Where does the money in expensive speakers get spent?
- Thread starter Sibbers
- Start date
The point I was trying to make was that when spending large sums of money on speakers there is no need to accept the compromised performance that comes with a 2 way design. A competent £5k 2 way may well have a bit better technical performance than a competent £1k 2 way but it will be outperformed by a competent £5k 3 or 4 way.
Robert
Tapehead
3 way has the better potential.
The typical model of crossing a 5-8" bass-mid to a 1" dome, or worse 3/4" dome carries a number of problems.
At the crossover point appropriate for these design to work acceptably, the dispersion characteristics between the two drivers are markedly different at the crossover frequency. You are stuck with this compromise since lowering the crossover point places too much stress on the tweeter. Using a smaller mid-bass helps with the crossover issue but you then have limited SPL capability and the possibility of higher intermodulation distortion if the driver used for mid reproduction is dancing around trying to produce bass fundamentals. But that's the best compromise is you want high quality and can accept the SPL restriction imposed - clean and fairly quiet, or loud and messy!
A dedicated mid driver largely avoids these problems.
The typical model of crossing a 5-8" bass-mid to a 1" dome, or worse 3/4" dome carries a number of problems.
At the crossover point appropriate for these design to work acceptably, the dispersion characteristics between the two drivers are markedly different at the crossover frequency. You are stuck with this compromise since lowering the crossover point places too much stress on the tweeter. Using a smaller mid-bass helps with the crossover issue but you then have limited SPL capability and the possibility of higher intermodulation distortion if the driver used for mid reproduction is dancing around trying to produce bass fundamentals. But that's the best compromise is you want high quality and can accept the SPL restriction imposed - clean and fairly quiet, or loud and messy!
A dedicated mid driver largely avoids these problems.
Good points well made.
As are the points above about the number of people in the distribution and supply chain as all need to take a cut to make a living. It's not unheard of for a speaker costing "A" at manufacture to be retailed for 5 to 6 times "A" or more by the time it gets to the consumer.
As for cottage industry, the better made ones I think still represent biggest bang for buck in terms of VFM if well engineered. Dealers would make nothing on what some of these sell for (my own included).
People often get the wrong idea that a box is a box is a box, but the permutations are endless, from materials, to build time, finish, components cost etc etc. I can spend a few hours on a straight forward finish, or days and days, even weeks, on some finishes. That all adds up, even for a small loudspeaker.
The difference in cost between, say, a simple 2 pole two way crossover with budget components on mass produced small PCBs, with low sophistication in design and a hand made point to point wired 2 pole 2 way of greater sophistication using high quality components can be more than £300 in cost of materials alone, putting labour to one side.
Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
Ah I see. So 3 ways really do outperform 2 ways then? I'd mostly heard the opposite to be true. I thought they were more suited to filling bigger rooms.
The reason I used two ways as examples was really to simplify the question though
All things being equal YES.
My own speakers are a 4 way design and have eight drivers in each box. Their performance is unbelievable for their size when properly driven.
They sell for around £6K new and I would say that about 40% of that is taxes, dealer commission and importer charges.
Cheers,
DV
cooky1257
pfm Member
No, not necessarily, we've been here before many times but TAD Exclusive, Tannoy DC, JBL M2, Meyer X10 all say otherwise.
merlin
Avatar changed - Town names deemed offensive.
Hand made in the UK? Yes
A lot of money spent on R&D? Not really sorry.
Nice speaker design that's been going for many years and continues to please many.
IME the expensive part of loudspeaker design is getting the fundamentals of notes and their physicality / energy without introducing distortion or simply losing it.
davidsrsb
pfm Member
I had the opportunity to hear many expensive speakers yesterday at the Kuala Lumpur HiFi show. Generally most rooms were avoiding playing music with vocals, too much instrumental Jazz and Chinese percussion.
I could detect some crossover region issues with 2 way ProAcs.
I heard similar problems with dual cabinet 4 ways (15+12+5x6+1") - you can still make daft choices of crossover in multiways.
Done right multiways sounded very good, even the Naim Statements.
For some reason the Linn room was running LS50s instead of their own speakers
Less searing treble than in the last few years
James
Lord of the Erg\o/s
I think you mean "badly designed crossovers are to be avoided".
James
Lord of the Erg\o/s
I think ATC uses Seas tweeters? Those are made in Norway. Damn fine tweeters too.
darrenyeats
pfm Member
I agree some are worse than others, but no-one ever puts in a crossover because they want to, rather because not putting it in creates a bigger problem.
I agree SEAS make good tweeters. ATC now use their in-house tweeter (allegedly better than the SEAS it replaced in terms of FR, distortion and dispersion).
James
Lord of the Erg\o/s
That's only because a proper full range driver has not yet been invented.
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
A waveguide on the tweeter can help smooth the dispersion discontinuities around the crossover frequency, and/or a slot load on the LF device.
RustyB
Registered Ginga
The more important question: Is an expensive speaker actually worth the asking?
Unless you know what the drivers are, and you've taken them out and had a look at the internals, you just don't know for sure, although the weight is a good indicator.
Back in the day, Thiel used to run ads showing cut-away photos of their speakers.
Funnily enough, this was not common practice!
This scenario is one to be wary of:
Clever designer creates attractive performance from inexpensive ingredients, prices product way in excess of cost, gets a good review or two, sells some product, hype dissipates, value of speaker eventually drops to something approximating its actual worth.
As for 2-way vs 3-way. for a given budget you'll necessarily have better quality drivers in the 2 way, plus a simpler cabinet construction. Most cheap 3-ways compromise the midrange performance with rudimentary enclosures. Then there's the issue of needing an electrolytic cap in series with the midrange.
Best leave 3-ways to the higher end, where there's the will and the budget to do them properly.
Unless you know what the drivers are, and you've taken them out and had a look at the internals, you just don't know for sure, although the weight is a good indicator.
Back in the day, Thiel used to run ads showing cut-away photos of their speakers.
Funnily enough, this was not common practice!
This scenario is one to be wary of:
Clever designer creates attractive performance from inexpensive ingredients, prices product way in excess of cost, gets a good review or two, sells some product, hype dissipates, value of speaker eventually drops to something approximating its actual worth.
As for 2-way vs 3-way. for a given budget you'll necessarily have better quality drivers in the 2 way, plus a simpler cabinet construction. Most cheap 3-ways compromise the midrange performance with rudimentary enclosures. Then there's the issue of needing an electrolytic cap in series with the midrange.
Best leave 3-ways to the higher end, where there's the will and the budget to do them properly.
Disbeliever
pfm Member
Jordan Eikona 11 is a proper full range driver made by Scanspeak
It has sufficient SPL for musical peaks, plays loud and deep enough for bass, has a smoothly varying directivity, the low frequencies don't modulate the high frequencies, etc...?
Seeing what one can get out of a single driver speaker can be an interesting challenge but the result, although possibly satisfactory in some aspects, is not going to be satisfactory in sufficient of them to be reasonably considered high fidelity sound reproduction.
James
Lord of the Erg\o/s
I don't think so, not even allowing for the rather generous +/- 6dB tolerance.
For a rich person I think the answer is likely to be yes. For the rest of us it is probably going to depend on the level of enthusiasm for the hobby.
In practise a 3 way using decent standard range drivers will outperform a 2 way using premium range drivers. A large woofer moving a small amount will be louder and distort less than a smaller midwoofer moving a large amount. A smaller dedicated midrange compared to a larger midwoofer will have a better directivity, probably better cone behaviour, allow a higher crossover frequency to the tweeter, less modulation,... However, the size of the market for expensive 2 ways does rather suggest that factors other than technical performance are relevant when it comes to what people choose to buy.