I’ve been involved in the high-end audio industry since I was 14. Back then I was wiping dust off of $100k speakers (and trying not to poke the tweeter). These days, I guide people through auditions of them (and still try not to poke the tweeter).
The thing about this segment of the hi-fi industry is, almost no one outside of the industry knows it exists. In our showroom we consistently have people who are stunned to discover it’s even possible to spend $100k on audio (let alone much more).
“Do people actually buy this stuff?”
Yes—often for the same reasons people buy top-of-the-line Rolex watches, bottles of Leroy wine, and other extremely expensive nonessentials.
Status, of course, can be a reason. Only the very best will do, for some.
Brand loyalty can be a reason as well. Imagine someone who in youth, saved up for a pair of KEF Concertos, and now with age is finally ready to get the KEF Blade Ones they’ve been dreaming about.
In hi-fi specifically, you get the usual reasons as well. Maybe they love music, and have the means. Maybe they love audio gear, and have the means. Maybe they’re seeking the perfect sound, and have the… you get the picture.
In high-end however, while sound quality does improve, it’s almost never just about sonic improvements.
That’s to be expected, given that as we go up in price we see diminishing returns in terms of performance. The sound quality difference between $1,000 and $2,000 speakers is usually significant and obvious. Between $150,000 and $200,000 though, the difference is more about refinement and in some cases can be subtle, despite the huge leap in cost.
In the upper price brackets, aesthetics, on the other hand, become much more important. Again, this isn’t just in hi-fi, it applies to most luxury goods. For instance, if you’re looking to spend $20,000 on a car, aesthetics are unlikely to be your primary concern. Practical needs come first: fuel consumption, space, reliability, and so on. However if it’s a Ferrari or a Bentley you’re after, practicality goes out the window. Now it’s all about look, feel, prestige, colour…exotic things.
The same goes in hi-fi. Aesthetics aren’t exactly the centrepiece in the low-to-mid level. At that level, you might be asking whether you want a silver box, or a black box, and which logo tickles your fancy. Bump it up to a hundred grand and the products look grandiose, unique, intricate, and polarising. Looks become one of the biggest factors for those shopping for high-end audio.
So there’s more to high-end than better sound reproduction, which may make it sound like a shallow, ego-fueled affair. That however, couldn’t be further from the truth. There are very real, very human merits on which people dish out for high-end audio.
To truly understand this, let’s look to primetime talk show host and stand up comic, Jay Leno.
Jay owns an enormous collection of over 300 cars and motorcycles, most of which are rare, high-end models and discontinued classics. His collection is so massive, he was even able to launch a successful TV show around it.
It’s easy to assume that this collection is a product of self-indulgence, and just a matter of having a ton of money and saying yes to every impulse. But when you look closer, you discover that this is not the case. Jay has a deep, nuanced relationship with his collection, having personally repaired almost every piece, and driven all of them.
Journalists will visit Jay in his garage, and he’ll walk them through a number of cars. For each one, one after another after another, he’ll share a story—usually the story of how he acquired it, as well as an interesting retelling of the model’s backstory.
“This one I got essentially for free in the early 80s” he says, in reference to his Lamborghini Miura. He continues to share how his friend had bought it from fellow comedian, Dean Martin, whose son had wrecked the engine. “Back then you had to know someone in Italy who spoke Italian…you couldn’t just call the factory and order parts.” He then says the car sat in his friend’s yard until eventually, his wife pressured him to give it away—to Jay, who took on the cumbersome project of restoring it himself.
Above: A Lamborghini Miura similar to Jay's—photo by Andrew Dawes on Unsplash
Then he points out his McLaren F1. He recounts how McLaren priced the model at a million dollars when it came out, which people thought was ridiculous. Then the recession hit, making it impossible to sell and forcing the company to shut down with only 64 units made. Jay says this made the model’s value skyrocket later on.
There are countless examples of him doing this. It’s truly amazing to hear. In his mid-seventies, Jay can instantly recall these stories in surprising detail. It’s an unmistakable sign of true passion and appreciation.
Now in Jay’s case, he’s gone so far as to collect these pieces of “kinetic art” as he calls them. He has many of them. While most people may not want to own a warehouse full of high-end listening systems, the merit that underlines Jay’s love for each individual piece still applies in the audio space:
There’s more satisfaction in owning this piece than the fact that it performs well and looks great, and it’s not all about status…it’s all about the story, and an appreciation for what brought it to bear.
This is what drives many people to spend generously on their audio systems. They either resonate with the story of each piece or brand, or they appreciate the engineering feat that made it possible…or both.
Consider the story of fidelity itself. An engineer’s romance. The challenge of recreating an ensemble of vibrations that once existed; to send one’s ears back in time to a different place. To manipulate metal and other materials with such prowess that the recreation is as true—and as realistic—as possible.
Many hi-fi brands began with this romance, started by engineers bursting with so much passion, that they developed audio products by any means possible. Amar Bose would open up the university lab after hours and burn the midnight oil, working on his first innovative speaker design. Polk Audio’s founders started their company with just $200 in hand, and built their first design in an unheated garage. Jamo was founded by a carpenter in a chicken coop. And the list goes on.
Granted, none of those three brands are still guided by the ethos (or the people) that started them. And while some (though definitely not all) of their current products may sound pretty good, they do not compare in the slightest to the creations of brands still led by passionate craftspeople.
It’s not a coincidence that true high-end brands are all in that category.
To illustrate, let’s examine three such brands. I’ll share a story for each that shows you (without overtly “telling” you) the ethos that drives them. Then I’ll allude to the sort of person who gravitates towards that brand. And finally I’ll give a little car analogy, as a reminder that people do invest in luxury hi-fi, as they do luxury automobiles.
Marten
Founder Leif Marten Olofsson designs first-order crossovers that will be built on-site, outperforming the common circuit board designs by a mile. He prioritises stiff materials with narrow resonance bands, so he can completely eliminate resonance using crossovers. He focuses on low production volume to maximise quality. And his speakers are clad in laminated timber constructions, where pieces are hand-picked for perfect grain matching.
But there’s one thing that really makes his process stand out.
Leif is so dedicated to recreating real, natural sound, that he hosts live music recording sessions in the same room he assesses loudspeaker designs. Regularly exposing himself (and his team) to how instruments really sound in that room continuously resets his benchmark, which informs design changes and ultimately ensures Marten speakers really are exceptional. This also ensures their speakers will sound excellent in a broad range of different rooms.
It’s said by many world-class speaker designers that real listening sessions reveal things you cannot see in the measurements, making them crucial for refining performance. Marten has taken this widely-accepted truth to another level entirely.
Who Marten tends to attract: Traditional hi-fi enthusiasts who now have enough funds to invest in high-end, “endgame” speakers, but still want a more classic aesthetic that’s reminiscent of vintage gear.
If Marten were a car, it would be: The Ford GT. A modern take on a classic design, with immaculate finishing, cutting-edge materials and exceptional performance.
Estelon
Alfred Vassilkov had developed more than one-hundred speaker designs during his career. Despite everything he learned in that time however, he found himself stifled by the same limit that burdens most acoustics engineers. Namely, budget.
So once he was ready to bring all his experience together and build his own prototype, he didn’t consider costs at all. Rather, the aim was to build the best possible speaker and then work backwards to figure out costs.
As Alfred saw it, the best possible speaker would have an ideal shape for acoustic performance—no corners, no parallel walls inside or out, and thus no reflections—while also having an elegant look that people would want to display in their homes.
Eventually this led Alfred to his own proprietary material: a marble-based composite, which would be the foundation of his company Estelon. This material is dense and resists resonance, while being mouldable into almost any shape. Thus, it lends itself quite literally to the idea that each Estelon speaker is like an artistic statue…while also ticking all the acoustic performance boxes Alfred knew would make for a world-class speaker.
This is the story of Estelon as a brand, but it’s also the story of their newest and most affordable piece, the Aura (shown in the picture above). Alfred’s limitless design approach revealed methods and components that he could then apply more efficiently, to create a high-performing speaker at a lower cost.
Who Estelon tends to attract: Those who enjoy exceptional sound and especially love to display elegant, impressive works of art in their homes.
If Estelon were a car, it would be: The LaFerrari. A force to be reckoned with on the track, of course, but with unique, exotic lines that command attention and admiration.
Wilson Audio
Daryl Wilson, the CEO and son of the original founder (David Wilson), believes that a new model shouldn’t be released unless it’s justified by numerous concrete improvements.
When referencing the Sasha V speaker in an interview with Audio Excellence Canada, Daryl shares how you could just put a new tweeter into it and call it an improvement. But, as he believes, that wouldn’t justify a Wilson owner going through the upgrade process: appraising their existing speaker, trading it in or selling it privately, laboring to pack and move it, and so on.
Instead, he says, “I look top to bottom and ask, what have we developed in the last five to seven years that would benefit this product?”
Referring to the Sasha V again, Daryl recounts several design changes he made: The new tweeter. How the interior is machined to diffuse the rear waves of the midrange. The binding posts. The interior cables. The V material separating the woofer from the midrange enclosure. The capacitors used in the crossover. The acoustic diodes on the bottom.
He concludes that you can go top to bottom and find 30 things in the Sasha V that are different to the previous Sasha DAW. If one update gives 0.5–1% improvement, and there are a lot of them, the result is a substantial improvement from series to series.
Honoring the end user in this way, and being intimately connected to every performance feature of every product, is what has made Wilson Audio one of, if not the leading high-end speaker manufacturer on Earth.
Who Wilson Audio tends to attract: Music lovers who are drawn to an authentic, prestigious brand that has stood the test of time.
If Wilson Audio were a car, it would be: The Pagani Zonda. A spectacle of cutting-edge materials and design features that give it world-class performance, while sporting an almost futuristic, “avant garde” style that’s unmistakably its own.
When you listen to these designers—who are also the founders and owners of their companies (which is not a coincidence)—you realise that like Jay Leno, they can immediately recall the story and purpose behind every design feature, every unique material choice, every in-house component.
A sign of true passion.
This kind of passion wants freedom from boundaries. Thus, the things they create are expensive—and it’s not due to vapid, ego-driven premiums. These are engineers and designers, but also artists, and as such they spare no expense in turning their visions into tangible realities. That means R&D costs, material costs, and copious amounts of time spent exploring, building, testing, failing, and refining.
This is why it’s such a shame to see disparagement towards high-end. There are some voices, particularly online, that seem dedicated to “proving” that high-end hi-fi products aren’t worth their price tags. Usually this involves claims around more affordable products being “just as good,” and seems to pretend that sound quality is the only source of value.
As stated before, diminishing returns are a real thing and to get improvements at the highest level, you’re essentially investing in R&D. Sometimes, it even takes a passionate and experienced listener to really hear what makes a particular piece special—especially if there’s no back-to-back comparison. The listening experience is also subjective, and depends on prejudice, biases, mood, distractions, music selection, and so on.
There’s more. Consider that there are certainly products at all price points marketed dishonestly, which aim to profit from misguided hopes for better fidelity. There are brands that bend truth, and make hyperbolic claims about products that are actually built quickly and cheaply. There’s dishonesty out there. But, as in all industries, that’s completely separate to the genuine innovators and creatives at the top.
Ultimately, energy spent speaking out against high-end audio products says more about the critic than anything else. It telegraphs emotional investment. To praise one’s own budget-friendly audio system is healthy; to denigrate something that excites others is not.
So to conclude, people really do spend $100k, and much more, on high-end audio.
People who look to own unique products with incredible stories, that are built on feats of engineering prowess. People who look to own products that perform at the top level, even if it costs a lot to get that next millimetre of improvement. People who look to own products that are hand built to the highest possible standard, one at a time, from excellent materials and components.
People do spend big on products like these, as long as they have the means…and as long as they know they exist.
