Are The Speakers We Purchase Really What They Are Cracked Up To Be?

I would agree with that I've heard some very expensive not very good sounding speakers.

 

Improved crossover networks can be carried to extremes to be sure. While I would enjoy a nice, simple upgrade to my Polk LSiM 703, when I viewed this modification, I was pretty surprised, have a look at this "big boy" modification!

External LSiM703 crossover modification

Darn, if I go to that much trouble, creating external monster crossover networks, my LSiM 703 loudspeakers need to sound like some Wilson Yvette's, is that too much to ask?

 

No, they certainly aren't "sub-optimal". I've seen numerous respectable constructors say that you choose a part based on its very specific function in a design and then it's specifications and characteristics. In fact, there's something that could be said about designers who just throw the most expensive part on the whole dwsign, blanket-style. We are not engineers and we are obviously easily impressed by shiny, expensive parts. Marketing knows that. What Danny does is modding, not fixing. He also doesn't make sub-optimal optimal.

 

Every manufacturer at most every price point has a BOM budget. This limits what they can choose for this inductor or that capacitor. You can put a lot of dough quickly into the crossover using boutique components. So yes, any crossover can be optimized, all but a few at the very high end.

People do not typically buy their speakers for the components inside of their crossovers, they buy them for looks, sound and price, and rightly so. They aren't opening up boxes (normally) and doing a crossover inspection. The designer would love to put the best parts in place, I am sure of that, but the bean counter says no, this is all you get, now make this budget work. They surely are not selling them with a marketing strategy of "shiny expensive parts" hidden inside of a box.

And the crossover is the sum of the parts, and a good designer can level match the best components. Where folks get in trouble is replacing these parts with boutique parts and not understanding how to level match them to retain the character of the speaker and still allow for the improvement(s) to shine.

 

That crossover build is impressive overkill. I imagine the difference in sound between the modded and standard 703 would be noticeable. The question is, does it sound "better?"

I'll bet you're questioning the sound of your standard 703s with their puny "sub-optimal" parts now. You probably loved them a week ago.

 

I'm quite familiar with all the points people here have made regarding the need for product designers to fit their component selections to target prices and BOMs. I worked in product management for electronic design companies for more than 10 years. We designed audio and video products that sold for anywhere from $49 to $30,000. I was sometimes the "bean counter" who had to limit what the BOM cost could be, and for some products our procurement people chose parts suppliers based on savings of a fraction of a penny on this resistor or that connector. In other cases, the use of premium grade electronic components was a viable marketing point. (Whether or not they produced measurably better audio or video depended on a host of other design factors.) In the case of speaker crossovers, premium grade components typically have tighter tolerances, which among other things can improve matching of stereo pairs.

A manufacturer's gross profit margin is a huge variable in this business, and can often determine whether or not products "are what they are cracked up to be," which is the question posed in the title of this thread.

Gross profit margin also determines the allowable total BOM cost for a given price point. The portion of the BOM allocated to the electronic components depends on many factors, including how much of the BOM goes to enclosures, finishes, etc. and in the case of speakers, the drivers which make up a big chunk of the parts cost. Therefore, at a given retail price point, different speaker manufacturers may have very different BOM costs allocated to the crossover components, and some manufacturers may be using much lesser or much higher quality electronic components than others for end products selling at or near the same price.

 

Sorry if I gave you bean counters a bad rap, seems they take it on the chin a lot. Realists are needed for good business, as well as the dreamers.

 

Well, the typical buyer is going to look at the finish and the sound. Dynaudio certainly spent money on the finish, so we know not everything is going to their bottom line. The sound is more subjective but the speaker is generally highly regarded for how it sounds. Sure there is a niche within a niche, audiophiles who fawn over graphs and crossover parts, but IMO they are far from the typical buyer. That subset might feel a little ripped off, but I'm not sure many of them are dropping $3,500 on a pair of these speakers, or even what I paid ($2K USD as I bought a dealer demo - I would not have paid full retail for these, though they may well be worth that price). So I feel like buyers who focus on crossover parts are likely attracted to different speakers.

I think Danny definitely calls into question the sound of the S40, and by extension those in this thread who agree with him also call the sound into question. How many have actually heard a pair is another story. But the speaker is voiced by Dynaudio, who know a thing or two about building speakers, to sound a certain way...and I'm sure they know the market it's going to compete in and thus to what level it needs to perform. So in my eyes one needs to hear them to really be able to judge the speaker against it's peers. Looking at graphs and parts is a small part of the equation (for most buyers it's not even in the equation, since that is what the speaker maker worries about). If one bases their view of what a speaker "is cracked up to be" solely on that sort of thing, to me they are passing judgement based on partial information. Atkinson raised similar points to Danny's in his Stereophile review, yet aside from some congestion he said the speakers sounded superb when you turn off critical listening mode and just sit back and enjoy the music, and with that I would certainly agree.

I'm not sure that is the right expectation, knowing Dynaudio makes much more expensive speakers. I would expect a well designed speaker, with parts that are at least good and do their job. But I'd expect the very best parts, say, on the new Heritage model. $3500 is a lot of money, but that's high end audio - it is a niche industry. It's not cheap for the very best when you buy from traditional channels, and I knew when I was buying the S40 that I wasn't getting the best Dynaudio makes. But the point is that you can't assume. If you want the very best parts, as a consumer you need to do the homework before buying. Companies are not obligated to tell you where each dollar went.

Thanks! I guess my point is that one needs to look at the big picture with a pair of speakers, and measurements/parts are a small part of the big picture. The biggest part is sound. This thread tends to ignore that, boiling everything down to the smaller parts of the big picture. Speaker building is a bit of an art form; flattest FR and most expensive parts doesn't guarantee the best sound.

The Brio is nice, but I've been kicking around the idea of selling it and getting a Tavish Classic to get MC capability.

I put ? in my profile because I am deciding on what to keep at the moment. I tend to buy used/demo gear so that when I move to something else I don't lose money (or don't lose much). This way I can try out different systems to find the one that really moves me. For the past year I've mostly listened to the S40 with a Naim Nait XS, and more recently the Nait with Neat Motive SX2 speakers. That's what I have hooked up right now. I'll try my Sugden A21 with the Neat speakers soon; I'm not sure they will power them adequately but I'll give it a shot. I think I'd really like to keep the A21 long term, it's such a sweet sounding amp. Needs the right speaker though. It doesn't have enough power for the S40's unfortunately.

I'll also be trying a set of ProAc Tablette 2000 Signatures - this is a 20 year old speaker that I owned a long time ago. They were one of my favorites, always sort of regretted selling them, so I want to try that again, especially with my room more optimized for audio now. They should work well with the Sugden. In the end, I will sell everything and keep one amp and one pair of speakers. What I haven't played around with much is DACs, so I'd like to try one or two of those. And then hopefully be left with a system that stays relatively stable for a while.

 

It's not that bad, as I know that most any speaker can probably be upgraded to an extreme, so I am not the only one with inexpensive crossover parts I have to live with, so it's all relative. Unless we own loudspeakers like the Wilson I referred to, we can just expect less than premium parts in our crossover networks. Personally I would not wish to have a separate box of parts attached to my small Polk speakers.

 

Well who are the speaker police?

 

They're busy on the street busting those white vans.

 

Looks cool..probably too niche for me to find it here in EU but made me think there's more stuff like this out there...combined with the right amp might be a better cheaper solution than the pro studio market.

 

Just a great post! I enjoy my Polk LSiM 703 and 707 speakers, and yes, I know some people out there have modified the heck out of them, as I showed in my post, however, I'm enjoying them as they are. In the case of the Polk LSiM series I now own, I would simply sell them as is, they are great speakers, but I'm pretty sure they could be better if someone spent the money to make some high dollar upgrades.

 

Just a great response indeed, thanks so much!

 

Do you still use the super tweeters? I've read a few guys that love the Polks but wouldn't mind a bit more extension from the tweeter. One could say the super tweets are a kind of mod, externally.

 

This review just came out for Danny Richie's cheapest diy speaker kit (200ish bucks)

 

All New Voxativ Ampeggio X are the best speakers I've heard from Voxativ by far !

These could be some of the best speakers to ever come on the market !

 

I watched this today, the breakdown of the parts cost is quite eye opening!

 

I'm a fairly new member to this forum, and just stumbled across this thread. I noticed that there was a fair amount of discussion of GR-Research. I currently own a pair of NX-Otica speakers with stereo triple subs. These are the same speakers that Ron from New Record Day has discussed on his YouTube channel, except that I have triple subs instead of dual subs. I have owned them for about 18 months now, and built them using flat-packs from one of GR's partners.

I've been an audiophile for about 45 years and these are the all-around best speakers I've owned (for my taste). Other speakers I've owned (or still own in some cases) include: Magnepan MG1, MGII, Tympani IV, MG3.5r; Revel F30, F50, Gem, Studio; Duntech Sovereign; Totem Mani-2; Goldenear Triton 2+.

The NX-Oticas work best in a fairly large room where you can get them out into the room a bit. My listening room is 17' x 29' x 8'. I have mine set with the front baffle about 7ft from the front wall, and about 4' from the side walls. They have an open airy sound like Magnepans, but much more dynamic and deeper, tighter bass (by far the best bass I've ever had in a system).

They took me about 50 hours to build - most of that in the finishing. I don't have a lot of woodworking skills, so I decided to paint mine. They came out fairly nice, but the finish quality certainly doesn't live up to the sound quality. Total cost, including the subs with servo amps was about $6K. I built them with all the crossover upgrades that Danny offered at the time.

I have been so impressed with these speakers that I've decided to build a pair of Line Forces which is a significant investment. This was a speaker design that Danny created for Serenity Acoustics. They are open baffle line source speakers that used 16 Bohlender Graobener NEO 3 tweeters and 6 BG Neo 10 midrange drivers, and are designed to work with the servo subs to cover the bass. They never made it to market because BG was acquired and the drivers were no longer available to OEMs. The prototypes were very well received at audio shows though, with a planned MSRP in the $40K to $50K range. I bought the NEO10 drivers while Parts Express still had them available and I'm using Danny's NEO 3 drivers. Even as a DIY speaker, my total spend will be around $15K not including the subs, but that includes professionally finished cabinets.

I'm also building a set of NX-Studios for my bedroom system. For these, I'm having Mike Lundy (Audio Circle member) build the cabinets for me since he DOES have the woodworking skills to do a nice job with veneer. Total cost for these with having Mike make the cabinets will be about $1800.

 

So just to make a quick point about “premium” parts and this particular example. The below is an oversimplification but an important distinction nonetheless...

Proper engineering is about designing to a certain performance specification.

Proper procurement is about acquiring parts that meet (AND DO NOT UNNECESSARILY EXCEED) the spec and tolerances set forth by engineering.

Proper manufacturing is about building to the spec and within tolerances.

In all three areas, EFFICIENCY (minimization of COST, e.g. loss/waste, rework, time) is paramount.

With this in mind, we should all understand that the word “PREMIUM” does not exist in the engineering/manufacturing world. There are simply parts, with different tolerances and specs. These parts have prices, and we want the part that MEETS the engineering requirements (achieve designed performance, meet specific tolerances) for the least amount of money.

 

One of these days I'll get em' finished.

We were Klipsch owners for 35+ years. After many OB builds, we put these together.

 

That strikes me as semantics aren't higher tolerance parts better aka premium? Beyond that I basically agree with the rest of your post.

 

Better how? If a well designed and functioning crossover requires capacitors with a certain tolerance, and we put in caps with a 2x tighter tolerance, what do we gain, other than less money in our bank account?

 

The possibility exists that you could get better sound. That not always the case but sometimes it is.

 

It very definitely is the case. Although a capacitor may have the same amount of capacitance and tolerance as another, that by no means they will sound the same.