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An encounter and lesson in speaker prices ...

Not to long ago, in a shop I like but will remain nameless I got to observe a customer evaluate a pair of systems side by side. The buyer had an eastern European accent. First they listened to the larger system, $50k speakers, equivalently priced amps and digital.


It sounded _really_ good. Then we moved to another system. Slightly smaller speaker pair, around $20k, completely different DAC and amp. Sounded like crap. The digititis was unbearable and the speakers were clearly out of phase. On top of that, the treble and bass balance were now all wrong.


The buyer was "I like them, what colors do they com in? " and that was that.

After the buyer left I looked behind at the amp. Yep, I was right, the pahse was reversed. The darkness of the room and angle made this an easy and common mistake to make. But the rest was unbearable.


What is my point? The people buying the top end gear are not necessarily the one’s with decent ears, so we really cannot trust price points to be any sort of guide to value. If you develop your taste on your own, independent of prices, you can score some fabulously performing gear at a fraction of what this buyer was going to end up with.


Best,

E
erik_squires
audioman58's avatar
audioman58
4,227 posts
 
Having sold audio for a number of years  I realized every persons hearing range can vary to certain sensitivities ,and preferences from razor sharp leading edge 
detail ,to silky smooth , and as ones ears get older you do loose different parts 
of the audio range 16khz is about average for many high frequencies over 50. Especially if playing 
music over 90db over time .  Including myself I get tinnitus sometimes 
which truly sucks from all this 100 + dB Deep purple ,ELP ,Stones Sabbath type concerts ,and 2,000 watt multi amp stereo systems in my cars . As well as all
the weapons I fired in the service without ear protection. My point is there are 
a lot of factors  that dictate how one hears the same music.
ketto's avatar
ketto
8 posts
 
I had possibly a worse experience: 
I went to a dealer who was selling both Magico and Alexia speakers, after auditioning the magico I asked to plug the Alexia to the same amp (d'agostino momentum), the dealer did the connection but.. in a wrong manner. both speakers were plugged to the same channel..
the sound was so transparent and pleasant that nobody in the room realized the mistake.. we auditioned a few songs but then I so unsatisfied with the sound that I told the dealer: a pair of 40k speaker cannot sound so badly.. there must have been some mistake. he put a Demo disk on and heard "this is the right channel" from the left channel speaker. 
after adjusting the connection he came back to me very proud and sai: ha, you can listen now how good these speakers sounds. 
please....
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,511 posts
 
What audioman said is pretty much the main thing one needs to realize to have any chance of explaining why people make the sound choices they do. The second thing behind the variable metrics of human hearing is the even greater variability of how one reacts to what they hear at any particular time. People are humans not machines.
larry5729's avatar
larry5729
1,009 posts
 
You lost me.  How can you determine whether the speakers are connected to an amp out of phase.
erik_squires OP
16,414 posts
 
You lost me.  How can you determine whether the speakers are connected to an amp out of phase.


By looking at the color coded speaker terminals and comparing them to the wiring.

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