they must have given you the deal....you know they wouldn't put 48 dollar tweeter in a big time speaker...oh my....is this true? you see, i don't know what to believe on this site anymore, i have been around for over seven years and it has gotten just like the press, nothing is backed up anymore, it is just put out there to believe ..wow...no wonder i am quickly leaving this site after 7 years and 80 transactions...
34 responses Add your response
Radrog, Thats quite normal - it is a perfectly good tweeter (Vifa XT25TG30). Tweeters don't do much - despite all the fuss people tend to make. Hopefully you have good expensive midrange and bass woofers, as that matters a great deal - good starts around $300+ for a good mid and good woofer and may cost up to about $1000. Excellent subwoofer drivers can cost up to $2K. All much less than the overall cost of your speakers but they can still be excellent quality. |
I know exactly how you feel...a long time ago when I had a pair of Martin Logan Prodigy's I blew the front woofer. I was able to order it localy from a company...it costed 60.00!!?? a 60.00 woofer out of a 10,000 pair of speakers!! WHAT THE!!and it gets better. When I removed the blown woofer and looked, I saw the cheapest, most generic solderless connector I had ever seen. You mean to tell me that ML couldn't even of used a gold plated spade?? Not to mention the spade wasn't even soldered on, but someone must have used pliers to crimp it because it was butchered!! and the thing was loose as hell on the the woofer terminals. Anyway, as someone else said. The tweeter could have cost a whole lot more...be thankful. But it does make you think about things??? |
Here we have the problem with the 'hi-end'. Great sound, poor value. Krell could have done themselves a favor by simply giving you, for free, a replacement set of tweeters. Then, since 'price' never entered the equation, you would have wow'd about the great customer service and had confidence in your making the right decision in the first place. Now you just feel ripped off from the initial price of the speakers, not being a good value. |
welcome to the world of diminishing returns... the post about crimp on terminal exposes the truth behind so much of this ultra hi end gear! also the post about tweeters is right on, so little music is contained in those octaves it is ludirous how much atention is paid to them often. if you bought them from a krell dealer they should have installed for free! foolish biz. ethic. |
I was able to order it localy from a company...it costed 60.00!!?? a 60.00 woofer out of a 10,000 pair of speakers!! That is why consumer speakers look "stunning"! Cheap drivers but beautiful (and expensive) cabinets. Partly they must fulfill an aesthetic roll as nice furniture and the manufacturers know that few customers will open the box to find a woefully cheap driver with a miniscule magnet and voice coil. That is also why professional speakers may look butt-ugly but can sound significantly better. Instead of great veneer and aesthetics - a proportionally higher part of the cost will go into the drivers, which are expected to perform better and with lower distortion at higher SPL's. Of course this is a generalization - there are plenty of exceptions in both camps - but, in general, each target market gets what it desires most...pros impress their friends with loud, dynamic and precise sound whilst consumers will tend to dwell on the overall balance of the design, which includes the aesthetics as much as the value of the sound. All to say there is absolutely nothing wrong with ML speakers - they still sound good and look stunning! |
For the money the speakers cost to purchase Krell should of gave them to me for free. I think that is unfair to Krell...the aluminum cabinets are EXTREMELY expensive...especially if you consider the small sales volumes of this a higly exclusive 'statement" speaker! Sure a pro speaker with thick heavily braced MDF cabinets (cheap but functional) with pro drivers can sound better and cost less but it is going to be butt-ugly! |
Radrog, You have a pair of excellent speakers, independently of tweeter cost. If you had bought the tweeter from Krell it would have cost you the double, but I think they would have measured it and sent a selected matched unit. Many, many years ago when I used to build my speakers I measured tweeters and found great differences in sensitivity and frequency response of standard tweeters, even from the same batch. Look at tube costs - a special tube selected for low noise and a special gain can cost you five times the cost of an unselected tube. Usually when it comes to excellence we have to pay some more! |
Shadorne makes a great point regarding professional speakers. Parts quality is important and should be part of any big $$ speaker, period. The mark-up and prices for high end gear is really not justified in many, not all, cases. Buyer beware and one must really have lots of experience to wade through the jungle of overpriced gear even though much of it does sound pretty good. |
Radrog, you're not making sense. You complain that the driver costs so little, but you won't buy them from the manufacturer because they costs so much. The speakers "cheap" components, yet you like the sound. And that seems to make you unhappy. Finally, you didn't even buy them from Krell, but you think Krell should give you the replacements free. I guess there's no pleasing some people. |
A pro driver will look beefy when you pop it out - Like these small 3 inch drivers, the one on the left with a 7" & 18 pound magnet . If you place the smaller pro 3 inch driver along side a tweeter you get the idea of "beef". Now if you think that 3 inch driver with a 7 inch 18 pound magnet is big then you need to look at pro woofers - now those are big and heavy (up to 40+ lbs each - I think TC sounds holds heavy weight record)! |
Shadorne, pro drivers should be far more robust than the home audio versions. It's akin to a commercial lawn mower intended for use 8 hours a day five days a week versus a residential mower designed for 1or 2 hours once a week. In studio use a monitor has to deal with far more out and out abuse than a home oriented speaker would ever face. |
The OP highlights the "problem" with many of the "hi-end" "snake-oil" peddlers in the industry. No doubt many of the products ARE excellent, but certainly they are priced way beyond of what they are actually "worth", even with costs and profits considered. Most of these $20K+ speakers are manufactured for less than $2K, if not much less. That's a fact. Unless your tweeters are diamond or some other exotic material, which are expensive to produce, most likely they cost the speaker brand less than $100 to make or purchase from manufacturing vendors. So much of the industry is to pray on "wealthy" (or mostly "wannabe") individuals that seem to still believe expensive=good. Or perhaps they know they are being rooked, but feel the mark-up is worth it to feel good about themselves or impress their friends. That is the problem with the industry. And when the economy is good, no doubt not many people complain. But in these economic conditions, you'll find a lot of these companies failing or coming back to the customer with tails behind their legs and lowering their products to more "reasonable" costs, and still making substantial profits per speaker pair. Not giving a free pass to dealers either whom are a huge part of the problem, or the silly consumers with the attitude of "this is my money, I'll waste it as I like" which is true, it is their prerogative. But like the finance industry, this Ponzi scam can only last so long, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what's in store for the "hi-end" audio industry. |
Dylanhenry, I couldn't have said it better myself. It is after all the "Great Audiophile Swindle!" While there are many components that do merit their high cost because of materials used, processes and technologies invoked, most tweaks and cable claims are just plain marketing hype and a complete sham. |
most tweaks and cable claims are just plain marketing hype and a complete sham. Unfortunately for everyone concerned. Perhaps, just maybe, collectively audiophiles tend to get what they merit - lets face it, manufacturers are only around if they are sustainably successful! Making & selling beautiful luxurious "eye candy" with run-of-the-mill outsourced mass produced materials/parts is a solid sustainable business model for this industry. The high cost of beautiful cabinet work (exotic veneers) and stunning brushed metal face plates is highly appreciated by everyone, as is the value of precious metals such as Gold & Silver used in cables, as are monsterous technical hyperbole used to create the illusion of exclusive technology from what are largely off-the-shelf parts! High performance and costly but obscure aspects of the design (such as a short voice coil in a long magnetic gap) will only ever be appreciated by a small minority. That's life! There is nothing shocking about this - it is just the reality of the high end audio market segmentation - no amount of crying or wailing will change this. Hardly anyone wants to plop $20K on a butt-ugly speaker because it happens to sound exceptionally good. It must first and foremost look damned good for that kind of money - sound will be a secondary consideration for most buyers even if they will never admit it (not even too themselves)! |
Any speaker a manufacture only has about 1000 to 2000 bucks in drivers and parts for a speaker that goes for 5000 to 10,000, even 20,000 per pair... Exotic crossover components and cabinets cost far more than the driver parts normally. For example some line array speakers that have 20 drivers per side can cost about 10 to 30 bucks a driver, and cost you 20 to 30 grand!! Speakers are the highest markup of all next to cables.. At least like 400 to 500% from manufacture to dealer alone. I worked for a retailer, we would sell a pair of speakers that were retail for 2500.00 and we paid about 600 to 700 per pair! Lucky if you found more than a 7 or 8 dollar tweeter in them. Lets not even get started on CABLE markups.. I recently found the Military formula wire that a few hi end companines use, the exact mil spec # etc... I ordered the stuff and made the same exact pair of interconnects and power cables including the connectors for 10 to 15 bucks each! Retal for them with the name brand on them is 600 plus! In their defense and I guess it has to be, first these companies need to make money, second "R&D" costs, and Third Marketing cost... And fourth how many sales do they actually get on this stuff? Especially with the amount of hi end small manufactures these days. But there is nothing really "Rocket science" about hi end audio gear in general, there are few proprietary parts and designs however those even though still cheap to produce you will not find the means or materials to replicate them at home. Funny because we will still have "Audiophiles" listen with the Eyes not their EARS!! |
Funny because we will still have "Audiophiles" listen with the Eyes not their EARS!! That is the whole reason why it makes more sense for a manufacturer to add some nice cosmetic styling and a nice veneer on a speaker rather than throw money into better quality woofers. For example some line array speakers that have 20 drivers per side can cost about 10 to 30 bucks a driver, and cost you 20 to 30 grand!! Yes indeed, but it is very comforting for the customer to be able to count the impressive number of woofers for his 20 Grand! Make no mistake about it, even casual non-audiophile friends will almost certainly be impressed by a speaker with 20 drivers per side. (Irrelevant that the drivers might have cost, on average, $20 each.) The same casual friends would probably not even notice a much more ordinary looking speaker with a single larger and slightly more costly $500 woofer, a $500 mid and a $50 tweeter. If you told your casual friends the cost of the ordinary looking speaker they would probably laugh. However, they would not be at all surprised to learn that the 20 driver tower cost as much as 20K becuase it look like it should cost that much! Perception is everything. |
