The mistake armchair speaker snobs make too often

I don’t understand the argument,

The argument is snobs calculate the cost of the "parts" of a speaker and pass judgement, overlooking the design and overall SQ. This rankles the DIY crowd in general. Personally I am parts agnostic, turn it on and if it sounds good I don’t care if it is $ in parts or $$$.

My bias/snobbery is that matching an amp and a speaker is a crap shoot and happens to be the most profitable strategy for manufacturers (sell you two products amp + speakers plus an additional set of cables). I think it should go away, all speakers should be designed from the ground up as an active "system", sold as a one box solution, and reduce the risk of a mismatch. Since we are discussing JBL here is an example:

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-t70mycAd42U/p_1094305PWN/JBL-4305P-Studio-Monitors-Walnut.html?XVINQ=BP1&XVVER=1EB7&awcr=76759846185115&awdv=c&awkw=jnl%20active%20studio%20monitors&awmt=e&awnw=s&awat=&awug=&msclkid=8363914ec31218b82511f5995be3243a

To the DIY crowd, what is your opinion of this much speaker for the money, the JBL 4305P Studio Monitor. Could Joe Sixpack do better if I sent him off to shop for speakers, amp, preamp, and a DAC with the same dough? @phusis @ghdprentice what are your thoughts?

People make judgements about things they really don’t know about all the time.  So what’s the problem?  It’s not going to change so best to take it for what it is and move on. 

erik_squires

I totally agree with you AMT's are much better than any dome tweeter but the mundorf one only goes to 27,000 the monitor audio platinum MPD Twitter goes to 100,000 clean on the G2, on the G3 they redesigned it a little bit and it only goes to 60,000, the theory is that the higher it goes the cleaner and clearer and more accurate and natural everything will be down below and I have the monitor audio platinum 200 G2 and the highs or so three-dimensional airy and spacious I absolutely love it and I also have my speakers on Townshend podiums what a effing difference that made it was like night and day better, it was like I had upgraded my electronics to much more expensive gear.

@magnuman

I’m a big fan of Monitor Audio and think that they are a brand that has done an exceptional job in engineering for cost and performance at the same time. Really amazing stuff.

Going out to 1 MHz doesn’t make a tweeter audibly better, but in the past was kind of a proxy for stored energy, and lack of inductance but now we can measure that directly. Mundorfs are absolutely exceptional drivers, and the Monitor Audio can be as well. :) Sure does give you bragging rights, however!!

Besides FR there is also compression and distortion, and in this case as well, Mundorf tweets are absolutely world class. They are not hte only world class AMTs though. Beyma for instance are incredibly well regarded.

I haven’t heard every tweeter on earth, especially since the covid pandemic, but I will say that I’ve never heard better performing tweeters. There may be some that sound better, and some that measure better, and I am sad I haven’t experienced that.

I’ve experienced the ScanSpeak AirCirc motors and they are also very very good, but have yet to measure one to the extent I have measured the Mundorf. Part of why I was measuring the Mundorfs was I was talking to the folks at Raal and doing it as a cooperative investigation. :) They know their stuff really well also, but sadly never heard them.

Best,

Erik

Let’s take the example of excellent $10,000 speakers with in-house custom drivers. Most people have no idea how much the drivers cost, so you never read about it in reviews and you don’t have hens showing up to nit pick them on part cost.

There’s no way those retail store speakers have more than $1,000 in drivers. You can’t maintain a speaker company for more than that. In addition, even with brands I really really like, I posit they are closer to 5-7% of cost in drivers. So they may spend $750 in the drivers, while selling you a $10,000 speaker.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but I am saying that your opinion of the speaker brand and quality will be altered just by knowing the cost of the drivers.  That Class-A rating and glowing show reports will absolutely have you reaching for your wallet, and calling them giant-killers so long as you have no idea of the driver cost.

The exact same speaker, with the same review, and performance is suddenly not worth a listen when you know the actual driver cost.   And this is where the small cottage builder is at a complete disadvantage.  They may in fact use more expensive parts than the mega-brands but you don't know the mega-brand part cost so you can't look down on them the same way.

So please for heaven’s sake stop doing that to little brands with off the shelf components when they are great products and amazing deals.  We need more cottage-industry builders, not fewer.