High End Speaker Prices

They're more eye candies than something serious. It's like upscale custom couture that you might want to have for Oscars or Grammy Awards nominations -- same analogy if showing off is very important.

Quality comes at a price.

Corrollaries;

- high price does not always ensure quality

- you don't have to spend ridiculous sums of money to find a high-quality speaker...

There are many brands that are known for their performance for the dollar that are not off the charts expensive. Check out Legacy and several others mentioned with alot of devotion from their owners on this and other forums.

The BBC article is a good one though and although a bit predictably, using a major UK manufacturer as an example (B&W, one that I respect and like their offerings very much...), they do 'lay it out there' in a fair amount of detail. They do however seem to shy away from actually defending anything above the top BMW's price point even though they mention the upper-strata priced speakers at least once or twice as a reality of the audiophile world.

Personally, I think alot of manufacturers in the high price ranges over-price their speakers (and components!) and while they should command a premium price for those that ACTUALLY perform better (not all do), I do think they've "hit the bowl or bottle" a few too many times :-) and overdone it. My 2 cents...

This article misses a huge factor in high end speaker production, economies of scale, or lack thereof. It's infinitely more expensive to make one or ten or 100 of something than it is to mass produce it. Most speakers north of say $20K are made in relatively low, sometimes very low, quantities. This effects pricing greatly.

I couldn't agree with Jond more. Most of our hobby it seems depends on firms with only one or two people behind them, though they appear to be major players. It is obvious when tragedy strikes or one simply retires. The lack of high volumes makes much of what we admire very expensive.
It does raise an interesting point though, would high volume make something no matter how good it sounds a new "mid fi". I read some one describe McIntosh as being solid mid fi equipment despite its hi end cost.