Misconceptions of Speakers

I would be very wary of any product that immediately sounds impressive. It's been my experience that the better components, those that give long-term satisfaction, generally sound a little bland in the audio showroom. It's not so much what the component does right, but the fact that it does very little wrong.

Listening to music only requires enthusiasm, but evaluating audio components requires a certain amount of knowledge and training. The fact is, not everybody has an educated ear.

Ohhwy61 is right on the money. Products usually "stand out" because there is some specific irregularity that catches your ear. Speakers that are "forward" often seem louder, clearer, offer better resolution due to propped up midrange, etc... Try listening to speakers like that on a long term basis though and it gets old real quick. The same can be said for speakers that have slightly elevated bass sounding "powerful", having "great impact", etc...

I went with my brother to buy speakers quite a few years ago. The speakers he picked out sounded good in the showroom. I told him that they would sound horrible at home. He asked "which ones do you think i should buy". I simply pointed to them. His response was "those are the flattest, dullest sounding ones in here. NO WAY". Needless to say, he ended up returning the "commercially marketable" models and bought the ones that i suggested. He had them for years and now one of his friends is enjoying them.

Something else to keep in mind is that most speakers have well under $200 in parts in them ( wholesale ). Much of what you are paying for is research & development, etc.. Smaller companies don't do as much of this since they don't have the means to do so, but that doesn't mean that they can't produce a very fine product simply by trial and error, fine tuning basic designs, etc...

As a case in point, we've built speakers for $150 total that looked and sounded like some $2500 - $3500 models. Not all products are created equally nor do they share the same design or "mark up" philosophy. Many times, the simpler and lower cost models will easily outperform larger, more complex designs. They just don't offer the volume capability or extension at the frequency extremes that the bigger, more costly models do. That's why the "monitor on stands / subwoofer" design has caught on so well for many people. You can start with good "basic" speakers that don't chew up a lot of space ( high WAF ) and then go for the extreme bottom end at a later date. Not only does the subwoofer extend the bass once it is added, it frees up the monitor so that the mids are even sharper and cleaner while also increasing the volume capability. The best of both worlds and it spreads your cost out. Sean
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Don't tease us! Tell me what the brand names of the $3500 speaker and the $700 speaker. I promise to tell noone! Seriously, you won't get sued. You are expressing only your opinion. And I promise to not get offended, if the $3500 is the brand that I think. I will agree with you even not knowing what speakers that you are discussing, there is very little correlation between speaker quality and price. I would add that in judging speaker quality, you have to take into account 1) synergy or lack of it with other demonstration components, 2) your biases as to what sounds good 3) room interactions etc. Most of us have heard tremendous equipment made to sound incredibly awful due to improper matching of components and cables, lousy room placement etc. Sometimes, particularly at low-end or even sleazy, high-end stores, the salesman, who has already sized you up with regard to what you'll pay, will purposely favor one system or one component over another in the way they are set up to make one sound much better than another.

Regarding R&D costs, isn't this partly subsidized to Canadian manufacturers? It seems that I read that they have a huge, well equiped, research facility available to their manufacturers. Of course this would also create a great deal of travel expense for many who use it.

Dekay, the NRC facility in Ottawa is available for use by pretty well anyone, so you're right there. Dr. Floyd resides there and will help out most folks. No different from many other research facilities around the world; the U.S. tends to have advanced facilities attached to universities (e.g. Johns Hopkins) as opposed to being directly funded by the government. Now this may seem awfully handy, until you take into consideration the geography. You're quite right, travel costs would be a very real issue. Canada is CONSIDERABLY bigger than the U.S. with respect to land mass, with roughly 12% of the population of the U.S.; "dropping into Ottawa to use the anechoic chambers" isn't always practical for most. Oddly enough, there are no audio manufacturer's in Ottawa that I know of, but plenty elsewhere in the Canada. I could list'em all, but it would bore even me and I'd have to type it out. ATB, Jeff