Really expensive systems that sounded great?


I often laugh at megabucks systems ($100K and above) I hear because so often they are just OK, or the presentation is so off in one dimension or another I can barely listen to them for long.

What I’d like to ask now is what megabucks systems have you heard which you felt actually were worth the asking price? I don’t mean incrementally better than your $20k system. I mean leaps and bounds. Anyone?

The best system close to that I ever heard was the top of the line Vandersteen speakers and Vandersteen monoblock amps driven by VTL preamp (I believe) at a show in Oakland. Nothing else I heard in that price range or above sounded worth it to my poor ears.

Lets try to stay wealth-positive here and stick to things we actually LIKED. 😁

erik_squires

Seeing @ghdprentice called a fool - Now I remember why I stopped posting here for many months. But since trolls need feeding, else they wither and die, I will state that not all drivers are off the shelf and cost a few hundred dollars.

While the vapor deposited beryllium coincident drivers in My TAD’s are expensive, they supposedly cost millions in R&D to develop over many years, which has to be factored into the price.

When Andrew Jones created much less expensive coincident drivers for the Elac Adante,which I use for LCR home theater, they were also bespoke, not off the shelf.

I put together a well performing $8K simple system based on a Hegel H190 when I was away from home for a year.

When I finally returned home and fired up my system that cost around 15 times as much, it was evident that one system made pleasant, enjoyable sound, and the other recreated a more than decent facsimile of live musicians playing in my home.

The other aspect of having systems that perform at this level is that small changes/upgrades (like going to Cat 8 Cable) play huge dividends, which counters the traditional thinking about the law of diminishing returns.

My reference is not other hifi rigs, but live acoustic music played in small or home venues, which I used to attend regularly, and I tuned my ears to that.

 

 

 

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Meridien flagship speakers ($125K) with all Meridian electronics at a dealer.

If you are spending money as a hobbyist/tinkerer Meridian speakers or active speakers in general are boring. You will not be able to mix and match amps/speakers for the next 20 or so years to enjoy the adrenaline rush of banging your credit card over and over and putting multiple unboxing videos on youtube. If that is your thing I get it. But if you are of the buy once/cry once mindset a matched system using active speakers fed by quality electronics is almost impossible to beat. I find Meridian products to be among the best for those who like that type of approach.

 

@kenjit Enjoy your $8 Big Mac meal with its $0.40 worth of meat.  Low cost, high convenience, shorter life span- who’s the bigger fool?  Something to think about…

@kenjit 

Why not start another thread about the secret speaker research from the seventies and anyone using a box speaker is a fool? I love your speaker conspiracy threads, so entertaining. Please don't insult anyone that buys stuff they like, regardless of wheher you approve or not. We don't have access to the secret research that you do. Have you built you flying donut (or balls) speakers yet? Let me know when they are in production so I can buy a pair (NOT)..