Kind of. The thing is though, if we open ourselves to DIY then that calculation does change a little. I don’t mean just speaker building, but say, DIY your room and acoustics, or cables, etc.
We may spend more money on our children, but we may also make them toys and spend time with them in homework and after school activities, so I do think we can separate attention and money somewhat.
Exactly right...
And in my case i dont solder...😁 I am not near an electrical engineer or amplifier designer...
I used then only acoustics principle for my modifications of speakers and headphones and of room ...
I discovered that acoustics basic is underestimated completely because you can touch a cable or a piece of gear , you cannot touch acoustics... This is why so much people are focussed on gear upgrade race instead of their speakers/ears/room relation ...They believe or act as if the sound was "made" by the gear not by the brain in some acoustic context...
"Absolute sound" does not exist for most of us and for acoustician ... It is not an acoustic concept it is a marketing superstition ... In acoustics exist only optimization ...In acoustics between optimization thresholds there is minimal and maximal acoustical satisfaction for some given acoustics conditions and parameters and for some inear ears structure and some HRTF and for some trained or untrained listener biases etc ...
Some like too much their gear to appreciate what acoustics can taught us...The gear is secondary when you have a budget and secondary when you are a ascientist... The gear matter for the designer who do a marvellous work for sure ... But listening in optimal conditions had nothing to do with price tags , even with to some extent nothing to do with gear design ...
Acoustics work as well with a low cost piece of gear... What is analysed by acoustic experience is not something that does not exist , absolute sound, but something more real : acoustics parameters... This does not means in my mouth that the gear dont matter , it means the gear is a budget problem not an acoustic problem ...