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Pulsars and the Mythical Armchair Speaker Maker

There’s another thread going about Joseph Audio Pulsar speakers which I did not want to derail, but it is showing up some common logical fallacies and dead ends I wanted to talk about.


As anyone who has read my posts knows, I’m a huge proponent of DIY for speakers and cables especially. Not that I think you should only go with DIY but because the more audiophiles who can build their own we have in the community the less snake oil gets spread around as fact and there’s less worshipping of the price tag as the almighty determiner of speaker performance.


The myth I want to talk about is kind of related. It is the idea that we should value speakers based purely on driver cost. JA’s Pulsars suffer from this because they seem to use off the shelf components, in very nice cabinets, with perfectly executed crossovers. The thing that I don’t understand are buyers who look at driver cost, and say "well, these speakers should cost no more than x amount, so I’m not buying them... "


I call hogwash. Speakers are more than a collection of parts. They are curated components brought together by a designer and manufacturer. Those same people who are likely to engage in this behavior:

  • Can’t actually design a speaker themselves
  • Would NEVER build a DIY speaker even as a complete kit because it doesn’t have a brand, nor would they buy an assembled DIY speaker.
  • Would probably go with a speaker with in-house drivers which have an even higher markup
  • May not have very good ears anyway


My point is, knowing the price of the parts does not make you at all qualified to judge what the final price should be. That is, fairly, in the hands of the market, and it doesn’t actually make you a better listener or more informed buyer. I would argue you end up buying speakers for brands with even more of a markup and more likely to have questionable performance.


It’s perfectly reasonable for a manufacturer to charge for parts, and skill. So, yes, talking tech and drivers and crossover components is always fun, but please stop evaluating the price of finished goods until you’ve attempted at least designing one pair yourself.

And again, DIY is a lot of fun, and if you want to go that way, you should, but let’s not denigrate high value, high quality manufacturers and delers by reducing them to part assemblers any more than you'd judge a restaurant based on the cost per pound of chicken.


Thank you,

E
erik_squires
erik_squires OP
16,004 posts
 
Hi Gang,
The cost of the Seas Diamond is $6,800 for a matched pair (only sold in pairs), and I think people are misreading that as the price of the speakers. Can anyone point me to the price of the actual Ascend speakers?

JA at Stereophile did a _terrible_ job of reviewing the Crystal Cable Minissimo Diamonds which are $20k.


But again, we are weighing the cost of the steak, instead of thinking about the satisfaction of the meal. I’ve heard plenty of diamond and Be tweets I thought were crap sounding. No one is here talking about B&W and how much they overcharge for their drivers, because no one has any idea how much they cost. Same for Focal.


Measurably, and audibly, the quality of "custom" or in house drivers is an absolute crap shoot. But hey, the price is hidden. It’s like eating a rare dinosaur. Well, it’s $55,000, and I don’t know what the meat costs, but others say it’s good ...


So again, as a DIYer, and audiophile, I think these are nonsense ways to evaluate speakers.


If this is you, then go eat at Burger King every day, and stand outside a nice steak restaurant and tell the diners they are being overcharged.

soix
9,022 posts
 
@kenjit -- Ascend Acoustics sells direct, not through a dealer network.

@wildfoxinn -- I don’t even see a model like that on the Ascend Acoustics website, so not sure what speaker your referring to. But anyway, there absolutely is some voodoo magic in the Pulsar -- it’s the infinite slope crossover. It’s patented, so in fact other manufacturers can not duplicate it. And a lot of us think it is precisely the crossover that does indeed make the Pulsars, and all other JA speakers, uniquely special. The fact that they’ve piled up a bunch of very positive reviews, measure very well, and have tons of fans and owners all attest that there are lots of things special about them.

Pricing differences between the Pulsars and these mythical AA speakers is apples to oranges, and the AA speakers, if they even exist, would have to double in price to sell through dealers. And BTW, there are a ton of variables in how a speaker ultimately sounds, and drivers are only one.

So you can GUARANTEE the Pulsars would lose in a head-to-head against these mythical AA speakers can you? Did you hear both back to back in the same system? If not, your opinion is worth precisely zero here. And I highly doubt you did unless you owned both or brought the AA speakers to a JA dealer. And even if you did manage to hear them in the same system, which I HIGHLY doubt, we all hear differently and value different things. So don’t come riding in here on your high horse (and 26 posts) and think you can guarantee anything to anyone here. That is just ignorant and hugely arrogant.

I’m a fan of Ascend Acoustics too, so by all means please reveal which magic speakers you’re referring to here.  Now back to my bolognese.

BTW, here’s a complete list of AA speakers from their website:

Stereo Pairs

Code Name Price
9HT20SBM2 HTM-200 SE pair $298.00 Add One To Basket
9CB17SBM2 ** Sale: CBM-170 SE pair $298.00 Add One To Basket
9CM34SBM2 CMT-340 SE mains $568.00 Add One To Basket
9SRM1PB2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, piano black $763.30 Add One To Basket
9SRM1NT2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, natural $720.80 Add One To Basket
9SRM1PPBS ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair B-Stock $678.40 Add One To Basket
SRT2 Sierra Tower pair $1,998.00 Add One To Basket
9SRM1SE2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, satin espresso $720.80 Add One To Basket
9SRM1SC2 ** Sale: Sierra-1 pair, satin dark cherry $720.80 Add One To Basket
9SRM2PP Sierra-2 pair $1,448.00 Add One To Basket
9SRLPP Sierra Luna pair $1,148.00 Add One To Basket

kenjit
1,771 posts
 
But anyway, there absolutely is some voodoo magic in the Pulsar -- it’s the infinite slope crossover.
stereophile measured the pulsars. The measurements look like its 2nd order. Not infinite
soix
9,022 posts
 
It may look like it, but it's not.
soix
9,022 posts
 
Yeah, you’re right.  From your completely uninformed and ignorant reading of a simple graph, you obviously have nailed it.  You can now build your own Pulsar on the cheap.  Oh, but then there’s this: 

From Jeff Joseph as of today:

“The filters we use are asymmetrical, there is a very steep slope on the woofer and a gentler slope on the tweeter. This infinite slope topology differs from conventional filters in several ways. The implementation is not as steep as our earliest designs, because I found this to be the best sounding trade off of filter q and driver integration.

Compared to slow slope filters, ours confines most of the overlap between the drivers to below the crossover point, where wavelengths are longer. This prevents the lobing effects of wave interference. The speakers balance through crossover remains intact along a broad vertical axis.

The other major benefit is that we can derive the full benefits of using metal cone woofers because the special filter effectively suppresses the high frequency ringing the stiff cones exhibit. A second order filter wouldn’t come close to doing that. ( the metal woofers are typically +13 dB at the hf breakup frequency relative to their usable output, and a 2nd order filter only rolls off at 12dB per octave)”

@kenjit — does that answer your question?

How you gonna replicate this without violating a patent?  Best of luck with that buddy! Just go home and lick your ill-informed and ignorant wounds. You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and no basis for your claims, and if you try to come back at this in any misinformed way, I will have Jeff come back and smack down any other uninformed and misguided crap u try to lay down. Live in ur own silly world dude.

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