loudspeaker is marketing costs. You’re generally not paying wholesale price from the manufacturer. If you’re buying from a local audio shop, list price is a 40% markup from what they pay for it, and they’re often not getting it from the manufacturer, but from the distributor, who is also representing other manufacturers as well. So you’re paying the distributor’s markup. This means that the price you’re paying is at least 2 times what the manufacturer is charging and probably a bit more than that.

The manufacturer has to charge at least 2 times their cost because they’re in business to make a profit. Yep. If they don’t make a profit, they don’t stay in business. So this means that the cost to build a loudspeaker is about 1/4 of what you’re paying.

There are any number of excellent loudspeaker kits available. The engineering has already been done. The magic is there for the taking. The comparison I love to show is the Joseph Audio PERSPECTIVE2 Graphene, which retails for about $12,000, to the SEAS Thor kit, available from Madisound for $1,993. Depending on how you do the project, you can spend another $400 to $1000 on building them.

Even if you don’t see yourself as a woodworker, a loudspeaker is a very easy cabinet to make up. Any local cabinet maker can knock them out for a reasonable amount. The hardest part of making any loudspeaker is making it look good. You can have the cabinet maker put a veneer and nice finish, or you could take the cabinets to an auto body paint shop, like this loudspeaker:

http://russbutton.com/Russ/audio/imgs/loudspeaker_auto_paint_job.jpg

and they could come out looking incredible.

And if you’re thinking about dropping $12k on a loudspeaker, then you’d do yourself very well to think about this Thor kit.

30hz bookshelf? not likely

Kenjit, my bookshelf speakers measure flat from below 30Hz up to 20kHz (in room).
Using a Peerless HDS 6.5" in a ported box for the midbass.

The New top Wilson flagship speaker  $750k, I would consider that slightly overpriced , to say the least , and I thought  the Great    MBI 111 Radiastraler ultimate was expensive approaching            at $200 k.

Kenjit, my bookshelf speakers measure flat from below 30Hz up to 20kHz (in room).
Using a Peerless HDS 6.5" in a ported box for the midbass.

Thats not impressive. A devialet phantom can do far better than that in an even smaller box. 

The Wilson Watt/Puppy 3/2 sold for $12K when I first saw (and got to hear) a pair in a local store. They were very solidly built and had a reputation for being "bullit-proof"- playing VERY loud without distortion.
When I listened to them I could not locate their position in the room, which was a 1st time experience for me. Down the road a bit another dealer demo'ed a different speaker to me made of much less expensive cabinet materials. However the technology #2 used was also very different, and sounded extremely good as well- maybe even better in certain respects. It retailed for 1/3rd the cost, but- it didn't look all that great- the good sound came from inside the enclosure, and the outside was mostly a black-cloth covering the frame (no, not Vandersteens).
Both companies are still around today, and to be frank #2 is now very expensive also. But Aesthetics play a role in what you want in YOUR room,
and speakers make more of a difference than any other single component. Somehow Magico Q-1 bookshelfs just HAVE to be miraculously good,
and if they're not I would be very surprised, even disappointed. Don't ask me why- it would be like someone telling me all that effort designing them was done by an engineer that doesn't listen to a lot of music themselves when they go home. Are they worth all that money? No, and Yes- and....Maybe. But it would HAVE to make beautiful music and make the person that bought them extremely happy. For me it would have to blow my mind when listening to chamber music or a well recorded piano. But it's ALL crazy, even my talking about two little metal boxes
that cost more than my last car. I am just in love with all the beautiful sounding instruments played on records these days (not to mention voices). OTOH, as for CGI movies played on 4K televisions, many of them don't entertain me, so I can get by with a much more basic video system. 

I am sure it costs more to get a box speaker with cone drivers to work really well than an open baffle planar speaker such as Magnepan. Crossovers are more complicated in cone speakers in a box because they have to deal with back EMF at different frequencies which are influenced by the mechanical properties of the cone and the surround and coil geometry. Cone drivers have more mass and make damping factor more significant. Cabinets have to be braced and soundproofed to stop cabinet noise. But they are very dynamic.
To me, the less expensive Magnepans sound more like a live purely acoustical orchestra in a concert hall. Everyone should try the different kinds of speakers and amplifiers because there will be differences in what people prefer.

The Swiss have never (there must be exceptions) offered value for money. It's intrinsic to their culture. HDF is pricier but unless they're using the very best Teflon capacitors, wiring, Vishays etc. then the value is certainly unexceptional. The drivers are somewhat on the ordinary side too. No novel egineering. I don't think they care. They've developed a business model with likely a small group of dealers that allows a profit.  It's likely gravy on top of European sales.  It looks a touch cynical to most of us, but they've factored that in & can likely make money w/o bothering with as many pesky Americans, as they would otherwise. 

My engineering/cable manufacturing friend built his small stand speakers based on an old Aiwa platform which has a 12'  folded interior quasi-transmission line design.  It uses a similar soft dome tweeter and 4.5" mid-woofer.  It plays down to 25 Hz without power.  Low organ notes are heard but not felt (obviously).  Cost to build with custom crossover and cabinet is under $500.  It would be comparable to a $3500 to $5000 retail.  It has every bit as good sound as a Legacy Focus speaker but for the bass and that speaker retails for $10k+.  

I've also noted that Swiss made audio products tend to retail for twice as much as comparable products.  There is so much competition, I don't know how these boutique manufacturers stay in business without absolutely superior products for the money.  My friends' business is booming and he has stacks of orders for superior handmade patented cables at low retail price direct to customers (hence no 50% mark-up there).  His highest priced ($700-$1000) Pharoah line suffers though because when potential customers discover their low price, they balk saying that they must be inferior to high priced cables ($5K and up).  This is a common occurrence (despite the money back 60 day guarantee).   

Many audiophiles are just not wise in spending money to acquire quality sounding products.  Snobbery is rampant in this hobby.  

I think it is a good review.  Speakers that look plain need to be reviewed even more - if you judged by looks alone you would buy Spendor A4s.  One thing that good speakers do is to image well and that was Steve's first focus.  Would I buy them?  No way.  My experience of Swiss products in general is that they are good but always over-priced.  I only have a single such Hi-Fi product - a Daniel Hertz M6 Pre.  It is very good but with, as expected, a very high price.  

Swiss taxes and trump duty..

 Shd v sound good tho, drivers are excellent. That doped rev midwoofer is the best 5.25" on market imo. tweeter I think is from SB.  But just not sure I believe the specs ie 89 db..

   I would love to have a listen to those, never had a bad experience with odd speakers that use Scan Speak drivers like North Creeks, and Norhs. I enjoy SG’s videos, thanks for posting. 
    It strikes me a little funny that 12k is a crazy number when millions of people a year pay 6 - 8k for watch you can buy at every mall in America.

danvignau wrote:Imagine what great stuff you could buy for $12,000 if you were on a budget.

 I agree, my setup is about $25,000 list but "only" cost about $10000 used.

So...I got to ask. What does anyone think about Tyler Acoustics?

Dsper.