I'll make what I guess is an obvious point. If you're going to have "giant-killers," you've got to have giants. We should be grateful for the Wilsons, Magicos, YGs, MBLs, and Rockports of the world, companies that have cultivated a customer base (well-heeled, and willing to spend large sums for all the right reasons and sometimes the wrong ones) that can support their efforts to develop the best loudspeakers they can—even if a great deal of expensive engineering/manufacturing is applied to deriving only a small incremental improvement. I've spent a fair amount of time with some of the designers of these speakers. They don't build pricy products to cynically gouge rich people. They build them because they're driven to fulfill an engineering concept, whatever it takes.
That said, I (and many of my fellow audio writers, a despised bunch on many forums like this) truly love nothing better than a relatively low-priced product that achieves 95% (or 100%!) of what the famous expensive brands achieve. I don't think it's necessary to bitterly dismiss stuff that non-oligarchs can't afford just because it's not a good value for most of us—reviewers included.
Andrew Quint
TAS
