My FIL is a stereo enthusiast, and has joined a stereo enthusiast group. One of the members recently bought some speakers for $125,000. $125,000!!! Isn’t this the price of a Ferrari or something? I simply couldn’t believe that such things actually exist, so I googled and found this article. $125,000 isn’t even the most expensive speakers - there is a pair that sells for $225,000, according to the article.
Have any of you ever listened to music using these kinds of speakers? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to go see live music, or is it better than live? Is it worth all that money?
The thing I’ve noticed with audiophile gear: It is over priced. the more over priced it is the more the audiophiles think it does a better job. Case in point, overpriced audio cables.
It you want good sounding gear at a fair price, the place to look at a music store with pro recording gear. You’ll pay way less for speakers and amps that do a much better job then their audiophile counterpart.
$125,000 for ANY consumer speaker is overpriced. They might sound good but I bet I can find a pair for under $750 where you couldn’t tell the difference.
I’m not an audiophile in that class, but here are my two cents.
If you were to plot a curve which has audio quality on one axis and price on the other axis, for speaker the curve would first rise sharply (i.e. great improvement in sound quality) as prices go from $0 to around $1000 or so (per pair). After that, the curve would flatten slightly, but still contiue to rise slowly until (and this is a VERY rough guess, taking into account my own experiences and that of friends) you hit the $30000 mark (but already after about $10000 or so the curve would be very very flat) or so. After that, it’s just icing on the cake IMHO.
I don’t think there’s anything that can justity a $125000 speaker vs. a $30000 speaker. I’ve listened to speakers costing around $20000, $50000 and $70000 and I could not really distinguish audible differences between them (of course the sound source was different, but what the hey…)
Anyway, on top of that, there’s the “shit-in-shit-out” thesis to consider. A pair of $125000 speakers hooked up to a Sony walkman is a different thing that if it’s hooked up to four monoblocks from Krell…
Once you get past about 2000 a pair for speakers, the room that you put them in makes a bigger difference. Even with the perfect room, as soon as you add people it effects the sound. The number of people, their size, what they are wearing, (Believe me, in a theatre with 600 people, the time of year will make a difference because in the winter the audience wears heavier clothes and they absorb more sound than in the summer.) In a consumer house the room will sound different with one, two, four, etc people in it. The weather makes a difference because sound travels different through humid air than dry. Cold air and warm, High pressure versus low pressure. (barometer readings)
Of course a good amp, eq, turntable/ disc player, compressor/limiter, etc, etc, makes a big difference.
Another thing to think about. The quality of the recordings. A $500 dollar mic will not record a sound that is much better than a $2000 dollar pair of speakers. And most recording studios use $500 dollar mics.
When I was in Berlin a few months ago, I saw (but didn’t hear, unfortunately) these speakers, which as I recall were about 100K euros. And the company’s other components aren’t exactly cheap, either. I think it was 20-30K (euros, not dollars!) for the CD player.