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When I was first shopping for stereo in the early 70's, the 901's were pushed in most of the stores, and they definitely had a distinctive sound. But I actually heard them sound good on one occasion. A guy I knew set up a pair for the local community theatre, doing a production in a small venue. He had a Phase Linear amp and a DBX 3? expander. **emphasis added **The music was a squeezebox playing a tune for a scene in a Paris outdoor cafe. The sound was expansive and holographic. Compared to my little Marantz 1060 integrated and large Advents, it blew me away. Nearly 40 years later I still remember it. In the day, set up right, they could sound pretty darned good.
JLM is absolutely right. We do need to keep this all in context. My first loudspeaker ever was my 1st year in college back in 1992, and it was a Bose 201. My best friend at the time had a 301. Of course, my 201 lasted about 2 months before, I took the grill off, removed the woofer and found that the woofer was run wideband without a crossover and the tweeter had an electrolytic capacitor in series with it. Entire enclosure was particle board. Of course, I moved on after I learned about the distinct association between marketing and sound quality in high end audio.I have to thank Bose however for opening my eyes (and I got them for $150/pair so I wasn't screwed as much as some). I wouldn't have turned to DIY had I had a set of 'high end' speakers as my 1st speaker.FWIW,Anand.
Once I "upgraded" some 301 speakers for a friend, and I was shocked of the "POOR" quality of components and materials that these speakers are made. They try to save as much money as they can, but at the same time they try to price their products as high as they can. it is funny to see some people bragging about their Bose speakers, they think they have the pinnacle in speakers. Keep dreaming Bose lovers...keep dreaming!
You are wrong sir!!! He can sell tose drivers for way,way more money like $30 each, remember they are Bose drivers made of lunar material that can reach a phenomenal 12khz with +/-10 db.
Whoa, this topic is getting heavy.
When you add up the value of all of the drivers used in practically all TOTL speakers like those of Wilson and Von Schweikert they come out to a tiny fraction of the $150,000 they charge for them. You could easily reverse engineer them for a few thosand dollars if you are not obsessed wtih the finish of the cabinets. Their price based on the value of what's in them is a joke. The changes to the stock drivers if any the speaker manufacturers make when they order them from their OEM source is not due to some remarkable discovery they've made but to keep control over the replacement/repair market for them and to prevent exact reverse engineering, however substantially similar units are available from those manufacturers as standard stock items.
If you've ever toured the Wilson factory (and i have) the amount of time and expense that goes into every Wilson product is pretty substantial. You may think you can reverse engineer a pair of them for a couple thousand bucks, you can't. You can't even buy the product they make their cabinets out of. Most of the driver changes are to get a specific performance parameter, and they buy in large enough quantity that it makes sense...And you also forget that Wilson has one of the best dealer and service networks in the business. Even when you buy a $15k pair of Sophias, the dealer installs them in your house,etc etc.There's probably a couple thousand bucks worth of just wire and caps in a pair of Sophias. Not even counting the drivers, the cabinets and the quality of finish, which is part of what someone buys a $15k pair of speakers for.All of these things add up to why Wilson products also enjoy a high resale. I'm guessing that your $2000 wilson clone will suck.(and it will have zero value on the secondary market) There was a company at CES last year showing off their X2 Alexandria clone that sounded dreadful in comparison and guess what? They were $175k a pair.If you can make a better speaker than a Wilson Sophia for $2500, I'll put it on the cover and give you a years worth of free advertising to launch your business. It won't happen.
I've always wondered how a $30,000 speaker can be placed beside a $30,000 car and called a good value. The complexity, materials, engineering, tolerances, durability, etc., etc., etc...... in the car are orders of magnitude greater than what is required by, and provided in, the speaker. Personally, I think the ultra high end audio products are a shameless fraud perpetuated on a witless hobbyist elite. If you go far enough into the land of diminishing returns, you come up empty.Maybe manufacturers have found that the paucity of new customers can be overcome by scoring deeper on the few willing remnants of their past customer base.
Say ----- you really are sound-minded.
I would say that at best he is only half soundminded because he is only looking at one side of the coin.
