Just to get away from the madness for a little while…
An audio magazine I currently receive published a special issue consisting mostly of directories of speakers, subwoofers, and cables from companies the magazine regards as worthy. Oh, and lots and lots of full-page ads from many of those companies,
The directory covers 96 speaker companies (and three that only produce subwoofers, which I’m not dealing with here) and 31 cable companies.
I believe speakers are one area of high fidelity where you can probably keep getting better performance for more money for a very large span of “more money,” although for most of us the point of diminishing returns would come fairly early (as might the point at which we could clearly appreciate a difference).
Even so, some of the numbers are, well, at least interesting.
Speaker prices
- Only 22 of the 96 companies have any speakers costing less than $1,500/pair.
- 28 of the 96 have no speakers costing less than $10,000/pair. (The company I’d likely buy from if I had great wealth and needed a really good pair of speakers doesn’t have any speakers costing $10,000/pair or more…)
- 47 of the 96–nearly half–had at least one pair of speakers costing $50,000/pair or more.
- I saw 34 speakers costing $100,000 to $199,000 per pair…
- …and 28 speakers costing $200,000 to $499,000 per pair…
- …and four costing at least half a million dollars per pair (“at least” because several speakers had “price on request” or some other version of “if you have to ask”).
- Two of the speakers cost more than $800,000 per pair. Eight hundred thousand dollars.
- At least five of the speakers weigh half a ton or more; not clear whether that’s per-speaker or per-pair.
Cables (10ft or 2meter speaker pairs or one-meter interconnects)
Almost all of these noted below are speaker cables. I believe each of these prices would need to be doubled for a pair of speakers, but I could be wrong:
- 26 cables cost $10,000-$19,999.
- Another 26 cost $20,000-$49,999.
- Three cost $50,000 or more. For a speaker cable or cables. But hey, if you’re spending $855,000 for speakers (the top price I saw), what’s another $50,000 or $100,000 for cables?
I offer no comment.
