By David Gibbons
Revised April 2007
I would suggest that the above graph applies to speakers as much as it applies to cars. In cars, the doubling of top speed doesn't cost much when you are starting out at the very bottom of the automobile price range. However, if you already have a $100,000 high-performance race car which does 180 MPH, buying a car which can do 360 MPH could cost $1,000,000 or more.
Yes, spending more money wisely on a car can buy you more speed, but the gains get smaller and smaller as you move up the performance scale. It is the same for speakers.
On the bottom end, $20/Pair speakers will sound awful, and it may be necessary to get up to the $100/Pair level to get half-decent sound. At $500/Pair, the quality brands deliver very good sound indeed. The $5,000/Pair speakers might be tremendous, but the increase in performance from the $100 to the $500 levels will probably be much more that the increase you get going from $500 to $5,000, in the normal home theater environment. (Yes, there are some $50,000/Pair speakers. Let's not go there.)
Back to cars again. A $100,000 sports car requires special conditions to be able to fully display its talents. It will not do much better than a midprice sedan when both are caught in rush-hour traffic. Consider the listening space and the equipment you will use with your speakers. High-performance speakers require a high-performance room, amplifiers, and sources to deliver everything they're capable of.
Where higher-priced speakers can make a difference is in the situation where you want to fill a large space with a lot of high-quality sound. If you have a small apartment, you will not be able to get all of the performance you paid for out of super speakers without getting the other tenants upset.
In ordinary home theaters, good speakers ARE crucial, and some extra investment can be very worthwhile. Just remember the graph above, and you should be able to avoid getting carried away.
