Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Axiom, with $10,000 US to build a speaker..

could you use it effectively or is that more than would be needed to build a speaker that met your ideal to within .00001 % or so ?

On alt.home-theater.misc someone asked for a recommendation for the best speaker system under $20,000. Among the answers was this :

>Do take a listen to Aerial Acoustics speakers. Their best
> L/R pair, the 20T, are 20 grand by themselves and won't fit
> in your budget, but using a pair of 10T's for main L/R, a
> CC3 for the center and a pair of SR3 di/bipolars for
> surrounds, will come in well under $20,000.

So lets assume that you wanted to build the best speaker possible and that the final price would be cost of labor and materials plus reasonable markup (development costs to be spread out over the first 10000 units). would such a speaker sell for $20000 a pair ? Or do you think Axiom could make a competitive speaker for less than that. I'm also curious what components would run the cost up to those levels.

On this message board, we like to ask relevant, interesting, and feasable questions. If you want 10,000$ US speakers, then buy Totem Shaman's or whatnot.

Who do you mean by 'we'- I probably just don't know your position in this organization, Mr. Singh, so tell me who appointed you to decide what is interesting and relevant. Then perhaps I'll try to check with you before I bring anything to the board. Sheesh !

If one of the Axiom people, or anyone else who knows speaker design, wants to address my question I expect to learn a great deal about loudspeakers and what makes the high end so high in cost. I'd guess that even if you don't think its interesting plenty of others will.

And by the way I don't want $10000 speakers. I am delighted with my Axioms and would like to know what more one would expect to get for the additional $9800.

9800 can buy a car

Do you mean if I send Aerial Audio $10000 they might send me their model 10T loudspeaker and a used Hyundai ?

Hey don't knock Hyundai, I have a Sonata with 385,000 kms thats 231,000 miles still on the same engine although it's starting to burn oil. As for the speakers Axiom does not make a $20,000 nor probably ever will but you could try MartinLogan Prodigy at $22,500 or ATC Multichannel Concept 7 Collection at $92,500 how do you justify that

The building of speakers in these sorts of price ranges usually has more to do with the cabinet aesthetics than with the components used. But leaving the aesthetics aside for the moment, I find it best to not be too concerned about the end price of the speaker when doing the design. This avoids putting in fancy technical stuff that may even detract from the performance in order to justify the cost. This being said we are always working on new things and trying to achieve even more accurate reproduction, so we will have to see where this research ends up for final product prices. For overall performance and accuracy of reproduction, I would have no problem putting the M80s up against products costing many times the price.

Thanks Ian. I can easily believe that the M80 is good enough so that more $ invested in their construction would produce little or no acoustic improvement.

Regarding the $10000 speakers sold by other companies it is hard to imagine that the price can be justified by the cabinetry. As a piece of furniture how does a speaker cabinet even begin to compare to a fine china cabinet, dining table, or steinway piano, all of which can be purchased for less than $10000 ?

Hello Harvey,

Some of them can be quite beautiful, acutally. I once lusted after a compact 2-way (Italian, I believe) built of Koa wood (Hawaian?). It sounded okay but it was physically beautiful and it was about $3,500 a pair.

Then again, at the recently concluded Stereophile-sponsored Home Theater Show at the Hilton here in New York, I just heard a largish bookshelf speaker from a famous high-end amp manufacturer. It's all-metal (stainless steel?), looks fabulous, and sounded awful! And, get this: $10,000 per pair!

A few years ago, I almost spent $2,500 on a steel-string acoustic guitar from Craig Breedlove because it was made of curly maple. Very peculiar sound, rather soft but lovely nonetheless. I bought a Taylor, not as beautiful, $1,000 less expensive and very balanced detailed sound. Still, I sometimes wonder ....

In my judgment, it's rapidly diminishing returns in speaker sound quality once you reach about the $2,000 level. In other words, slight, if audible improvements cost thousands. . .

Regards

Ever take a look at the B&W Nautilus? I have a hard time it's worth a penny over $10,000, much less $60,000, for the sound quality. Aesthetics is another matter altogether.

i've seen the nautilus, about 45,000$ US per pair... they look like they are from another planet, but I doubt they sound like $45,000 US

Those nautilus speakers look like big conch shells to me.

"HEY YOU CAN'T SPEAK, I HAVE THE CONCH": Lord of the Flies

Alan said, "I just heard a largish bookshelf speaker from a famous high-end amp manufacturer. It's all-metal (stainless steel?), looks fabulous, and sounded awful! And, get this: $10,000 per pair!"

Would that manufacturers name happen to start with a K? If so, I just listened to this same speaker for about two hours. The whole time I was thinking how much better my $275 M3 Axioms sound.
BTW...can't wait to hear your NEW M2i.