Why pay so much for super high end?

I am working in this world for over 18 years of time now. In the last 2 years I have spoken to many people who spend a lof of money on audio for a long time.

I wanted to know how it is possible they buy expensive stuff and some time later they don’t like it anymore.

Why you bought it?

I met a few people who had sets of about 80.000 euro and were not happy with their set and still trying to find the sound they were looking for.

They all had one thing in common. They bought parts which costed a lot of money. But at the end they didn’t like it.

They all gave the same answer why they bought it. They were busy for a long time and were tired of trying things out.

The second reason was that they believed the people who sold it to them. It takes some time and then it will sound good they told them.

Mannnnn how naive you can be? Things need time to burn in, but when it does not convince don’t buy it.

I met people who were so tired that they wanted to sell their whole system. When I saw what they bought it was very easily for me why it sounded like shit.

When you are not able to think in properties audio is one big F. gamling. Nothing more, nothing less. You need to understand why the stage and sound is what you hear.

If you cannot answer this question, audio is all about trial and error. There is no discussion possible.

Each system what only playes a 2 dimensional stage has nothing to do with highend audio. Because when you listen to music in real it has it’s place in space.

Most 2 dimensional systems play all instruments and voices on one line. The problem is based on the human emotion. Each single 2 dimensional system is not able to create enough intensity and emotion to be liked over a longer period.

All the people who didn’t buy music anymore, or didn’t like their system anymore had the same thing in common. They all owned 2 dimensional systems.

mb1 audio

 Magico made a pretty good attempt at speaker design. First using plywood in the face of their monitors ( plywood has great pullout strength for screws adding stability to the drivers )  and then heading towards aluminum. Vivid Audio has shaped their drivers which is perhaps more important then shaping the cabinets. The drivers are designed to allow the back waves to flow more freely past the magnet and spider towards the dampening. Looking at most drivers even on very expensive speakers it is easy to see that a large portion of those back waves are just going to bounce off the magnet and spider and fly back through the thinnest part of the cabinet, the very thin cone. There goes the clarity. 

It should be noted that heavy speakers boasting their size and weight actually work against physics in that heavier materials resonant at a lower frequency. Low frequencies are much harder to deal with. Much harder. Larger cabinets will always propel greater amounts of cabinet resonance into the room. The reason is simple. If the area of the cabinet is 100 times the area of the driver then the cabinet only has to resonate at 100th the amount of the driver to deliver the same amount of energy into the room. The test for this is to stop at a traffic light next to a car with a subwoofer in the trunk. The sound is amplified by the surface area of the car..

Dome tweeters are of of those parts which does not make sense at the time we live. Based on their limitations why you would still use them.

At shops, shows, distributers and people at home they still make a lot of mistakes regardless what kind of stuff you connect with it.

With the expensive Sonus Faber, B&W 800D3 series, Kef reference. Kef Blade, Focal Utopia and Wilson Audio showed at many sets the same kind of difficulties over and over again.

Sss, sharp edges, word endings which are not pronounced well. Also the limitation in diversity in heights of recordings. Narrow staging and not a sharp individual focus of voices and instruments.

These are essential parts of highend which need to be there.

When there would be parameters, many highend speakers who use the word ’highend’ would never be called highend.

Magico uses some nice materials. But they have their own limitation as well. You can make a cabinet without any kind of resonations, it will not be the best sounding speaker.

They get a clean sound, and even with tubes you still hear back the clean sound. Creating speakers by computers and measurements will not create the best and most involving speaker.

Sonus Faber had once a great article about instruments. Like a violin or cello creates it’s sound and diversity by distortion. When you listen to many highend systems these days often they miss diversity in sound.

This is by far the most important part to create emotion for us humans. When we go to a show and we speak with many different people about the sets. Most discussions are these days about the lack of emotion in the sets on shows.

It is a fact that many sets are not able to create diversity. The thing is; they don’t know how to create it?

Highend without a 3 dimensional physical stage has nothing to do with highend audio. When you go to the biggest highend show in the world in Munic and 90% is 2 dimensional you can ask yourself if people understand what they are doing. And why the stage and sound of their system is what we hear?

Even expensive audio does not garantie you a higher quality or a physical 3 dimensional image as it should be. The reason why is very simple.

There are no parameters and rules for highend audio. It is word without a true  meaning.

Vivid Audio has shaped their drivers which is perhaps more important then shaping the cabinets. The drivers are designed to allow the back waves to flow more freely past the magnet and spider towards the dampening. Looking at most drivers even on very expensive speakers it is easy to see that a large portion of those back waves are just going to bounce off the magnet and spider and fly back through the thinnest part of the cabinet, the very thin cone. There goes the clarity.

I’ve never heard Vivid Audio speakers, but would like to. They are compelling in light of how their sound is described, and are said to be very dynamic and resolved. Perhaps you could elaborate?

What you mention though with regard to the free flow of the back waves emitted by the drivers seems if not unimportant, then a curious highlight from anyone other than the manufacturer itself. I’m not saying this particular technical feat doesn’t matter, but what is it to us really to speculate into these issues when what most of us really do is being immersed in the totality of their reproduced sound? What I’m getting at is the effect of being lead on by claims that seek to explain this and that feat and its sonic importance, when we can only really assume its (ir-)relevance and should perhaps refrain from any further deduction. For example, many of us have been spoon-fed with the apparent importance of speakers being slender, that (multiple) smaller drivers are quicker, that certain diaphragm materials are desirable, that totally inert cabinets are a must, etc., and we then go on to label this off as the truth ourselves. Let’s not pretend to be oblivious to the business importance of brand distinction, the domestic (spouse-)demands for smaller size, the want for convenience and on and on, and how all of this is catered to to varying degrees by the manufacturer. It seems to me we’ve lost at least some, or even a vital part of reference outside of what the industry "dictates" or fashions, a reference that rests more solely within the listener.

It should be noted that heavy speakers boasting their size and weight actually work against physics in that heavier materials resonant at a lower frequency. Low frequencies are much harder to deal with. Much harder. Larger cabinets will always propel greater amounts of cabinet resonance into the room. The reason is simple. If the area of the cabinet is 100 times the area of the driver then the cabinet only has to resonate at 100th the amount of the driver to deliver the same amount of energy into the room. The test for this is to stop at a traffic light next to a car with a subwoofer in the trunk. The sound is amplified by the surface area of the car..

A propos.. Reading over at Oswalds Mill Audio on the choice of hardwoods for building their very large conical horns and cabinets, Mr. Weiss mentioned particular woods as being sonically desirable (i.e.: "the ones that sound good"). So, this is actually acknowledging the contribution of the surfaces not being the diaphragms themselves, but that would otherwise play a factor in the overall sonic outcome, and work with them as part of a whole. Others would fret over the issue of progressive size and its associating resonant tendencies, and altogether ditch their justification. Or, try to work around them as a means of seeking resonance elimination, and end up with enclosures the weight of several hundred kilos a piece, and a new set of challenges with the drivers being the by far biggest sonic contributor - not necessarily desirable.

1st this thread makes no sense at all and maybe that's what the intentions are. The originator thinks putting $30 speakers in a $10 cabinet and you have a $130,000 raidho speaker system.
also, if somebody spends more $$$ on something than what he does he thinks it's insane and foolish.
i don't need some guy that really doesn't know what he is talking about criticize me or others on how much they spend on something.