Speakers cost to much for quality?

[Radiation]

Something i don't get is why speakers in general should cost so much when the tech is very basic and should have improved and got dirt cheap by now, am i the only one who thinks having to fork out many £100's to £1000's just for a half decent setup is wrong?

When people have a sensible budget and ask for good speakers i always see people say well you might have to pay more mate to get something that sounds ok, just ok?, uh for the prices i see i would expect something to sound amazing in this day and age!

What's a good 5.1 setup for around £300?

Thanks.

 

[Alex_L]

i don't know much about hifi, but i'd imagine that whilst fundamentally a simple technology, the devil is in the detail with speakers, and that very fine tuning and refinement of a design can make a big difference to the sound.

I also imagine a lot of the price is to do with the materials used and the workmanship involved, as I suspect from my rudimentary understanding of sound waves, that the materials in a speaker make a big difference to the signature and quality of the sound.

 

[Radiation]

I understand what your saying and your no doubt right but still what I don't get is say a large company comes up with a very high quality design, whats to stop them from mass producing it at a reasonable price?

 

[Teifiterror]

It may be simple tech, but think of all the R&D costs that are involved in designing a new speaker, just to get a small increase in sound quality from a new model must take a huge amount of deisgn and tweaking etc. Becasue as youve said, the tech has been round for a while and improvements are going to be harder to find. They still manage it though. But at a cost.

A good example is how B&W's high end speakers cost thousands but the R&D involved in finding that new technology is high, but after time it starts paying back for itself and the tech is slowly filtered down through the range to give improvements.

 

[DRZ]

The technology is old, yes. The understanding of the maths in the system simplifies well to a reasonable approximation, which allows people to get "reasonable" results. To get things perfect though, the full horror of the maths involved is unveilled. This is the kind of maths that hardened acousticians draft in maths specialists for because it is impossibly hard. THEN once you have understood the maths for it, you have to understand exactly what you can physically change to get better results. It is all of this understanding that goes together to make a good speaker and THAT is what costs so much.

You then have the company trying to make back that exorbitent cost by manufacturing a speaker that reflects that design - just as much of a challenge (regarding tolerances etc) and that bumps up the cost quite a lot again.

It isnt amazingly difficult to knock together some speakers that sound half decent once you have a rudimentary understanding of the maths involved but to make a system that works well - that is a challenge indeed.

For what its worth I am friends with a chap who used to work for TurboSound. One of their designers designed the B&W Model Nautilus speakers, and the design work that went into those was, well, rather a lot Unofficially, he designed them "In a day" Pure genious, that man.

I understand what your saying and your no doubt right but still what I don't get is say a large company comes up with a very high quality design, whats to stop them from mass producing it at a reasonable price?

If you, as a company owner, just poured ooh, perhaps £5,000,000 into what is essentially a low-volume product, you would charge rather a lot to try and make a profit from that, wouldnt you?

The Nautilus design is as close to perfection as you are probably ever going to see from a speaker. Nobody has even come anything like close to the stats they have for that speaker (that I know of). Still, at the price they are, I cant see me ever owning a pair unless I wangle my way into B&W as a consultant

 

[Matblack]

What's a good 5.1 setup for around £300?

Speakers only?

Canton CD101

MB

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Something i don't get is why speakers in general should cost so much when the tech is very basic and should have improved and got dirt cheap by now, am i the only one who thinks having to fork out many £100's to £1000's just for a half decent setup is wrong?

When people have a sensible budget and ask for good speakers i always see people say well you might have to pay more mate to get something that sounds ok, just ok?, uh for the prices i see i would expect something to sound amazing in this day and age!

Thanks.

With all due respect, watch technology has been around for centuries, does this mean that a rolex should cost peanuts?

The simple fact is that mass produced "averageness" does cost peanuts. You can happily walk into Tesco and buy a CD player, with a radio and speakers for under £30.
Unfortunately, you don't want something that is average, and because of progress, what is "average" now, is probably a good deal better than the average say 20 years ago.

What you're asking for is something that outperforms the average. That's where companies trying to outperform each other comes into being, resulting in turnover of new products and their associated design costs, and run out costs.

With regard to your question about £300. Picture that as buying a new Focus. You pays more, maybe you can have a BMW, you pay more again, maybe a Porsche. The analogy is just the same in audio.

 

[Manlove is my forte]

another point is the frequency of sale.

A good pair of speakers will last 10+ years (my dad has a pair that are about as old as I am)

They need to put a high price tag on the speakers because they sell a relitively low quantity

 

[9designs2]

Dam I was going to use the Rolex and car angle Mr_S !!

Plus Speakers as opposed to the electronics are not cheap to make. People like nice wood finish cabinets, perhaps with a little bling around the edges !!
Floor standers take up quite a bit "Volume" during shipping, when you have put plenty of packing around them. They also can weigh a lot.
Sure companies have put the electronics out to places like China, with massive numbers of chips being made, bringing cost down. The same manufacturing technique doesn't work quite as well with speakers.

The drive units are normally one of the cheap items in a speaker, cabinet and packaging cost the most. ( I work with a guy who use to work at Celestion/KEF !!)
Typicaly a drive units would be £10 - 50 to an OEM for a "quality" speaker

So add the above examples of R&D and you struggle to make good quality items for low cost.....bit like CRT's there is/was a limit to how cheap they could make them due to manufacturing costs and limitations.

Finally "Quality" has never been "cheap" and never will be ...in any product.

Don't believe it... go have a demo, and hear the Quality change

 

[clockworks]

Dam I was going to use the Rolex and car angle Mr_S !!

Plus Speakers as opposed to the electronics are not cheap to make. People like nice wood finish cabinets, perhaps with a little bling around the edges !!
Floor standers take up quite a bit "Volume" during shipping, when you have put plenty of packing around them. They also can weigh a lot.
Sure companies have put the electronics out to places like China, with massive numbers of chips being made, bringing cost down. The same manufacturing technique doesn't work quite as well with speakers.

The drive units are normally one of the cheap items in a speaker, cabinet and packaging cost the most. ( I work with a guy who use to work at Celestion/KEF !!)
Typicaly a drive units would be £10 - 50 to an OEM for a "quality" speaker

So add the above examples of R&D and you struggle to make good quality items for low cost.....bit like CRT's there is/was a limit to how cheap they could make them due to manufacturing costs and limitations.

Finally "Quality" has never been "cheap" and never will be ...in any product.

Don't believe it... go have a demo, and hear the Quality change

Actually, manufacturing speakers in China does work.

A couple of months ago, I bought a set of Quad L-ites, a £1000 5.1 speaker set. These have received excellent reveiws, and certainly sounded better than any £1000 set I've heard before. The satellite speakers are available as stereo pairs for £150.
Although they are designed in Britain, they are built in China. The quality of workmanship is first class, equal to any fully-British product at twice the price.
Expect the same to be true of the next Mission models (now owned by the same parent company as Quad).

I realise that, to many people, the Quads are expensive speakers, but this is just the beginning. Once all the manufacturers start producing in China, prices will fall significantly.