How a $300,000 Speaker is Made 

in mono ! please !

Hahahaha I swear people are actually like that though.

You could've stopped at .mp3

Or vinyl for that matter. People who actually cares about “sound reproduction” moved on from that as soon as newer tech came out lol

Also known as the sound of gravel

Beskar

We use planted trees which start from seeds and end up as hardwoods

@@LTV746 no one in the world does that! :))

@@LTV746 😂😂😂 I’m dying laughing. This is the best comment. 😂😂😂

Just like Terminator

I just saw a clip from "Ford VS Ferrari" movie. Someone talked about how Enzo Ferrari had sought and achieved perfection, but went broke doing it.

It hurts my head.

There are a lot of better ones. The "aerospace technology" says it all, it's just marketing garbage. They work with primitive methods and materials compared with other expensive manufacturers.

he says they use solid wood and thew video shows a laminate cylinder hahahaha classic self hype ..

@@ctr289 Exactly. They are just finding a way to mark up already expensive materials

He's used to saying all this BS to his rich clients, not RU-vid people who have knowledge of these kind of things and can call him out 😂

@@winstonzeb2842 exactly! I can tell you know what’s up

The even better joke is calling TUBE AMPLIFIERS, "aerospace grade". Was this video digitised footage from the 19th century? 😂😂😂

That's how you make business in USA 😂

And also how they use a diamond blade to cut the stone slab... haha what other blade would you use other than a diamond bladejajaja.

Even the joinery work. Maybe there aren't other people out there doing that with speakers, but people use dovetail joinery all the time.

Especially with melting metal and pouring it into a mold

Yea a lot of their techniques and materials have been put in speakers way less expensive yet equally amazing.

@@neykodimov2786 If you want a really clean cut you kind of have to use diamond blades.

Hal nicely put, Patrón

😅😅😅😅😅😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hal you can fly to Vegas for $150 and see Elvis live

hill billy I live in Spain, so I'm afraid the fare will be a bit more expensive ;)

Lol

My IKEA wood chair contracts and expands in my home, so it's a living object.

@@stevezzzful Its cursed

It plays but stops when you turn your head...It. is. Sentient.

jajajaja

@Jimmy Dean it's not even a word

and that would be really "hi fi", in the literal sense of high fidelity. Fidelity to the recorded, mixed, processed material. Especially if using ATC's

But that would require skills right ? I mean anything beyond a purchase transaction

@@vfavereau Well no, you could hire a team to do it for you.

This guy 😂. I’m sure the speakers sound great and I’m sure they depreciate around 90% within the first 24 hours.

Facts

Poor Elvis, he would have rolled over a few times if he'd known his name was used to promote this stuff!!!!

highest quality components my arse. I use some of the absolute best components money can by on a regular basis, including custom made parts, and those parts are mid tier at best. the wiring is also a joke. Welp, time to build a pair of speakers to blow those shown here out of the water, running off one of the most powerful tube amps every created, just because i feel like it.

😂😂😂

I rather reinforce my floor joists and find a 1.25 ton Genesis system and connect it into my cheap HK AVR-7200. xD It's about time to heft that 70lb beast out of the cabinet and give it it's once a year or 2 cleaning.

the trick is to find ppl with money that fall for it, you only have to find a few with that kind of margin.

That`s a false claim, sound is "miniaturized" by reducing the dynamics

It is all about relativity. These folks seem to like Horns and it all starts at the APEX. So is it really miniaturized? Yes and No. A short distance away from the apex, as in headphones the size of the cone is small but the listening distance is also small. Looking at newer higher end headphones thy have gotten larger and larger drivers to better and more faithfully reproduce a particular note. Looking at the speakers in this video they are just farther from the Apex and the listening sweet spot is further away. In theory it is all the same horn, only taken to it's ultimate end. Now comes a problem. The small headphone driver can't move the same volume of air, so it will be weak and useless as a speaker at distance. These guys are all alike, they ignore facts or just toss out words like they know what they mean, to make a sales point.

aerospace technology from the 20s. "Quality can't be miniaturized" cuz they cant solder a giant resistor well.

Spagg Trait Lead free is slightly more difficult to solder I admit. I use the stuff everyday and I can do a much better job than that. It's pretty bad. That is a class 1 or class 2 IPC standard level. It should be a 3

Nothing in this video shows the quality of soldering in OMA amplifiers. You can only see a guy soldering using point to point wiring, a method still widely employed today.

I 100% agree. For 300K USD that speaker needs to be world class. And it most definitely is not. Your better off getting a $200 speaker at Walmart.

5:25 It's not perfectly done, like a mess from a freshman

I think he meant Aerosmith!!!!!

I know, right? If NASA was doing the same solder jobs as this guy, heads would be rolling.

Aerospace technology would be the Devialet Phantom speakers which are a far better value.

Apollo microchips maybe?

"The same capacitors they used on challenger II, micro chips with 32k memories and all that.""

strung together in a nice list like that it sounds even funnier

Also this: 1. Oswald Audio is the only company that mills wood and stone to flatness, no other company flattens wood and stone cause it would be "too costly." 2. Soft slate is perfect cause its soft and not hard, that means its desirable for speakers, much more so than hard wood, cause hard wood is harder than soft slate which is softer. 3. Oswald Audio is the only company that makes loud speakers shaped like cones.

Actually no for your #4 it is wrong oswald had learned that the hardwood was great because martin guitars was using the same hardwood.

That was so funny bro. I laughed the entire time reading your comment. Yea, I think that about sums it up!

Nauseating

and why would you want the wood to put it's sonic qualities into a tone ... you want the recorded music to do that, not the part that is supposed to be inert.

This guy weiss is a toolbag.

@@tbmuse Love this. Do you know if any double-blind sound tests or laboratory type tests have been done to determine the best kind of wood to use? If these tests don't exists than it sounds like this company is simply trading on the "Martin" brand recognition to assure folks that their systems will produce awesome sound.

@@elonmust7470 No joke... are you right or left handed?

@@theodorepaul2610 I don't know of any tests offhand, but I've worked with a high end speaker manufacturer (and others) and the upper end designs use hard wood plywood. I've used MDF and solid woods for a few of my own designs, and so far I like Maple Plywood, the more layers the better. JMHO

The glue IS the Budweiser Clydesdales.

@jdeshetlerII You get the best one-liner in RU-vid history award. Congrats.

"Gives the glue a very regal sound." yeah sure buddy, trying to justify the 300k$ with 99% markup LOL

Cameron Crosby Wow! I had to look twice, but you are right! The soldering at the PCB is really poor. It looks like they soldered from the upper side?! Anyway, people spending 300k for an audio system will probably never open the case. Who cares?

@50flamingbottles You imbecile. Anyone with an average knowledge in hobby electronics can agree on that pathetic soldering job!

I had to look twice too, but you're right. What a shoddy soldering job.

And the hard wiring from the board to the pots and switches is amateur hour. I've seen the hard wiring in equipment costing half has much made in Japan that is done cleaner and more neatly organized.

I took a screenshot and zoomed in. They must be joking, honestly it’s absolutely terrible. What a fricken disgrace 🤨

i got one from radio shack :-)

the company will claim its hand beaten pure silver from the mines on mars. there a sucker company, you have to be a sucker to pay that much for all the bullshit there hosing out

@@kevinmorrice Lmaooooo I'm dying

Nope, made in house, solid platinuim.

And it's scratched...

Have you seen the price of the compression drivers they have to buy for their products?

You shouldn't exaggerate - actually, only about 4-5 times. Labor ain't cheap.

Not steel buddy. Steel's pretty hard to melt

Stop saying Bro, makes you look dumb.

@@aes30006 ok bro

@@aes30006 You not a bro?

@@kwando472 not your bro

Shity but hurt people.. Knowing they ...can't afford. Great Success!!!

and the same about all other process in this video. 300k? this man is mad.

Yeah, when you add up powder coating (super cheap), slate tiles between 20 and 40mm thick, some high end speakers + amplifier and some expensive hardwood your still 295,000 short of the price tag. What nonsense.

You can buy everything you need to powder coat from harbor freight!

don't forget the trees that need to grow up in Pennsylvania.

I noticed that too, while the quality is unmatched, the price is also unmatched. That is the earnings from each product, almost a 10x investment.

​@@Spsz6000 there are a surprising number of speaker brands that sell in the 250k+ price bracket

HAHA @ pretending N E 1 buys them =)) They R a '$how piece' 2 $ell much lower priced, but equally bad trash =))

Has a good sound system too lol

searching for pun

"sounds".

Depends on what you want in life. I personally would choose the sound system over the car as I am a life long music collector and would get vastly more use out of it.

I wouldn't pay 300k for any sound system, because there's no way it'll be worth it. You can achieve close enough perfection for less than 10k (I have a certain speaker in mind but they haven't been made since early 90s). After that you're just fooling yourself (or compensating one impurity with another). Hell, I could buy a great hifi system and a supercar for 300k.

as they say - a fool and his money are easily parted.

@@Johnnybananass-_ I certainly am a shining example of this.

I wonder if you've ever attended a high end audio show or listened to gear of this quality. I agree that this video is filled with PR and hype. But most people have never experienced great audio systems so can't make any judgments on sound quality.

@@brentwalker3300 i have and it have made me realize that 99% of audiophile products are fraudulent

@@theseriousaccount That "99%" figure is quite the bold statement and extremely difficult to quantify. It's really hard to define "audiophile products". And "fraudulent"? Wow, you should really start suing manufacturers if there is 99% of these products are fraudulent. Have at it Hoss.

There have been no major advancements in audio since the CD. Most ‘advancements’ today are in the direction of smaller and cheaper.

​@@jonathandavis9507that's not true lol

@@jonathandavis9507 As a consumer who has a certain budget, there very much is still a lot of innovation. Today, you can get far better speakers at any price point than 20 years ago. Many manufacturers are experimenting with driver design, cabinets, crossovers and room correction. Modern hifi speakers are so much more than a box with some driver units in it.

Perfect.

They are free-range. No GMO's

Rain forest alliance certified non conflict fair trade slate.

abyde 100% vegan now with 20g's of Protein.

Looking at his minimum wage, "overly excited" employee shutting the oven door, I would say.. full of gluten an other unwanted toxins.

Michael, he was referring to the cables they use. They use cables from a company called Analysis Plus and their customers include NASA and Boeing, so that's what he was referring to. plus, they are using Mundorf Caps which can cost as high as $750 for one cap. There are certain applications that still use tubes. But yes, audio is the most prolific. But do you know how much a high quality Field Coil driver costs? Lowther charges $6K for one. Some of these drivers they are using a VERY rare, very expensive. I think you are more misleading that the owner of OMA. He's at least been in business for 10 years, so he must be doing something right. I'm sure they sell a respectible amount of product and their customers probably love their products, which is what it's all about. and yes, if they can make a profit in doing so, even better. But these small boutique audio companies aren't profit first quality second. They are quality first, profit second. Go ahead and really find out what they are doing before spouting bullshit that they only cost $10K to make a pair. That's probably more bullshit than anything the guy in the video is saying.

You really have bought one, havn't you? hahahaha

My guess is people buy his speakers for the same reason why people buy sportscars, iPhones, and starbuckls coffee, it makes them look rich and cool.

You don't have to be honest to be in business for a long time... It's very obvious that the markup on items like this is astronomical. There is a customer base of people that just want the most expensive things they can get. He takes minutes to explain things as plebeian as powder coating and metal casting. If that doesn't make things clear enough, look at the internal build quality. At $300,000 for a set of speakers, he can't even match the build quality of a $150 Corsair PSU... Buy into it if you want, but Michael isn't wrong by any means.

Reason people buy sports cars because of their performance. Of course, you know that you will be gaining attention and look rich with an expensive sports car. But if you are a car person, you are buying it for your enjoymeny

i thought the same mannnnn

You're correct, they use pro sound components. One of their systems (i think the museum speaker) uses a coaxial compression driver. These are only made by B&C or BMS, so it's apparent they source from those manufacturers. Even though this might sound a bit weird, those companies actually make stellar motors (much of which is better than a lot of hifi transducers) and eventually it's all about how they're implemented. Budget transducers in a properly designed cabinet can sound better than high end components in a badly designed one.

I believe that's the point - 50 years ago they would have been doing everything in analogue. It feels silly to say analogue as if it's a magical word that means perfect audio quality, but it's simply the case that an analogue signal is a far more simple and accurate way to produce sound. It just isn't at all convenient, and is more susceptible to interference. There is lossless digital audio out there, but once it's gone through a ADC and a DAC on the other end, you do lose quality. Just ask any electrical engineer about it. The specifics of ADCs and DACs are pretty interesting.

coming to you live and direct.. "Help, get me out of this box!"

Right! That's just common sense, also Transcoding 101 from the Introductory Internet Pirating Manual ;]

I seem to recall "His Masters Voice" was RCA's dog, NOT ELVIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@@Stewi1014 Agree, listing to 192khz compared to44.1khz and even 94khz (to me) is night and day on some old recordings

I’m not impressed by the artwork

The first thing that popped into my head when I saw the close up shots of the circuit board.

Seriously though. That was bad. I was curious if anybody else noticed how crap that was.

Aerospace soldering bro.

i cried a little bit when I saw it

They solder it badly so it breaks and you have to spend another $300,000

Joseph Keys I make speakers out of solid wood and joinery... In my driveway. Cat doesn't know what he's talking about.

I'm also having a hard time understanding their decision to use solid wood in the first place. MDF is not just cheaper, it's also superior in this application. Martin uses hardwood in their guitars BECAUSE they want the tone of it, in speakers you don't.

Concrete would be preferable to solid wood. At least then, you can be sure that cabinet resonance isn't a factor.

he meant in the room he was sitting

@@arilschultzen3017 the best speakers are made of plywood Tannoy .

Its even funnier Because right after he says this they show an amp enclosure that is barely filled with components & can literally be 30% of the size if the designers felt like not wasting tons of space.

Extremely low frequency sound waves can be 30m long, way larger than the length of a room in a house with the speaker system in it. You can still hear the sound though, because since sound travels 343m/s, it wouldn't be a problem to hear the fast moving longer waves.

@@twistieman1078 Your understanding of physics is as appalling as the guy in the video.

Lol! Only an Eskimo prick would buy his stuff. 🤪

And he could sell sand to Arabs in the desert 🤣🤣

Only to eskimos with a self image issue looking to buy ridiculously overpriced regular ice with the hope others lift their ego up in admiration

Judging by the majority of the responses, you might be insulting most of the Eskimos. I don't believe an Eskimo could be conned by this guy ....none of the responses have been conned.

Totally!

Agree. Then one can place a value on it. Hell, with a $5000 system, I expect to jump out of my skin for that money. Every day.

probably won't, diminishing return is strong in the audio world

sharemymood It's more so about the hand made and work that goes into as opposed to just sound, it's one of those collectors rich people like to keep as master peice

I'm sure they sound great. They are using a very efficient speaker design and amp designs so you don't need lots of power to drive them. Some people prefer horn based speakers some don't. Some prefer tube electronics some don't. Some prefer to deal with listening to vinyl vs digital. It's all about convenience, personal preference and then exclusivity.

sharemymood You're paying for the design.

Ricky Lee probably more like 95%

Where is his RD lab ? I'm guessing there are no spc sheets also.

puff puff

Yachts and gold toilets, that's where it goes!

Wow😂

vinyl does sound better though

vinyl sound much much better and accurate digital sound. it's simple. because its analogue.

@@zerotickpulse i hate ignorant people like you.

Horrible filtering on vinyl. But it changes the sound, and some people like it better.

Vinyl fans are such idiots. Even lossy digital formats have surpassed it in every conceivable way. The only way vinyl sounds better is with the odd vinyl-only master or excessive amounts of placebo.

Jeroen Verbeeck You did 300$ with a extra 0 in the cents, $300,000.00 is what you were going for.

Well if we're going to be a smartass; the dollar sign should be before the number. Also, in my country we actually do write it like I did.. What are we even talking about.. The fact still is that this absurdly overpriced speaker has some awful soldering. Even I did better soldering my first time

I always find the ignorance of a lot of Americans to other countries. Like I live in America and I know a lot of countries use periods and not commas for thousands places.

I guess he is intended to imply "come on we don't even accepts that if it is $300"

Eddi Kimball Oh wow you are dumb.

Geshtal302 It's the american way. Juice the clock.

well its powder coated. like my washer. and has slate, like my backyard. wow how amazing!

This is the best comment i have read in a long time XD

It's a "boutique halo product" marketing strategy. Honestly, the designs are not that impressive to me. It's for wealthy hippies that buy things like Alembic guitars once used by the Grateful Dead or whatever. It's not that these speakers are crap but they spend way too much money on things that don't affect performance and then even make some design compromises. The ideal speakers can be used for any kind of sound reproduction controlled by the electronics. These speakers are designed to have "character" and "panache" that people get excited over, and yet they 're introducing dispersion flaws that limit the ultimate performance of the speaker systems. I'm guessing there are some peaks and valleys in the frequency response any time you move the test mic from their idealized position. They also treat the speakers like instruments (with their own organic character), as if all of these design elements help it reproduce the sound of natural instruments and that just is not how it works. Putting a speaker in a mahogany and ebony cabinet is totally different than stretching strings across the same lumber. I mean totally different. But even if their ideas did work in reality that would mean you need special speaker cabinets every time you change the programming from whatever signal you're feeding the speaker. The speakers must be neutral and transparent as a platform for the signal to reproduce the programming faithfully. Almost everything from the narrators of this video is bullshit.

Really, wealthy hippies? An oxymoron if ever I heard one. No, I suspect that this equipment is for those who value style over functionality. Perhaps some trust fund babies, or corporate execs who have too much money and too little sense of perspective. If Apple made high end audio equipment - this would be it.

Exactly!!

Lei Chen: Hahahaha. All about the manual labor. Why are HyperCars so expensive? Not because of material "carbon fiber maybe". Not because of the speed. But because of the manual labor. If I wanted a fast car I'd get a Tesla.

John Baptist the only fast thing about a tesla is the 0-60 anything else and its slow

Not even a thousand I bet.

Some people will pay anything for an hand job.

Actually, let's say it takes 2 weeks to produce with all the materials bought, you're looking at maybe $8k. Up that number by 30% to make a profit, and you're looking at $10k speakers. Still $290k to go.

great point

Jeff Oakley agreed

THATS WHAT I DONT UNDERSTAND

Who knows, maybe sound reproduction is more complicated than the raw recording???

@@paulf1071 It's really not.

So are B&W speaker!!!! A sucker born every second....

B&W speakers is the most expensive you can get without be a sucker.

For 2000-3000e u can buy Dynaudio studio monitors, top class...

Yep. Somehow these retards buying this stuff think they can magically make it sound better than the components it was recorded on. I guarantee that Elvis's voice was recorded on some POS microphone from the 50s.

@@SoulArtSound You can buy a Genelec that are a much better.

LOL nobody buys this $hit. It's 2 help promote their lower end trash.

You took the words out of my mind! I have a 1500$ sound system and won't spend a penny more. It's perfect for me as it is

His joy is in seeing how far he can push the envelope of lies = the cutting edge of absolute $cam =))

@@Deathrape2001 he was probably a lawyer his past life

You can even smell it

It only smellz.

yeah , the fart sound will become crispier and warmth than ever.. XDD

Yan Campos I better be able to smell the fart coming from those speakers !!!

"It's very eerie... It's like a dead person is farting right there. What? Oh, there is a dead person right there... explains the smell"

same... whole lot of talk about powdercoating, nothing about the driver

thats aerospace level stuff, its probably classified according to the owner

Can you hire me, I can produce silver loaded quantum tunneling low dielectric mains cable and low-order harmonic high-Q super bandpass mains filters ).

Oh oh and hire me, I can develop cabinets of special hydroponic grown, bidirectional biodynamic wood that only sounds perfect when the growths rings are aligned with the gamma rays from the full moon. Suzy Siviter: Remember to design those cables so that there are left side and right side cables. :-)

and i will clone your product with the name slaceboponic :o

and hire me too , i can do nothing

Maycry Devil then you have to get on of the leading posts. :-)

.

Jiří Bednář first thing I noticed what the hackjob soldering. what the fuck

3 0 0 k

It's because it's old school, you obviously wouldn't know that a bad soldering job is to keep a more "pure" sound

I don't know how you formed a relevant opinion based on the few seconds of video at close range that showed what looked like an engineering prototype PWB. The areas that hadn't been reworked looked good. That the rework was done by a frustrated engineer trying to solve a design problem is obvious, I recognize the style. My guess is the response curve of the tube amplifier but whether it was for accommodating tube supply variations or for output matching transformer experiments or for the integrated response with a particular set of speakers (etc.) isn't obvious.

You don't pay 300k for a prototype.

Yep. Wooden speaker box may actually sound kind of interesting... But really, a set of $1000 speakers with a nice, dense particleboard cabinet would sound practically identical, if not better.

Just one word will suffice. *deluded*

The most unbelievable part is that this company exists so someone must be buying these speakers!

I guess that in this case we could even speak aboud slate oil... :P

@Diax1324 Only if you're listening to some shitty 128k mp3 from your iPhone.

My thoughts exactly. Snake oil salesman for sure

sold to hipsters.

@@TruthTortoise81 i wouldnt

I'd rather buy a new ferrari

"aerospace grade stuff" He had me on this one

im tellin ya!

Agreed!

the concert should have these speakers thou :P

BECAUSE COLTRANE IS STILL PLAYING...... some are dead dipshit. its about perfect reproduction of the music...

Did you know these people are trying to achieve how it hears in a real concert in their home. Using the money to go to concerts with a comfortable seating is probably actually what they should be doing.

looooooooool

Mine is about somali pirates.

Mine is ..Bear Grills breaks down (some movie scene)

😂

My recommendation is DIY speakers under $300 lmao

lol

Don't forget Joe Rockhead ... LMAO !!!

U should here their Morse code players!!!

It's $214,000.

Horn speakers are fine, the whole vinyl thing and outdated distorting tube amp business is just retarded.

TribeWars1 fck off tube amps sound great

socksumi Is there anything you have to wind up? 😊

The Emperor's New Clothes

they look nice tho

Solid wood is not a smart choice for loudspeakers cabinet...

Lol

Johan Fouche what .... this is about management of sound waves. Electricity is binary where as sound waves oscillate at varying degrees of taste. It not just the equipment that’s at play it’s also the room where the equipment is being used that will affect sound waves.

@Johan Fouche Who's the one pretending to be smart now.

@@younggunz4081 lol electricity is binary. You maybe dont even know converting one lossless source to another lossless type can be debatable in term of audio quality (for example source dsd to pcm lossless). There's a lot to determine, from the source, dac, preamplifier, amplifier, frequency response, transducer, environment, etc. If we talk technical, there's pretty much to talk, but with the price like that is overprice... a well known brand like polk, sennheiser, stax etc highest tier product are not that much expensive.

@Young Gunz "Electricity is binary where as sound waves oscillate ." WRONG. I Guess you don't realize that a 120v AC wall outlet oscillates at around 60hz. If you plug a speaker directly into the wall it will make noise, which means that it isn't binary and that it oscillates.

No sorry, at this pricepoint we have moved on from mere means such as AUX and evolved to telepathically auditorial eXperience (TAX).

Best comment i've ever read

Our company can supply an Aux port for just $5K, the port is hand turned out of finest Indian birch grown on sacred burial grounds connected to the main board via wires using African Gold collected by albino miners.

Suzy Siviter Lmfao!

Hahaha.

And through-hole components.

I think that's how he is playing up using mil spec grade components.

Gotta love me some modern, aerospace-grade... vacuum tubes.

If I had 300k, I would probably go for a pair of cheap aiwa SX-MS7 speakers over these

D Jaquith Yes, absolutely. Well said. I made some comments below.

saying you are an audiophile isn't giving you any credibility or points,its comparable to being an insane dumb-ass that hears things that arent there and thinks oxygen content in speaker wires is something you can hear in a recording.

D Jaquith I would buy a house 👍

Form300k I wouldn’t buy this at all... why not a super car ?

Boi 😂

I'll give you tree fiddy

::hands outstretched::

A R price: invaluable you miss out on things but the amount of crap you get to avoid is a blessing too

Dust Cloud mmmmhmm it is what you make of it. Is there crap background noise that matters not to you? Perception lies not with the senses but with the mind. You have the most control to appreciate, dislike, or ignore where all your physical senses meet to be deciphered by that wonderful thing in our heads. I love how you've pointed out the duality of things here. :) To press a metaphor, Through audiophile grade sound reproduction equipment, you may hear nuances of the reproduction that, indeed, are hard on the ears, but that is the fault of the artist, not the reproduction. Through our experiences we are always the artist, we paint it as we see it because of bias... yet many of us sit and only listen placing the uncomfortable tones in a place out of our control.