There's some impressive stuff in there, really makes me wonder how much of a market there is for such expensive high-end audio out there, what kind of people buy those speakers? I'm having a hard time believing all of those systems are worth their weight in the sound quality department.

 

The standards seem to be set very high, and they have 50-200k speaker systems rated C-, or 3/6 stars.
Speaker Comparator by HigherFi.com
when you look at the tower itself, it weighs something like 650-100 pounds and has all size speakers of high quality, but somehow they still find faults with it.
BTW, they don't even bother with Bose or Klipsch, and all Paradigm are mid-fi.
Check out the Moon Audio Titan, carved out of solid block of aluminium weighing in at 2800 lb/pair, $ 500k
MOON AUDIO - b e y o n d
or these solid gold Shape Audio towers Shape Audio | Loudspeakers, 7 mil /pair - audio eye candy.
most these speakers sell at 50-70% off MSRP after few years of use, on the used market. they depreciate faster than a S class Merc

 

I'm not sure what this is, but it seems an insane deal

 

this thing looks like 2000 lb, great price, they only want 2k for it

 

 

That seems like overkill for a PowerPoint presentation

 

Very good speech from Tony Andrews (Funktion-One) for anyone genuinely interested in audio quality:

TEDxBrickLane: Tony Andrews - "Bad sound is a vexation to the spirit" - YouTube

 

cool post, some information, but he takes forever to make a point.

 

Yes, he tends to wander a bit but you can see how passionate he is on the issue. He always has interesting things to say and makes valid points. The man knows his stuff, not to mention he makes some of the craziest and best looking loudspeakers there are. I made the experience of 4 "dance stacks" at Circus in montreal and, well, impressive is an understatement. Incredibly pure and powerful sound, my ears didn't even feel tired when I left.

 

I just browsed his website, cool looking stuff. I'm going to make some efforts to sample some high end stuff as most people here did, to get an idea. HigherFi rates the NTT Audiolab 101 MKII as best speaker system they've heard, and lucky me they are located in Temecula, 45 min from here. Looking forward for pure sound experience.