Not every one can afford 10k speakers. I just barely have 10k in my complete system and thats a mix of new and used equipment thats taken me almost 2 years to put together. You got to put yourself a lower income class below 50k a year and without the connection you got would you still own the same system you have now or would you re-think your strategies differently knowing what you know now.
That’s totally ok. Nothing about this was intended to suggest that you need expensive speakers or that cheaper speakers are bad. It was simply the idea that spending more gets more, or not. There is a lot of debate and many want to argue that at a certain point spending more is for vanity. My point is that isn’t my experience. While price doesn’t equal quality, within the realm of quality speakers, spending more does make a difference.
I appreciate you Matt! I could never own a $3,000 pr of speakers let $10,000 a pr at retail. I priced how much it would cost to build a real nice pair of 3-way reference level speakers. After pricing the cost of the MDF, or HDF, and cost to build the cabinets, the price of all other materials would come out to easy $2500 - $4500 to complete at a modest price. As a business to cover all costs of labor, storage ect... I am not surprised that these speakers would sell for $8,000 - $16,000 pr. If you have the expertise, and the ability to find all the materials at wholesale prices, you could make your own. You really have to be on the ball to be able to use multiple speakers with synergy using the best crossover components. You would have to have experience with (speaker design) cabinet design as well for maximum synergy, and fidelity. If a speaker builder doesn't cheap out designing, and building a quality speaker, even the cheapest priced speaker will most likely be far superior to most anything considered great by the average person. The quality of the materials used is at least 50% of the cost of building the speakers. The other 50% is labor, and design. Sometimes I ask myself on some speakers that are really decent for their price, and wonder how in the world can they sell this item at such a low price? How are they not loosing money? I really like your videos Matt! I also like Audioholics! Thanks again Matt for sharing!
I don't think that there is a difference between a $100k and a $400k pair of speakers of about the same size, but there is a difference between a $1k and a $4k pair of speakers.
How much weight do you place on playing reference level volume in reaching an immersive experience? Many speakers can play 10db down from reference (based on manufacture specs for power handling) at a fair distance. That extra 10db seems to cost a lot more to achieve.
Yeah that’s a common problem. Achieving that reference levels is costly. So it won’t immerse your or envelope you anymore. But it is as the director intended. This is the problem with ignoring that, voices were not recorded loud enough to turn them down 10dB. Quiet parts were also not recorded loud enough. The mixing was done under the assumption of a certain room noise floor and playback level. So when you turn it down 10dB you drop everything 10dB and now the effects and the voices won’t be clear. In fact, I take back my earlier comment. There probably is a loss of immersion from atmospherics falling into the background level. If someone chooses to listen below reference levels, compression and a voice raising or enhancing feature would probably be a good idea. A lot of receivers offer this. Compression is a better way to fix the loudness problem. I also like music played back at louder levels and for me the benefit is a more realistic experience. Music is loud. A violin is loud. A trumpet is loud. A guitar is loud. So when we don’t listen at those same levels we lose the natural dynamics of the instrument. We lose the visceral impact as well. The experience is less real for me.
Yeah. And I am as cheap as anyone. I like nice shoes. I went on various men’s forums to find the best values. I read about all these brands that people claimed equaled the expensive designer shoes for less. Well I bought them. Lots of them. I also own lots of the pricey designer ones. And in the end I found the designer stuff is better, often a lot better. I usually find that value is more about the best for a certain price. I rarely find things that are as good as the best but for half the price.
@@PoesAcoustics True, before each purchase I say to myself " The poor man pays twice" am I ok with being the poor man after buying this. If the answer is no then I spend the higher amount and buy the better brand, this especially with buying any tools.
@@microteche it depends on the goal. Designer shoes, tools, cars, function vs style are dependent on perspective. Tools would prob have to do with function, reliability, time efficency and no concern if there was a designer painting on the tool. With his shoes, he's not worried about them lasting while on daily runs, he's paying for style and comfort. Cars can both get you from A to B but how do we want to feel while getting there. The idea of buying twice is dependent as well. What if you have several rooms to make systems for? Or friends to give cheap stuff to? When I build computer's I know at some point I will transition the used pc to a kid so that factors into the parts I add. He mentioned blue jeans, when I was young I liked the $200 jeans too, but now I could care less.
Absolutely they do, I mean there is a point of diminishing returns but yes. 100%. My Paradigm Persona’s sound exponentially better than a pair of $1000 Best Buy specials. You pay for what you get for the most part.
Yes. But there seems to be a mentality amongst some that it is possible to achieve near perfect sound or near the best sound at a price that isn’t far from $1000. That doesn’t match my experience.
Thanks for the video, interesting thing to ponder. Obviously if you have more money you can do more and get better results. Even to the DIY crowed, you know you need to spend around $1000 to get a top quality drivers in a 2-way. A commercial product would cost $3-4k just for the 2-way with low distortion drivers. 3-way would be $6-9k easy if it had $1500-2000 in parts.
And a lot of diy efforts aren’t that good. A number have now been tested in Klippels and found to be mediocre. Which doesn’t shock me. I am yet to see a DIY effort yield measured results as good as the best commercial offerings.
I would only make one addition to your comments. I’d take a pair $5000/pr of speakers in a properly treated room over a $50,000 pair in a poorly treatef 11:10 (or worse) room every day!
How about a list of speakers in different price ranges moving up from 5k to 20k of pairs of recommended speakers. I have Kef R11s. If they are not up to the job, let me know. Kef has a range of speakers that sound tonality the same. Being in the UK with our tiny houses, it is hard to fit 7 speakers and 2 subwoofers in but I managed it using R series at the front and heights and some Kef flat speakers for the sides and rears. My room is not a bad size 24 foot by 13 foot. Being wider would have made it easier. I cant do in wall speakers.
Genelec s360 is intriguing for LCR with remotely mounted amps in the rack, but the deal breaker is getting power to surround locations for anything else from genelec...
I have a genelec 7.2.4 system (SVS subs) and you just need sufficiently long power cords for surrounds, running them at the same places as the xlr cables. True, it is a bit more cumbersome but not that difficult in the end.
I will never buy another manufacturer's speakers. I will continue to build my own for 1/4 or less the price while at the same time not compromising on crossover parts. DIY may not be for everyone, but I just built a pair of bookshelf speakers and a center channel for my den. These DIY speakers are the best sounding speakers I have ever had in my home and the three speakers cost about $500. I have built my own subwoofers for years and they always outperform store bought subs that cost thousands more than my DIY sub. Too many speaker manufactures do not focus on the sound of their products, but instead cut corners and rely on hype and marketing to sell their products.
Hi Chris. While DIY can net savings potentially, I don’t know that it’s such a slam dunk. I’ve been DIYing since I was a kid and I’ve build a good dozen or more DIY speakers. I’ve designed my own from scratch as well as from kits. However, unlike most people, I review commercial products and I measure them. That means I know what the market looks like and I’ve heard the best commercial offerings. I also know what goes into them and I’ve designed two commercial designs. Even subwoofers. A lot of DIY Kits measure like crap. They aren’t very good. I think there is a lot more cost cutting in those kits than you may realize. In fact, I haven’t found too many kits that measure like the best speakers on the market. And that brings me to my next point. Commercial speaker designs have a leg up on small brands and DIYers. They can custom build drivers to spec. Not to cut cost, but to perform as needed in their application. They don’t have to design around driver deficiencies as much. They can custom make waveguides and when they bring it to market, they likely modeled 100’s and build dozens of prototypes. It’s actually very necessary. Using fancy parts is only useful if the design is good to begin with and this becomes the tricky part. As I said, I am yet to find many that are any good. There are some, but by the time you build them, I don’t know how far off a commercial offering you would be. For subwoofers, I do think you can DIY something better, at least to a point. However executing something as nicely finished can be hard and you are still stuck with off the shelf drivers. I have measured quite a few subwoofers including a number of DIY subs. Some were decent and some were not. The cost savings for the performance wasn’t as great as you might expect. Maybe 25%-50% as compared to the better value subs. One thing you get with the best commercial subs is both very good performance and very good protection. Very few people know how to set limiters in a sub the way pro engineers do. In fact most diy subs are not protected at all and this isn’t good. Not just because of damage. It’s not good because all subs eventually distort and this audible impairment ruins the experience. So while I still diy and I am not against it, I’ve lost the view that it’s a clearly superior way to get better performance for the money. I don’t believe that is totally true. It can be but more often than not it is not true.
I also feel this sentiment. I think people make up little narratives to help comfort their spending anxieties, that results in them internalizing various beliefs that supersede the reality of quality with fictitious concepts. Influencing their future perceptions from having rationalized past compromises into philosophies of quality and value. This concept of “good enough” is really quite the construct. Likely so pervasive from the myriad of salespeople who use the concept to help close the sale of an inferior product. I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who finds the references to percentages to be rather ridiculous. Even the best available is still far from perfection, and with so many variables that are all over the place, cross comparison of just one master metric is laughable. They all have unique character, rather than being proportional to each other.
I don’t like the term “good enough”, it sounds like a type of compromise. I prefer the term “more than good enough”! It’s more applicable to my philosophy when purchasing hi-fi products and jeans. I wonder what the retailer’s mark-up is on a hi-fi component or pair of speakers? I suspect that with expensive speakers there is more room for a higher margin, than there is with inexpensive speakers. If a pair of speakers cost $200 from the factory then the retailer adding 40% only takes them up to $280 which is not untoward. But, if a pair of “high end” speakers cost $30000 from the factory, the dealer could easily add 50% bringing them up to £45000 and no one would blink an eyelid. I guess there’s an element in that which makes expensive speakers preferable to retailers. You see for me, a $35 pair of jeans is more than good enough. Where as the speaker vendor may find a $100 pair of jeans not good enough and choose to spend $200 on his jeans. Yes they’ll have greater longevity and durability, but I could purchase 5 pairs of $35 jeans for less than $200 and 5 years later I bet the last of my 5 pairs of jeans are looking fresher than that $200 pair. Also, if you’ve invested $45000 in a pair of speakers and you aren’t totally happy with them, chances are you’ll keep listening to them until you are happy with them. If you’d only spent £280 on a pair and didn’t like them, you’d likely not hesitate to trade them in, or, send them to Danny at GR Research.
I think it is not practical to use the reference level intended for large movie theaters as a reference for our 15-20 or 40-50 m2 rooms at home. No matter which mid-priced or high-priced speaker that delivers those levels without any problems, the reference level will definitely not be the choice of many like me. No matter how clean the sound itself sounds, its intensity is disturbing. This has nothing to do with the budget we can allocate to audio. It's simply a usage preference.
Sure but most residential speakers can do anywhere near reference cleanly. Be it 75 instead of 85, many speakers would still struggle to achieve 95dB at the RSP. With a 12’ listening distance, that’s around 107dB at 1 meter. Much of our testing shows near or at the 3dB compression limit at 100-102dB. So I think this still applies and matters even if you don’t listen to reference levels. Even 10dB below can be a stretch. I would still stand by that if you are listening well below that, like 20dB below reference levels, that isn’t really a serious endeavor. That’s a casual watching if a film and these quality differences don’t really matter anymore. At that point it’s really more about being better than tv speakers, not attempting to experience the movie as intended by the creatives.
I think the idea that you can go for a relatively cheap speaker that is mostly as good as a very expensive one comes from the fact that there are many very expensive speakers in the market that are just not worth the money. In that case a well designed speaker like an Arendal Monitor beats a poorly designed "high end" speaker. But this is not the case when you add a really good designed high end speaker like the perlisten series to the mix. Personally I use 3x Neumann KH420 for my mains. I thought about a year about before buying it and then decided that it is worth it for me and this are probably my "end game" speakers. :)
I think that is mostly right. I also think it’s a psychological thing. This isn’t unique to the home theater or audio world. I’ve gotten into high end products of other hobbies over the years. Watches, shoes/clothing, furniture, cameras, cars. In fact I remember going to a track event at Watkins Glenn when I was in my early 20’s. I had a modified WRX that was quick for what it was but had an unbearable ride. Someone had a ten year old Ferrari. I think it was like a late 90’s 360 but may have been newer and a 430. In any case, this thing was bone stock. I got a ride around the track in it and what most impressed me was how livable it was as it rapidly beat the pants off my track time. I had R compound tires, 6 piston brakes with track rated pads, race spec coil overs, etc etc. You can’t claim to achieve a Ferrari for substantially less in this case, it just wasn’t similar. I find the same with audio gear. There is a lot of very good cheaper gear that offers good value. But the value is more that it is the best quality for the price. For twice the price there exists a similar product value that is the best for its respective price. And it’s better than the cheaper product. The Neuman’s you have and the Perlistens I have are not perfect or the best. They are simply the best at certain things for their price. I can’t use the Neuman in a 6000 cubic foot theater. They lack the output needed for that. I could use the Perlisten for that, but by 8000 cubic feet I can’t use the Perlisten either. In fact between 6 and 8k I would be exceeding their limits and likely need to move to something else. Well…I don’t know of an equally good sounding speaker that plays loud enough for those larger spaces. But I do have go to products that I use at that size that I think get close enough in measured performance while having the higher output I would need. Grimani is someone I work with and I like his speakers very much so he would probably be the speaker I would go to for larger rooms and/or where wider dispersion is desired.
@@PoesAcoustics Is the Tweeter limiting eith the Neumanns (asssuming they are bass managed below 80Hz)? I think output really plays an important role for the price. For normal music and average volume you get very good speakers in the 500-1000€ range. I use the KEF R3 on my desk an for music in my bedroom/office. They a perfectly fine for it. For Home theater the requirements for reproduction are much higher when reference level is aimed for.
While completely valid for your own use case, I think you are placing too much weight on output capability for the average person. The majority of people do not choose to listen at reference level in their home. It's a lot easier to get 90% of the experience at -10db to -15dB for a low price.
But that really isn’t my concern. Nor do I say that only output is the cost differentiator. Many aspects of more expensive speakers are better. As for output, movies are engineered at reference levels or at 3dB below reference levels for animated films for kids. Properly hearing everything necessitated listening at those levels. For those who choose to listen quieter, a reduction in fidelity is being made and accepted. So I can’t do videos on quality based on a practiced intended to degrade fidelity.
@@PoesAcoustics Oh of course output is not the only differentiator, but frequency response linearity and good directivity are attainable under $1000/each when you are not targeting reference level. I understand how you view below reference level listening as a quality compromise, but many would choose that as a preference. It's the most reasonable compromise in my estimation that can get you 90% of the experience in a home setting at a reasonable cost. Again, I wouldn't expect you to make this compromise for yourself. I just think it's a relevant point for making recommendations to a general audience.
@@RickRalstonAsumendi the problem is that until the industry standard changes to mixing movies at a lower level, it’s a practice that does compromise fidelity. Many of the same folks who do this complain about fidelity problems which likely stem from this. If movies were mixed at a lower volume, likely quiet passages and voices would be mixed louder relative to the dynamics. Dynamic range would suffer but movies would be more tolerable at lower volumes. In terms of your speaker claim. What speaker as state of the art frequency response linearity and directivity for $1000? I don’t know that I am aware of any speakers that good. Certainly there are some decent values that aren’t too bad. But to the point I made, in my experience, even linearity improves with rising price. The point where I have found linearity to not get better, directivity to not really get much better, and the limits are just output and bandwidth would still be closer to $3k+.
@@PoesAcoustics That's a fair point about industry practice and I think it would make sense to include a validation step below reference level for home release. That said, I think there are a lot more factors at play than just the mastering volume for people complaining about fidelity or intelligibility: room acoustics, poor setup, poor calibration, or straight up bad speakers. Anecdotally, I've not had issues with my typical movie volume not eclipsing 10dB below reference. From the Perlisten lineup, I am only aware of high resolution, 3rd party measurements on the S4b. I'll use that as my reference for "state of the art". The best metric we have that incorporates frequency response and directivity on a large sample of speakers is the Sean Olive tonality preference score. If we use calculated preference scores with a sub (ignoring LFX) the following speakers under $1000/each match the S4b: Ascend Sierra-LX, Genelec 8030c, Revel M105, Dynaudio LYD 5, Ascend CMT-340 SE2, Kef R3 This is only to evaluate tonality in a typical room and doesn't take into account output capability or distortion. I'm sure we could debate the merits of each endlessly, but definitive conclusions would require research into a statistical model that better predicts preference.
@@RickRalstonAsumendi none of the speakers you mention are going to be even in the ballpark in terms of output. So much so they wouldn’t even be appropriate for a mid sized room at -10dB from reference. The Genelec and Dynaudio are very small speakers that cannot produce a ton of output. Many of those are also not as good. Your basically taking every very good cheap speaker and treating it as equally good to a better measuring speaker. Nothing that I am aware of in Sean’s research has ever made clear how his scores work from a relative standpoint. How much better is a speaker that measures a little better on his score. It wasn’t really designed for that, just a model for statistically assessing preference from a set of standArd measurements. Amir has commented a few times that his preferences didn’t match the score and I’ve had a similar experience. Some speakers seem to have problems that score fails to account for properly causing it to have a higher score than the subjective sound quality suggests.
I put together a Revel system with f226be towers up front and c426be center channel (see profile pic). I told my wife not to ask how much I spent. I basically blew through my budget on speakers and "settled" on an Anthem MRX1120 receiver.
Those are very good speakers. I don’t think you settled at all. The performance of that setup will be very good. The incremental improvement that a better processor or amps would make is eeking out the last .1% of performance.
Perlisten S7i-LR. They sound just like the S7T with less bass. There are a number of very good in wall speakers but right now the Perlisten is my all around favorite. They have high output, really excellent measured performance, and the subjective sound quality is amazing. It’s why I chose to align with the company so much. Kef meta reference based in walls are good but not as good in my opinion. They can get a little rough when pushed to their limits. They don’t have a back box so you have to build that into the wall build quality is among the best but falls a little short of the Perlisten. I’ve heard wisdom a number of times now and walked away unimpressed for the price. The overall experience impressed. They play loud and aren’t fatiguing. However I just don’t find that the way they present music or movies is to my liking and I don’t think their approach is technically the best. I also don’t like their subwoofers. At a lower price point KEF and Revel would be my go to for the most neutral in wall. Below that price point I have actually been impressed with my Def Tech in walls. There might be better options for $599 a piece but I haven’t heard them.
@@PoesAcoustics I actually use the S-280's, but considering an upgrade. Looked at Wisdom and Perlisten as contenders. Heard wisdoms on a few occasions, but haven't been able to demo any of the Perlisten in walls yet.
Probably still couldn’t pull it off. Some of the costs to achieve the things that CEDIA recommends in their audio design are expensive regardless. Sound isolation, HVAC design, acoustic treatment goals all cost a lot even in small rooms. I have no idea how cheap you could DIY a home theater that meets all the specs. I would suspect that you would still be in it for a lot of money doing all the labor yourself. If you had to pay a professional to design a theater that would meet those standards and provide you with the necessary documentation to execute the design properly, you are looking at $20,000+ just in design and engineering. Very few people actually understand what goes into those award winning theaters and I would guess very few could execute something as capable on their own. The engineering and design work is not insignificant. How it looks is not what wins awards. It’s how it performs and they rely on your documentation to prove it’s performance. I will be submitting my first two theaters for consideration to CEDIA either this coming or the following year (depends on when they are completed). Beyond what has been explained to me or in working with folks who have won such awards, even I can’t pretend like I know exactly how to develop a fully award winning theater. Until I have personally won such an award based 100% on my engineering I will be more guarded in my comments.
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Not every one can afford 10k speakers. I just barely have 10k in my complete system and thats a mix of new and used equipment thats taken me almost 2 years to put together. You got to put yourself a lower income class below 50k a year and without the connection you got would you still own the same system you have now or would you re-think your strategies differently knowing what you know now.
That’s totally ok. Nothing about this was intended to suggest that you need expensive speakers or that cheaper speakers are bad. It was simply the idea that spending more gets more, or not. There is a lot of debate and many want to argue that at a certain point spending more is for vanity. My point is that isn’t my experience. While price doesn’t equal quality, within the realm of quality speakers, spending more does make a difference.
@@PoesAcoustics😂😂
I appreciate you Matt! I could never own a $3,000 pr of speakers let $10,000 a pr at retail. I priced how much it would cost to build a real nice pair of 3-way reference level speakers. After pricing the cost of the MDF, or HDF, and cost to build the cabinets, the price of all other materials would come out to easy $2500 - $4500 to complete at a modest price. As a business to cover all costs of labor, storage ect... I am not surprised that these speakers would sell for $8,000 - $16,000 pr. If you have the expertise, and the ability to find all the materials at wholesale prices, you could make your own. You really have to be on the ball to be able to use multiple speakers with synergy using the best crossover components. You would have to have experience with (speaker design) cabinet design as well for maximum synergy, and fidelity. If a speaker builder doesn't cheap out designing, and building a quality speaker, even the cheapest priced speaker will most likely be far superior to most anything considered great by the average person. The quality of the materials used is at least 50% of the cost of building the speakers. The other 50% is labor, and design. Sometimes I ask myself on some speakers that are really decent for their price, and wonder how in the world can they sell this item at such a low price? How are they not loosing money? I really like your videos Matt! I also like Audioholics! Thanks again Matt for sharing!
I don't think that there is a difference between a $100k and a $400k pair of speakers of about the same size, but there is a difference between a $1k and a $4k pair of speakers.
not according to him both suck if not at least 10k...
How much weight do you place on playing reference level volume in reaching an immersive experience? Many speakers can play 10db down from reference (based on manufacture specs for power handling) at a fair distance. That extra 10db seems to cost a lot more to achieve.
Yeah that’s a common problem. Achieving that reference levels is costly.
So it won’t immerse your or envelope you anymore. But it is as the director intended. This is the problem with ignoring that, voices were not recorded loud enough to turn them down 10dB. Quiet parts were also not recorded loud enough. The mixing was done under the assumption of a certain room noise floor and playback level. So when you turn it down 10dB you drop everything 10dB and now the effects and the voices won’t be clear. In fact, I take back my earlier comment. There probably is a loss of immersion from atmospherics falling into the background level.
If someone chooses to listen below reference levels, compression and a voice raising or enhancing feature would probably be a good idea. A lot of receivers offer this. Compression is a better way to fix the loudness problem.
I also like music played back at louder levels and for me the benefit is a more realistic experience. Music is loud. A violin is loud. A trumpet is loud. A guitar is loud. So when we don’t listen at those same levels we lose the natural dynamics of the instrument. We lose the visceral impact as well. The experience is less real for me.
Absolutely but to a degree diminishing returns kick in at some point.
Goes for most things in life actually, good points you raise.
Yeah. And I am as cheap as anyone. I like nice shoes. I went on various men’s forums to find the best values. I read about all these brands that people claimed equaled the expensive designer shoes for less. Well I bought them. Lots of them. I also own lots of the pricey designer ones. And in the end I found the designer stuff is better, often a lot better.
I usually find that value is more about the best for a certain price. I rarely find things that are as good as the best but for half the price.
@@PoesAcoustics True, before each purchase I say to myself " The poor man pays twice" am I ok with being the poor man after buying this. If the answer is no then I spend the higher amount and buy the better brand, this especially with buying any tools.
@@microteche it depends on the goal. Designer shoes, tools, cars, function vs style are dependent on perspective. Tools would prob have to do with function, reliability, time efficency and no concern if there was a designer painting on the tool. With his shoes, he's not worried about them lasting while on daily runs, he's paying for style and comfort. Cars can both get you from A to B but how do we want to feel while getting there.
The idea of buying twice is dependent as well. What if you have several rooms to make systems for? Or friends to give cheap stuff to? When I build computer's I know at some point I will transition the used pc to a kid so that factors into the parts I add. He mentioned blue jeans, when I was young I liked the $200 jeans too, but now I could care less.
Absolutely they do, I mean there is a point of diminishing returns but yes. 100%. My Paradigm Persona’s sound exponentially better than a pair of $1000 Best Buy specials. You pay for what you get for the most part.
Yes. But there seems to be a mentality amongst some that it is possible to achieve near perfect sound or near the best sound at a price that isn’t far from $1000. That doesn’t match my experience.
Thanks for the video, interesting thing to ponder. Obviously if you have more money you can do more and get better results. Even to the DIY crowed, you know you need to spend around $1000 to get a top quality drivers in a 2-way. A commercial product would cost $3-4k just for the 2-way with low distortion drivers. 3-way would be $6-9k easy if it had $1500-2000 in parts.
And a lot of diy efforts aren’t that good. A number have now been tested in Klippels and found to be mediocre. Which doesn’t shock me.
I am yet to see a DIY effort yield measured results as good as the best commercial offerings.
I would only make one addition to your comments. I’d take a pair $5000/pr of speakers in a properly treated room over a $50,000 pair in a poorly treatef 11:10 (or worse) room every day!
How about a list of speakers in different price ranges moving up from 5k to 20k of pairs of recommended speakers. I have Kef R11s. If they are not up to the job, let me know. Kef has a range of speakers that sound tonality the same. Being in the UK with our tiny houses, it is hard to fit 7 speakers and 2 subwoofers in but I managed it using R series at the front and heights and some Kef flat speakers for the sides and rears. My room is not a bad size 24 foot by 13 foot. Being wider would have made it easier. I cant do in wall speakers.
What do you think about the Revel Performa3 F208s?
Genelec s360 is intriguing for LCR with remotely mounted amps in the rack, but the deal breaker is getting power to surround locations for anything else from genelec...
I have a genelec 7.2.4 system (SVS subs) and you just need sufficiently long power cords for surrounds, running them at the same places as the xlr cables. True, it is a bit more cumbersome but not that difficult in the end.
I will never buy another manufacturer's speakers. I will continue to build my own for 1/4 or less the price while at the same time not compromising on crossover parts. DIY may not be for everyone, but I just built a pair of bookshelf speakers and a center channel for my den. These DIY speakers are the best sounding speakers I have ever had in my home and the three speakers cost about $500. I have built my own subwoofers for years and they always outperform store bought subs that cost thousands more than my DIY sub. Too many speaker manufactures do not focus on the sound of their products, but instead cut corners and rely on hype and marketing to sell their products.
Hi Chris. While DIY can net savings potentially, I don’t know that it’s such a slam dunk. I’ve been DIYing since I was a kid and I’ve build a good dozen or more DIY speakers. I’ve designed my own from scratch as well as from kits. However, unlike most people, I review commercial products and I measure them. That means I know what the market looks like and I’ve heard the best commercial offerings. I also know what goes into them and I’ve designed two commercial designs. Even subwoofers.
A lot of DIY Kits measure like crap. They aren’t very good. I think there is a lot more cost cutting in those kits than you may realize. In fact, I haven’t found too many kits that measure like the best speakers on the market. And that brings me to my next point.
Commercial speaker designs have a leg up on small brands and DIYers. They can custom build drivers to spec. Not to cut cost, but to perform as needed in their application. They don’t have to design around driver deficiencies as much. They can custom make waveguides and when they bring it to market, they likely modeled 100’s and build dozens of prototypes. It’s actually very necessary.
Using fancy parts is only useful if the design is good to begin with and this becomes the tricky part. As I said, I am yet to find many that are any good. There are some, but by the time you build them, I don’t know how far off a commercial offering you would be.
For subwoofers, I do think you can DIY something better, at least to a point. However executing something as nicely finished can be hard and you are still stuck with off the shelf drivers. I have measured quite a few subwoofers including a number of DIY subs. Some were decent and some were not. The cost savings for the performance wasn’t as great as you might expect. Maybe 25%-50% as compared to the better value subs.
One thing you get with the best commercial subs is both very good performance and very good protection. Very few people know how to set limiters in a sub the way pro engineers do. In fact most diy subs are not protected at all and this isn’t good. Not just because of damage. It’s not good because all subs eventually distort and this audible impairment ruins the experience.
So while I still diy and I am not against it, I’ve lost the view that it’s a clearly superior way to get better performance for the money. I don’t believe that is totally true. It can be but more often than not it is not true.
I also feel this sentiment. I think people make up little narratives to help comfort their spending anxieties, that results in them internalizing various beliefs that supersede the reality of quality with fictitious concepts. Influencing their future perceptions from having rationalized past compromises into philosophies of quality and value.
This concept of “good enough” is really quite the construct. Likely so pervasive from the myriad of salespeople who use the concept to help close the sale of an inferior product.
I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who finds the references to percentages to be rather ridiculous. Even the best available is still far from perfection, and with so many variables that are all over the place, cross comparison of just one master metric is laughable. They all have unique character, rather than being proportional to each other.
I didn't quite catch all of that, do you just mean "perpective."
@@trauma50disaster1 I’m not sure where you lost me, but if you’d like to buy a vowel, I have some for sale. Ha ha
Using the Arendal 1723 S Towers and they are incredible.
They are a really good value. Hard to beat for the price.
I don’t like the term “good enough”, it sounds like a type of compromise. I prefer the term “more than good enough”! It’s more applicable to my philosophy when purchasing hi-fi products and jeans.
I wonder what the retailer’s mark-up is on a hi-fi component or pair of speakers? I suspect that with expensive speakers there is more room for a higher margin, than there is with inexpensive speakers. If a pair of speakers cost $200 from the factory then the retailer adding 40% only takes them up to $280 which is not untoward. But, if a pair of “high end” speakers cost $30000 from the factory, the dealer could easily add 50% bringing them up to £45000 and no one would blink an eyelid. I guess there’s an element in that which makes expensive speakers preferable to retailers.
You see for me, a $35 pair of jeans is more than good enough. Where as the speaker vendor may find a $100 pair of jeans not good enough and choose to spend $200 on his jeans. Yes they’ll have greater longevity and durability, but I could purchase 5 pairs of $35 jeans for less than $200 and 5 years later I bet the last of my 5 pairs of jeans are looking fresher than that $200 pair.
Also, if you’ve invested $45000 in a pair of speakers and you aren’t totally happy with them, chances are you’ll keep listening to them until you are happy with them. If you’d only spent £280 on a pair and didn’t like them, you’d likely not hesitate to trade them in, or, send them to Danny at GR Research.
I think it is not practical to use the reference level intended for large movie theaters as a reference for our 15-20 or 40-50 m2 rooms at home. No matter which mid-priced or high-priced speaker that delivers those levels without any problems, the reference level will definitely not be the choice of many like me. No matter how clean the sound itself sounds, its intensity is disturbing. This has nothing to do with the budget we can allocate to audio. It's simply a usage preference.
Sure but most residential speakers can do anywhere near reference cleanly. Be it 75 instead of 85, many speakers would still struggle to achieve 95dB at the RSP. With a 12’ listening distance, that’s around 107dB at 1 meter. Much of our testing shows near or at the 3dB compression limit at 100-102dB.
So I think this still applies and matters even if you don’t listen to reference levels. Even 10dB below can be a stretch. I would still stand by that if you are listening well below that, like 20dB below reference levels, that isn’t really a serious endeavor. That’s a casual watching if a film and these quality differences don’t really matter anymore. At that point it’s really more about being better than tv speakers, not attempting to experience the movie as intended by the creatives.
I think the idea that you can go for a relatively cheap speaker that is mostly as good as a very expensive one comes from the fact that there are many very expensive speakers in the market that are just not worth the money. In that case a well designed speaker like an Arendal Monitor beats a poorly designed "high end" speaker. But this is not the case when you add a really good designed high end speaker like the perlisten series to the mix. Personally I use 3x Neumann KH420 for my mains. I thought about a year about before buying it and then decided that it is worth it for me and this are probably my "end game" speakers. :)
I think that is mostly right. I also think it’s a psychological thing. This isn’t unique to the home theater or audio world.
I’ve gotten into high end products of other hobbies over the years. Watches, shoes/clothing, furniture, cameras, cars. In fact I remember going to a track event at Watkins Glenn when I was in my early 20’s. I had a modified WRX that was quick for what it was but had an unbearable ride. Someone had a ten year old Ferrari. I think it was like a late 90’s 360 but may have been newer and a 430. In any case, this thing was bone stock. I got a ride around the track in it and what most impressed me was how livable it was as it rapidly beat the pants off my track time. I had R compound tires, 6 piston brakes with track rated pads, race spec coil overs, etc etc. You can’t claim to achieve a Ferrari for substantially less in this case, it just wasn’t similar.
I find the same with audio gear. There is a lot of very good cheaper gear that offers good value. But the value is more that it is the best quality for the price. For twice the price there exists a similar product value that is the best for its respective price. And it’s better than the cheaper product.
The Neuman’s you have and the Perlistens I have are not perfect or the best. They are simply the best at certain things for their price. I can’t use the Neuman in a 6000 cubic foot theater. They lack the output needed for that. I could use the Perlisten for that, but by 8000 cubic feet I can’t use the Perlisten either. In fact between 6 and 8k I would be exceeding their limits and likely need to move to something else. Well…I don’t know of an equally good sounding speaker that plays loud enough for those larger spaces. But I do have go to products that I use at that size that I think get close enough in measured performance while having the higher output I would need. Grimani is someone I work with and I like his speakers very much so he would probably be the speaker I would go to for larger rooms and/or where wider dispersion is desired.
@@PoesAcoustics Is the Tweeter limiting eith the Neumanns (asssuming they are bass managed below 80Hz)? I think output really plays an important role for the price. For normal music and average volume you get very good speakers in the 500-1000€ range. I use the KEF R3 on my desk an for music in my bedroom/office. They a perfectly fine for it. For Home theater the requirements for reproduction are much higher when reference level is aimed for.
While completely valid for your own use case, I think you are placing too much weight on output capability for the average person. The majority of people do not choose to listen at reference level in their home. It's a lot easier to get 90% of the experience at -10db to -15dB for a low price.
But that really isn’t my concern. Nor do I say that only output is the cost differentiator. Many aspects of more expensive speakers are better.
As for output, movies are engineered at reference levels or at 3dB below reference levels for animated films for kids. Properly hearing everything necessitated listening at those levels. For those who choose to listen quieter, a reduction in fidelity is being made and accepted. So I can’t do videos on quality based on a practiced intended to degrade fidelity.
@@PoesAcoustics Oh of course output is not the only differentiator, but frequency response linearity and good directivity are attainable under $1000/each when you are not targeting reference level. I understand how you view below reference level listening as a quality compromise, but many would choose that as a preference. It's the most reasonable compromise in my estimation that can get you 90% of the experience in a home setting at a reasonable cost. Again, I wouldn't expect you to make this compromise for yourself. I just think it's a relevant point for making recommendations to a general audience.
@@RickRalstonAsumendi the problem is that until the industry standard changes to mixing movies at a lower level, it’s a practice that does compromise fidelity. Many of the same folks who do this complain about fidelity problems which likely stem from this. If movies were mixed at a lower volume, likely quiet passages and voices would be mixed louder relative to the dynamics. Dynamic range would suffer but movies would be more tolerable at lower volumes.
In terms of your speaker claim. What speaker as state of the art frequency response linearity and directivity for $1000? I don’t know that I am aware of any speakers that good. Certainly there are some decent values that aren’t too bad. But to the point I made, in my experience, even linearity improves with rising price.
The point where I have found linearity to not get better, directivity to not really get much better, and the limits are just output and bandwidth would still be closer to $3k+.
@@PoesAcoustics That's a fair point about industry practice and I think it would make sense to include a validation step below reference level for home release. That said, I think there are a lot more factors at play than just the mastering volume for people complaining about fidelity or intelligibility: room acoustics, poor setup, poor calibration, or straight up bad speakers. Anecdotally, I've not had issues with my typical movie volume not eclipsing 10dB below reference.
From the Perlisten lineup, I am only aware of high resolution, 3rd party measurements on the S4b. I'll use that as my reference for "state of the art". The best metric we have that incorporates frequency response and directivity on a large sample of speakers is the Sean Olive tonality preference score. If we use calculated preference scores with a sub (ignoring LFX) the following speakers under $1000/each match the S4b: Ascend Sierra-LX, Genelec 8030c, Revel M105, Dynaudio LYD 5, Ascend CMT-340 SE2, Kef R3
This is only to evaluate tonality in a typical room and doesn't take into account output capability or distortion. I'm sure we could debate the merits of each endlessly, but definitive conclusions would require research into a statistical model that better predicts preference.
@@RickRalstonAsumendi none of the speakers you mention are going to be even in the ballpark in terms of output. So much so they wouldn’t even be appropriate for a mid sized room at -10dB from reference. The Genelec and Dynaudio are very small speakers that cannot produce a ton of output.
Many of those are also not as good. Your basically taking every very good cheap speaker and treating it as equally good to a better measuring speaker.
Nothing that I am aware of in Sean’s research has ever made clear how his scores work from a relative standpoint. How much better is a speaker that measures a little better on his score. It wasn’t really designed for that, just a model for statistically assessing preference from a set of standArd measurements.
Amir has commented a few times that his preferences didn’t match the score and I’ve had a similar experience. Some speakers seem to have problems that score fails to account for properly causing it to have a higher score than the subjective sound quality suggests.
I put together a Revel system with f226be towers up front and c426be center channel (see profile pic). I told my wife not to ask how much I spent. I basically blew through my budget on speakers and "settled" on an Anthem MRX1120 receiver.
Those are very good speakers. I don’t think you settled at all. The performance of that setup will be very good. The incremental improvement that a better processor or amps would make is eeking out the last .1% of performance.
What’s the best architectural speakers you have heard?
Perlisten S7i-LR. They sound just like the S7T with less bass.
There are a number of very good in wall speakers but right now the Perlisten is my all around favorite. They have high output, really excellent measured performance, and the subjective sound quality is amazing. It’s why I chose to align with the company so much.
Kef meta reference based in walls are good but not as good in my opinion. They can get a little rough when pushed to their limits. They don’t have a back box so you have to build that into the wall build quality is among the best but falls a little short of the Perlisten.
I’ve heard wisdom a number of times now and walked away unimpressed for the price. The overall experience impressed. They play loud and aren’t fatiguing. However I just don’t find that the way they present music or movies is to my liking and I don’t think their approach is technically the best. I also don’t like their subwoofers.
At a lower price point KEF and Revel would be my go to for the most neutral in wall. Below that price point I have actually been impressed with my Def Tech in walls. There might be better options for $599 a piece but I haven’t heard them.
@@PoesAcoustics thanks for the reply and the additional insights 👌
@@PoesAcoustics Perlisten sure measures well. I hope they make a serious in wall sub. Ever listen to Dali Phantom S-280? Also a good option.
@@mrlinde6518 I have. We used those in a project once.
Yes nice but the two I mentioned remain my preferences.
@@PoesAcoustics I actually use the S-280's, but considering an upgrade. Looked at Wisdom and Perlisten as contenders. Heard wisdoms on a few occasions, but haven't been able to demo any of the Perlisten in walls yet.
I'm thinking the only way to have a cedia spec level theater for us poor folk is to have a 10x13x7.5 room and 2.5 seats.
Probably still couldn’t pull it off. Some of the costs to achieve the things that CEDIA recommends in their audio design are expensive regardless. Sound isolation, HVAC design, acoustic treatment goals all cost a lot even in small rooms. I have no idea how cheap you could DIY a home theater that meets all the specs. I would suspect that you would still be in it for a lot of money doing all the labor yourself.
If you had to pay a professional to design a theater that would meet those standards and provide you with the necessary documentation to execute the design properly, you are looking at $20,000+ just in design and engineering.
Very few people actually understand what goes into those award winning theaters and I would guess very few could execute something as capable on their own. The engineering and design work is not insignificant. How it looks is not what wins awards. It’s how it performs and they rely on your documentation to prove it’s performance.
I will be submitting my first two theaters for consideration to CEDIA either this coming or the following year (depends on when they are completed). Beyond what has been explained to me or in working with folks who have won such awards, even I can’t pretend like I know exactly how to develop a fully award winning theater. Until I have personally won such an award based 100% on my engineering I will be more guarded in my comments.
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