What speakers for 10k?

"02-12-15: Unclehub
Stop wasting your $$$ on $10k speakers or ultra expensive equipment! My last system consisted of a Sunfire Theater Grand III - (7) Marantz MA700 Mono blocks - NHT T-6 Evolution Towers and matching center & surrounds - and a Velodyne HGS-15 Servo Sub. I thought I had a decent setup until I redid everything (sold the old system with the house)."

That makes complete sense. If something works well for you, then it has to work for everyone.

Regarding engineers, any piece of audio equipment that sounds good didn't get that way by being poorly engineered.

Marketing and engineering are very different disciplines. Marketing uses emotion(!!!) and engineering uses math (yawn). Anyway, it is quite possible for a speaker to be well engineered but then hyper-hyped by the marketing department. I recall a speaker whose claimed bass extension was an exaggeration by about one octave... but it was still a very well-designed, good-sounding speaker, despite the fantasy claims of the marketing department.

In order to impart directional control of sound waves, a device must be at least 1/4 wavelength long in the dimensions of interest. For example, the baffle step kicks in at the frequency where the edge of the enclosure is 1/4 wavelength away from the center of the woofer to either side, which means the baffle width is 1/2 wavelength. So a horn 2.5" deep will not have effective directional control below 1.3 kHz. Just wanted to put that in the record.

Unfortunately different yardsticks are used by different manufacturers for coming up with their efficiency and bass extension specs... but that would be another can of worms for another day.

Anyway a thread like this is a minefield for a manufacturer, and I've ventured in farther than is wise already.

Duke
dealer/manufacturer/mime in a minefield

No it doesn't wolfman, like I said I work with engineers in manufacturing everyday, the production workers with no degree are the companies best engineers. and if a car is advertised as 300hp and only delivers 150hp isn't that false advertisement? this happened to sony saying their tv was 55inch when in fact it was 54.5 inches. and no I don't think if a system is right for me its right for everyone, some people think my Parasound amp and pre are junk! but I'll never get rid of them. and as far as speakers go I had some B&W 804s and could not stand the sound of them, and there is many who would disagree, to each his own. I'll know next week what wavetouch is like if it sucks I return them!

Well, not all engineers are created equal. From what I read Duke is a pretty good one though.

I'm not an acoustic engineeer, but it makes sense to me that larger structures would be needed to effect lower frequencies.

I am a systems/software engineer and have some background in physics. Not that it matters....

With most companies its the marketing folks that determine what the public sees in that the task at hand is to make sales and teh consumers are not engineers.

So lots of nonsense from a technical perspective goes on there all the time. Ive seen it as an engineer working with marketing folks to help them understand how a product really works. What comes out the other end is mostly a function of target audience demographics.

With small companies the engineer may also be the boss and also the marketer wearing different hats at different times. So anything is still possible.

There is a lot of grey with the Wavetouch for sure. In home trials/satisfaction guarantees when honored take most of teh risk out of trying something different at least.

ALso good engineers tend to be expensive and most companies cannot afford enough good ones. Hopefully they have at least one or two somewhere.....