Do Expensive Speakers Sound Better than Cheap Speakers?

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[CompetitionChris]

I got to be honest. You guys should have more than 99, 000 subscribers. You guys put in the work that no one else does. There's a lot of review channels out there but you guys dig deep and do everything. And that is what makes you guys Above the Rest. Great job.

[ReferenceFidelityComponents]

Generally speaking....YES. I'm a speaker designer and manufacturer from the uk. More expensive drive units have had more r&d put info them towards excelling within their bandwidth for low distortion and good power handling plus smooth off axis performance. It is NOT true to suggest bass extension needs lots of money...in fact thats nonsense. Cheap PA speakers can deliver bass but not refinement for example. A good speaker is the sum of it's parts. It needs good cabinet design, decent drive unit performance and good crossover design. Sacrifice just one of those things and you compromise the speaker.

In general terms you can have two of the following but rarely all three: bass extension, efficiency, compact size. This is the designers connundrum.

Resonance control in cabinets becomes more critical as size climbs. Rule of thumb for top speakers is that the cabinet can cost up to 70 to 80 % of the total of the speakers and that the crossovers slightly less than the drive units for quality designs which rarely include first order crossovers...the mark of a lazy design or a designer with little expertise who uses step response and phase arguments to justify poor design. Bandwidth overlap in 1st order has nothing good to recommend it period and despite the myth you cannot "hear" 2nd order or 3rd order if well designed plus these have distinct advantages for lower distorton, higher power handling and control of polar response.

What to look for at each price point includes type, number and layout of drivers, design of cabinet and of crossover. CoAxial 2 way passive...like Tannoy DC designs have much to recommend them but rarely in factory cabinets for older models and rarely with factory crossovers which is true of many designs. DC speakers give true point source so have almost cardiod non tilted field lobing patterns free of destructive comb filtering artefacts. Theres so much to the design of speakers that its impossible to sum it all up briefly but the first and second paragraphs above are a good rule of thumb.

[davidkosa]

I've found the used market is a good way to buy something you otherwise could not afford.

[Rometiklan]

I haven't upgraded my speakers in decades. Still using my Definitive Technologies BP10s as my fronts, and my Polk Audio 5 Jrs as my surrounds. Bought these when I was a kid in high school. I still dream about getting better speakers but I guess my mortgage and putting 2 kids through college have taken precedence. This channel keeps my dream alive. Thanks for posting!

[jeffsloane]

At 4:30 Gene makes a recommendation that I think is profound. Instead of trying to buy an expensive full range speaker, spend your money on a set with great midrange and treble and then add multiple subs to fill in the low range. THIS IS FANTASTIC ADVICE! and is free you youtube.

[howardskeivys]

From my experience as an audio consumer the laws of diminishing returns is key. You pay £5000 for a pair of well designed speakers and you will need to spend substantially more to get a significant improvement. Spend £500 pounds on a pair and you are still in the region where spending a little more gets you significant improvements. Not forgetting that if your amp is not up to the job your speakers will under perform regardless of how much you paid for them!

[nelsong]

I'm still using Infinity Primus 250 towers in my home theater. I bought those suckers like 14 years ago. Still sound great in my dedicated theater with 2 subs

[RustOnTime]

Not always. Around the year 2000 I bought a cheap shiny plastic Pioneer XR-A6800 stereo with two bookshelf speakers. 8 inch woofers, 2.5 inch midrangers, 1 inch tweeters and a single capacitor as crossover. But maybe by pure chance they sound awesome. Full, airy realistic sound with a lot of bass extention. Still proudly use them in a tv setup till they perish.

[peterbaugh]

The most important component of any good quality speaker is its designer. Andrew Jones has a good ear and has made great speakers for the price. I have a pair of speakers by Andrew Jones that sound better than my B&W speakers at six times the price. Six times the price, and they do not sound as good as the Andrew Jones / Elac Reference stand mount speakers. So, you could spend 10 times the amount of a pair of Andrews Jones speakers and MAYBE get the same or better quality sound (up to 85 db). Louder is not better for my tastes. The most expensive parts in the world thrown together with a poorly designed crossover and poorly designed cabinet, are not going to make realistic musical sound. The design is critical to all aspects of all parts of every speaker. Not necessarily the total cost of the speaker. Thanks for the video. It was very informative.

[whatonearthamito]

To a degree. You can go down to some level cheap. Below a decent level, speakers kinda lose important things like GOOD SOUND. Impossibly expensive speakers ARE stupid tho, IMHO

[adam]

I feel like the area where you really should prioritise your hifi spend is the speakers. Like everything there are diminishing returns but the level is higher with speakers IMHO. I would go so far as to say that I'd spend as much or more on the speakers than I would the rest of the system combined.

[kirkcunningham]

I have the JBL Studio 5 series, the Studio 590's with the 520C center channel. Two grand retail, bought them on sale through JBL for a grand. $350 for the center. UNBELIEVABLE speakers!! Love em and will never get rid of em! Greg Timbers last design too...

[yvesboutin]

For 30 years now I have upgraded about 100 loudspeakers from the cheapest to the low-fi point and I can tell you this: with a decent crossover, some damping, and sometimes retuning of the ports, most of the cheapest speakers start to sound close to Hi-fi products. Thank you for this excellent channel, I really appreciate the topics you brought and the content is truthful yet respectful, which is a nice touch in the audiophile world.

[kenwebster]

I would say generally yes but there is a lot of overlap and there are some really stand out performers in each class and price range. Price is definitely not an iron clad guarantee of sonic performance. I would agree with the previous comment that 2nd hand can provide a huge bang for buck, providing you buy something that was an exceptional performer in it's day at the right price and you are prepared and able to get any needed repairs done, including XO rebuild. Caps typically don't last well, get good ones! I generally go this rout but I don't have ideal listening space. I love my Polk 2B's and Proac EBT's but my Brother's Legacy towers are obviously much more high end than my vintage gear. Still, for the price, the vintage gear is extremely nice to listen with and there is a certain satisfaction and interest messing about tweaking it. Yes, I could just buy some really nice high end stuff, but that just gets me to the end of the road & where's the fun in that, I'd probably listen to all the recording a few times and then no more. The fun is trying different things and discovering new sounds. Achieving your ultimate goal is the death of interest.

[SoulControlla]

Bought a pair of Cerwin Vegas about 20yrs ago for about $500 that I still like. I'm sure there's much better out there now. I live in an apartment now so I can't do much cranking of the volume. Don't use my sub much nowadays either for the same reason. But the speakers have great bass by themselves.

[nickclark]

I bought a pair of Acoustic Research AR91 floor standing speakers in the mid 1970's, I was 19 and they cost £350 which was a LOT of money, about 3 months wages, they are still going strong today... They were very heavy 3 way speakers and had a 12" bass speaker. Any one owned a pair of these?

[genesis]

I'm willing to spend insane amounts of money on speakers...My bank account on the other hand isn't...

[Fmandan]

I'm 42, as a kid the best speakers I could afford were Boston Acoustics HD5s. I remember going to buy my HD5s and the salesperson recommended I step up to a pair of Rock Solids, an indoor/outdoor compact speaker made for Rock Solid by B&W. They clearly sounded better than the HD5s I ended up buying and enjoying for years, but the Rock Solids were $100 more than my budget allowed. I still own my HD5s btw, and they still sound great.
Recently I had the opportunity to buy a near mint condition set of Rock Solids (in black with stands / mounts) and they sound so good! They weren't cheap, a testament to how good they were for their time. My 12 year old Monitor Audio Silver S2's sound warmer, but I guess that's to be expected since they're a newer quality speaker, twice the price and larger. Maybe it's just the nostalgia of owning a pair of speakers I couldn't have when I was a kid, but I love the Rock Solids. I think they're an example of a speaker that sounded better than some really expensive rivals 20 years ago.

[photoggenes]

I really like the hulky Definitive Technology BP2000 towers, CLR2000 center, and BPVX surrounds. I bought them used but the rear firing mid woofers sound superb with the delay bouncing off the wall. The fact that each tower has a 15 active sub built in to not tax the amplifier is very desirable to me.

[stevorcompton]

Another great video for those who are not steeped in trying to impress with the name speaker manufacturers. My taste started with KLH back in the day moved on to Double Advents from there to Polk Modle 10 B now to Pioneer Elite 5 speaker Atmos system and a separate LRS 2 channel system. Value can be had across the board. Speakers are excellent today there are very few poor speakers let alone actually bad ones.