Affordable vs. ultra expensive speakers - what's the difference?

@fastfreight 

Congratulations on the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC. Yeah, I know. It is amazing how it just keeps getting better. I couldn’t have pursued this for 50 years unless each step didn’t result in more than I thought possible. Every day when I go down and turn on my system and listen for a while, I just can’t believe this was possible. It is incredibly rewarding. 

@larry5729 

”It would be fun to take a survey on how much people are worth who spend $100,000 on their system.”

My system is worth a bought $150K. I am retired. The major upgrade I made was about 2.5 years ago that took it from $70K to $150K… well i was retired.

They should sound exactley the same if you are deaf.

some people buy $50k speakers an its still not end game!  just use your ears to judge, difference between $5k speaker and $20k is not that much of a difference.  the difference in cost will be the name and material used to make it.  If I am about to drop $30k on a pair of speakers, I'll take the B&W 801 D4.  They will sound and look great to my ears and eyes.

@laoman 

spot on. Why anything op? You are not gonna put a ford escort engine in a Porsche. When you get better components you tend to do them across the board. Top end speakers tend to adorn top end electronics. Anyone with an iota of common sense (maybe I’m getting old) is well aware or room acoustics/ interaction and matching speakers to a room. But when space is optimised you create the conditions to maximise component performance. Think of comparing a road car on an f1 track and and f1 car on a public road 😉