elgrillo Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 After going from promedia 5.1 to RF3's then to RF7's, I noticed a definite drop off in performance increase as I upgraded. For instance going from my promedia's to RF3's was a huge upgrade, but when I went from RF3's to the RF7's there wasn't that great of a performance increase. So it seems that speakers, like many things in this world, has a point where at the begginning every dollar you pay for an upgrade gives you a certain amount of performance increase, but as you start to get into the upper end of the speaker line, you have to pay twice, maybe three times as much to get the same increase in performance. This is the same deal with CPU's. For instance right now for a P4 3.06 Ghz you pay $542. But for $225 you can get a P4 2.6. While the 3.06 is better than the 2.6, it is definetlely not twice as good, as the price would lead you to believe. So I was wondering what you guys felt was the magical price for speakers, recievers and subs, where you pay more for performance and less for having the "best out there". P.S I am particularly interested in hearing your opinions on recievers, since I am planning on upgrading mine in the near future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JewishAMerPrince Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 I disagree strongly about the limited differences between the 3's and 7's. You may want to view my post about speaker break in to get my whole opinion on the matter. Jerry Rappaport P.S. Perhaps you need something better than the Yami to bring out the huge soundstage that the 7's are capable of. I am pleased with the sound of the Denon, but for myself I am moving to Rotel separates. Rotel also makes two really dynamite receivers that can bring out the best in the RF7's. They cost a few bucks more than an equivalent power mid-fi receiver, ( oh G-d I'm sounding so snobbish recently!)but they are not outrageously priced and seem to have better resale than mid-fi. JR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ou8thisSN Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 do you feel that the Denon 5803 or the Pioneer ELITE 49-TXi brings out the full soundstage of the RF7s, or should I just get the RF3 system? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruinsrme Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 having both the RF7 and the 49txi and in the past the RF3II, I can definitely say the difference btw the rf3 and 7, to me, is considerable. I feel it was worth every penny for the upgrade. I can't imagine not being able totell the difference between the RF3 and Rf7. If you can squeeze the Rf7 int your budget do it. Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JewishAMerPrince Posted March 25, 2003 Share Posted March 25, 2003 ---------------- On 3/25/2003 9:35:39 PM Ou8thisSN wrote: do you feel that the Denon 5803 or the Pioneer ELITE 49-TXi brings out the full soundstage of the RF7s, or should I just get the RF3 system? ---------------- I can't speak for the 3803 or the 49 TXi but I do have a 3801 which has similar amps. While I feel the Denon does a good job with the 7's I think they deserve better. As far as just setteling for 3's goes, the 3's are great speakers and do "speak" quite well for themselves. Side by side comparison done in the same room with the same Denon 3801 receiver(which I had the opportunity to do today) puts the 7's in a different league than the 3's. I myself was in the same quandry two weeks ago before making the hard decision to replace my 3's with 7's. Several people here on the board convinced me to "go for it". I will be forever greatful to them for their opinions. Even my wife loves the 7's, and she has always claimed to not be able to tell the difference between the FM radio in her car and my HT setup! JR PS If you do want to go for RF3's, I have a pair with an Rc3 center less than 2 years old and all in perfect condition that I am willing to part with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elgrillo Posted March 26, 2003 Author Share Posted March 26, 2003 Don't get me wrong. I do hear a difference between the 7's and the 3's. When I first posted my thoughts, I hadn't had much time with them, but after a couple of weeks already I can hear many more differences. My point is just that it is not a difference as great as I had experienced moving up from the promedia's to the 3's. Yet no one has really answered my question. What price point do you feel that you begin to pay more for having the elite rather than actual audible improvement. Better said, what price range does the law of diminishing return start to take over? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JewishAMerPrince Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 That may be a difficult question to answer and may vary speaker line to speaker line. Using the RFs as an example, the 7's are an excellent value offering top notch performance while the 3s are a steal in my opinion offerring great performance at a very affordable price. Right now a 7 setup will cost nearly three times what a 3 setup will, but do they deliver three times the performance? The reasons for the difference in price/performance are mostly marketing based and only partially cost based. The more units a manufacturer sells of a given series the less markup it may be willing to accept to make an aggrigate profit off of that line. Therefore, just as an example, Klipsch may make only a 25% margin over cost on the 3's vs 75% margin on the 7's. Overall they will make far more total profit from 3 series sales than 7 series because of the far greater number of units that sell at a value price point. Because of this there is an apparent "diminishing return" in this and most product lines. A Toyota Camry is half the cost of a BMW 325 but is far more than half the car...etc ..etc JR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 Loudspeakers do have a point at the beginning where every dollar upgrade gives you a noticeable performance increase. As you get to the upper end of the loudspeaker line however, you do have to pay many, many, times more to get the same incremental increase in performance. As you slide up the price scale of loudspeakers, you do get less and less for the money, but sometimes more and more enjoyment. Many times however, you are purchasing narrowly defined, limited features for more and more money. In economics, this concept is known as diminishing marginal utility. You get less and less and pay more and more. Loudspeakers are by no means the exception. Automobiles and televisions abide the laws of economics too. A tricked up Honda CRX, for example, can give you 0 to 60 in seven seconds and cost less than $5K. Zero to 60 in five seconds may require a $43K Vette, while the same time in only 4 seconds might require an Italian super-car costing over $140K. Only slightly better performances, but for a whole lot more dough. A $99 12 TV gives you the News, for another example, so does the 25 model for $250 and so does the $20K extra wide, flat panel display. One is a mere kitchen table-top appliance, the other is a practical, mature centerpiece product in a HT system; and the last, is a superlative, leading-edge, emotion-involving luxurious excess. In loudspeakers, sliding up the scale has obvious benefits. At the low end of the price spectrum, less than $500 a pair, many low cost bookshelf loudspeakers suffer from more faults than strengths. They often struggle to reproduce the music. Instruments are "jambled" together like Grandma's stew - all sorts of things thrown in there. Cabinets and drivers are lightweight: thin and flimsy. Separation is poor. Dynamics are congested. Bass dies on the vine, parched from lack of power and control. Treble just hisses at you. Nothing that truly captures the joyous essence of music; only something that imitates the sound. Your ears are coupled to the worlds most powerful, massively redundant, parallel-processor, 20 BIPS, intuitive learning device ever created the human brain. Poor quality loudspeakers eventually wear out your ears. This isnt sports car performance. This is sedan quality pablum for the masses. Sell as many units as you can at as low a price as possible. Between $500 and $1K, many loudspeakers start to sound quite good. They begin to correct their faults. Though they may still struggle to correctly reproduce all of the music, instruments are easily separated. Cabinets and drivers improve. Dynamics begin to show. Mid and upper bass is certainly better. Some loudspeakers in this range may have low bass; many have good, punchy middle bass. Treble is much better. IT can sizzle and sing. The loudspeakers begin to sound competent only that they need a little more to start sounding good. The endearing Klipsch RF3 series falls in this category. This is performance more akin to sports cars: construction and design begins to reflect the task at hand. Weakness with these movie and music reproduction systems are usually NOT attributed to the loudspeakers, but sought elsewhere in the system. Typically, the front-end does not sonically match the loudspeakers. Two very different loudspeakers, which I seriously auditioned, in my own home, on the same equipment, and on other systems for Enjoy the Music.com was the Axiom Audio M3Tis ($279) and the single-driver Omega TS1s ($699). Although not flatly accurate, the charming little M3Tis were enjoyable to listen to for many reasons, no the least of which was their enviable mid-bass punch. (http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/archives/) The more refined TS1s were easy, smooth and a long term listening delight, especially well suit to flea-powered tube amplifiers. (http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1002/omegats1.htm). The TS1s offer a delightful combination of enticing cabinet colors, smoothness, detail, speed, dynamics, effortlessness and natural sounding musical involvement; especially for a loudspeaker of that size, driver and price! The Omega TS1s do not sound, or act, like the vast majority of conventional loudspeakers in its price category. They do not suffer from the usually small bookshelf loudspeaker problems, either. While either one is certainly enjoyable in the long run, more expensive loudspeakers are typically deeper, more sensitive and accurate better at recreating some of the emotional excitement of music. At the $1K price, and beyond, there are wild differences in the price, quality, construction and design that may or may not contribute significantly to the re-creation of the sound. The speakers can sound really very good, or just simply more of the same hash of their cheaper brothers. Loudspeakers at this level usually do NOT struggle to reproduce the music. They are confidently competent. Instruments are quite well separated, and distinct. Where one horn was heard, now two, playing side-by-side, can be heard. Cabinets are solid. Less regard is given to space considerations. Design differences are huge: not simply small bass-reflex boxes. Drivers are typically much better; more like top-of-the-line than bottom-of-the-barrel. Dynamics begin to show. Lower and mid bass is definitely better. Much of the mid-range definition is improved by the presence of 40Hz bass and sharper treble. Treble sparkles, sizzles and sings. Vocals are superb. Thankfully, many loudspeakers in this price range get this all-important area right. The overall frequency response is wider and flatter. This is crucial. The wider range makes all forms of music reproduction realistic. The flatter range helps too. A difference of 3dB up here and 3dB down there is a lot. It means that the sound is twice as sound at one frequency and twice as low at another. It means the difference between one frequency versus the other is a large 6dB. Better made loudspeakers, or unique designs, have flatter frequency response, even if it is limited in range. And it shows. The overall sound is smooth, even and feels tonally correct. A few of the loudspeakers in the one to two thousand-dollar range can sound as good as some mega-buck loudspeakers. They capture much of the joyous essence of music. Like Boxers, Vettes and other luxury price sports cars, many of the performers here are very good at what they do selecting the ride becomes quite tricky and personal preferences quickly pop up to the surface. My antique big old horns fall into this category, but so do the leaning Newtronics Skates, the Axiom line driver M80Ti arrays and the wonderful $1500 Classic Audio Cinema Ensembles (horns with tubes, of course). (http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0902/newtronicsskatemkiin.htm and http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1102/axiomm80ti.htm) Properly configured, with the right equipment, in the right room, in my limited experience. Loudspeakers from $1K and a little more can sound really very good, competitive with mega-buck dream systems in many regards. At the high - money is no object - end of the audio system price spectrum, you get no utility at all for even a marginal increase in performance. Every second of improved performance costs big bucks. This is the plateau of audio reproduction. Whether you spend only a few, or several thousands, audio nirvana is just as far away somewhere off near the horizon and no matter how fast you travel, it never seems to come closer. (See Deprecating The Gifts Of The Gods, http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/0902/deprecating.htm, but also read Uptown Horns at http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0203/uptownhorns.htm for the good, the bad and the ugly side of super-expensive movie and music reproduction systems.) This is one of the reasons I like big old horns so much. Coupled with the right tube amplifiers, they can compete with some very amazing movie and music reproduction systems in some critical areas - and for a lot less money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimbo357 Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 Colin- Very good discussion! I am interested in the Axiom line of speakers, I almost bought the M80ti's before I settled on the RF-7's. I could not audition them (Axioms) unfortunately because I live in the states. Can you speak about what you liked or didn't like about them, and compare them to the 7's if you have heard both? Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 I think colin just about summed it up about as good as anyone. My own gut feeling was that once you go past something like the RF-7s, you'll be seeing very small performance gains for large amounts of money. This comes from some of my own experience. I have listened to some stuff like the Vienna Beethovens, which are around $4K/pr, but I liked the sound of the RF-7s much better, and for 1/2 the cost. Also, once you get up into those kinds of ranges, alot of it is personal preferance. For example, most people on here can agree that going from say the RF-3s to the RF-7s is definitly worth the extra cost. However, things get more personal when going from say RF-7s to Dynaudio Contour 3.3 for example (nothing against Dynaudio - just using an example, or even the Avantgarde stuff, if keeping with horns). From what I understand, those Dynaudio speakers are around 7 to 8 grand/pair. Some folks may think it is worth it to spend that money, while others (such as myself) do not. Many can argue that the Dynaudio has better performance than the RF-7s (I cannot comment myself on the actual performance as I have never listened to a pair), but many also argue that is it really $6000 worth of better performance? To some, maybe it is, others, perhaps not. Also, there are certainly exceptions to the general rule. (At the risk of turning this into a Bose bash-fest) Look at how much Bose wants for thier junk. I honostly don't think the performance of the Bose junk warrants the asking price. However, what many are paying for here is the very sleek, and convenient design of thier gear (not to mention thier marketing campaign - i.e., I saw only one ad, maybe two, for Klipsch in a recent issue of Sound and Vision, but I saw at least 5 or 6 Bose ads, some where full page spreads - and they always seem to have an ad on the back cover - I bet they pay a premium for that). I'll admit that Bose makes for some very nice and neat installations, but I'd rather spend the money on the performance instead of the looks. Also, I just don't buy into that "direct-reflecting" line of crap - when was the last time you went to a concert where all the speakers were turned against the back wall? That is another aspect - alot of that really high-price stuff may have the performance and the looks. You'd be surprised how much money people will spend to get the "right look" in thier rooms (the all important Wife Approval Factor (WAF)). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elgrillo Posted March 26, 2003 Author Share Posted March 26, 2003 Very nicely done collin. So it seems that about the $1000-$2000 mark seems to be the point where you still get a good value for your dollar. Where do you think that point is for recievers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 ---------------- On 3/26/2003 3:56:11 PM elgrillo wrote: Where do you think that point is for recievers? ---------------- I would say around $1500 - $2500 for recievers. After that, than you are getting into territory where seperate amp and pre/pro will better serve you. When you get into seperates, once you get past say $5000 for the amps and pre/pro, than you are probably getting small gains for large money. For example, using Denon recievers. It seems that the AVR3803 gives you the best bang for the buck, which is around $1200 (all prices are MSRP). Some folks will think going to the 4802, which is around $2500 is worth it. After that, as awesome as the 5803 is, for that kind of money (something like $4200), I would seriously consider going seperates, unless you could get the 5803 for an excellent deal. There are folks that likes the convience of the reciever instead of messing around with seperate amps and pre/pros, however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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