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Speakers Don’t Matter As Much As We Think They Do?

When discussing how best to invest money into your system, it’s very common to hear people say, “Spend as much as you can afford on speakers, and then worry about the other gear because speakers have the largest effect on the sound.”

Now it’s never a bad idea to have good speakers and while I somewhat followed that advice early on, as my system has evolved it seems that I am not currently following that advice, and yet I am getting absolutely fantastic sound. For example as a percentage of my total system cost, my speakers cost 15%. If you include the subwoofers, that price is about 35%.

Early on I was worried I would outgrow my speakers and I’d hit their limit which would restrict sonic improvement potential as I upgraded other gear but that hasn’t been the case. With each component upgrade, things keep sounding better and better. The upper limit to speakers’ potential seems to be a lot higher than previously thought as I continue to improve upon the signal I send them and continue to improve system synergy. If you send a really high quality signal to a pair of speakers and get synergy right, they will reward you in spades and punch well above their apparent weight class.

One thing that may be working in my favor is that I’ve had these speakers since the early days of building my system so literally everything down to the last cable has been tuned to work in synergy with these speakers. Had I upgraded my speakers mid way through, I would have undone a lot of the work that went into the system in terms of synergy.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with their speakers? Does anyone have any extreme percentages in terms of speaker cost to system cost like 5% or 95% and what has been your experience?

128x128mkgus
fourspeed
12 posts
 
You clowns are not who this advice was aimed at. Average Joe with, let’s say, five grand TOTAL to spend, yes, spend a lot on speakers. They have the greatest impact in that range. 
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
Transducers have the highest distortion ( including microphones ) because they have the most difficult job to do. Spend wisely. But realize your out of phase el cheapo paper cone midrange is producing a lot of trash. Now try fixing that with a drumroll..., power cord.

speakers are transducers.
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
But, IF you understand the violent relationship between speakers and power amps, you might like to think about them as an optimized system. So to that end, in my reference system about 2/3 of the system cost ( not including wiring, room treatment, and power conditioning) is in amps and speakers. This in a single source system.
audioman58's avatar
audioman58
4,130 posts
 
Magus what do you have for speakers and sub ?
that is important to know ,and have you ever upgraded the Xover?
that for sure will give you better resolution and imaging  for that is where most companies skimp on , unless spending a lot.
stibi
51 posts
 
I think we should distinguish major gains from incremental gains. I do believe speakers change have usually the potential for a major gain. Nevertheless it is waste of money if one does not upgrade the rest of electronics. For me this was very evident when I transitioned from Focal Utopia to Magico S5 and then to YG after several years of enjoying each if them. The gear that has made the Focals sing was far from capable to get the best of the Magicos. Same thing now with YG. This experience has proven to me that going first with speakers change and then tuning the rest brings best results and lots of fun figuring out best match in the given system.
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