I listened to a $4,000,000 system and was disappointed. However, there were some real gems to be found at the biggest audio show in the United States at Axpona 2024. Check out the other vid from Axpona 2024 • Bose/Bang and Olufsen'...
We totally need to elect a president who can give these buyers of $4M stereo systems a tax break. Think of how tough their lives are. My heart aches for them.
right? It's almost like musicians and producers use speakers to produce the sound for recordings. And then mix their music using not-$4M dollars speakers.
I guess a way to think of it is it's like going to a classic car show or classic car auction or a high-end concept car show and it's great to see such stunning design and engineering even if one cannot leave with one of those cars, so it's the same for ultra high-end stereo systems and components at audio shows that will suit a select few buyers or aficionados, but not many among the general public due to price constraints. One can still draw inspiration from an audio show experience even if, I agree with you, prices are through the stratosphere to the point of being "unobtanium". ;)
I don't go to these shows for that reason. Most of them are just high priced Wi-Fi trolls that try to suck as much money out of the audiophile as possible. Generally, the higher in price you go, the worse it is. Sure, you have exceptions, like McIntosh, which really is good stuff, but a lot of these high priced trolls are just taking the audiophile for a ride by charging a ridiculous amount for an item and it is really (sonically) only marginally better than something that could be costing 5 to 10 times less. Its the Laws of Diminishing Returns. So, I don't go to these shows because they would probably throw me out anyway because I would have a bone to pick with a great many of them.
0:01 Even if I was a billionaire, I wouldn't want a $4 million hi-fi system. The law of diminishing returns is waaaaaaaaaay into overdrive at that point. Plus, that collection of hyped up monstrosities in that room reminds me of Homer Simpson developing an overpriced bubble dome car for his long lost brother, Herb. I'm sure all of those components are excellent and beautifully made, but as impressive as a setup like that may appear, naturally, it's not practical for 99% of most households in terms of dedicated space alone. ;)
Great coverage of the show. There was some crazy gear there, but a few hidden gems like you said. The new tiny speakers from like Elac and Dayton Audio blew me away on how much sound they can produce.
When I see all these monoblocks, I just remember a very big HiFi show quite some years ago. This was in a huge hotel. There was so much power consumption by all these class A amps, the mains voltage dropped to 70% of the rated value. Everybody was upset about the poor sound quality. 😂😂
I listened to that $4M system too and what I heard actually impressed me just a bit and here's why: there was definitely a way larger scale to what I was hearing than probably anything I've heard before and at the same time I felt myself being pulled in one direction after another as instrument positions changed. That happens on my meagar home system and other things I've heard, but not to that degree. Now, at the same time, I am completely uninterested in owning a system like that, even if I had a room for it. Probalby most of us would constantly be wondering if something was wrong with one of the many, too many, components in that monstrosity.
One of our biggest highlights of the show was hanging with you and your Patreons- that's a solid community you got there! Wish we would have crossed paths on friday =(
Excellent content thank you…. I have been a fan of morel for 40 years. Using them in Car Audio religiously. Love Their sound. I remember hearing some of their pod speakers back in the day and always wanted to hear what they could offer as a floorstand and a stand mount. I would assume they would sound similar to dynaudio. Can’t wait for you to get a pair and post your review
Thanks for the quality content Randy! I got a great deal on a pair of Morel Octave 6 LE bookshelf speakers which I've been running for about a year now, which replaced my older Heco Celan 300 speakers. Could not be happier with them! Amazing details and still punchy enough. Would be cool if you could get a pair of those in for review, very little content online to be found. For hifi I run them with a small 2x10w Dynavox tube amp (no problem driving them at all), and for TV-duty with a Yamaha RX-V4a. Cheers from Sweden!
Good seeing you at the show Randy! I'm 80% sure I saw the 4M system blow 2 of their subwoofers playing a rave like presentation of Martin Garrix at rave like levels Saturday morning 😱
I can’t wait to see your review of the Morel Biggie. When I was in their room I saw little speakers with buttons a thought “powered bookshelf eh”, but nice Bluetooths, definitely interested!
Was at this event during the weekend, loved the Geshelli room, bought a J2 and added Sparkos from Andrew down at the headphone room. Shout out to Cambridge guys as well for the beer!
Randy how was your experience with all the people? I have never been to an event like this, I was blown away by the great experience as a hobbyist. Talk shop with all these guys, try to understand half the stuff they are explaining. Just a great time.
The mind boggles! I can't even begin to imagine $4 Million dollar systems. Lovely to see Neil and I wish him much success and happiness with his speaker endevours. Thank you for your time and efforts to share this wonderful walkabout with us all. Very entertaining. Good to see the whole team hooking up! Stay well brother.
Nice to hear Morel get a shout. I have a pair of their Hogtalere Bluetooth speakers which sound great but disappeared without a trace when it came to reviews. What you showed look like a new version. I hope they fixed the fact that a voice shouts LEFT SPEAKER!! at full volume when you put them in stereo mode, and also that you can't connect them wired in stereo mode without a great deal of hassle.
Hi, I always watch your videos being a cheap audiophile myself. I got me a Chinese BRZHIFI X21 a year ago from Alibaba. Its as 2.1 setup with 220V power, 2 x tpa 3255, comes with a remote controller and lots of input and output configurations. Running it with diy desktop 2 way 6.5" speaker system and two 8" (8ohm in parallel) subs, I'm still in love with it. Sounds good.
Pro audio engineers spend the most (money & time perfecting) on their monitoring system including the environment itself. But none I've met 25 years in this industry have spent anywhere near that much.
I didn’t hear everything but the standouts for me were the Gema kit speaker from SB Acoustics and the HSU Research room. Hsu had some $800 coaxial speakers that sounded great and of course subs that went down to 16hz.
I heard a "million dollar" system at Capital Audiofest 2019 (VonSchweikert, VAC, etc) and it sounded pretty unimpressive, kind of like a PA system. The auditorium setup was downright awful, essentially a worst-case acoustic scenario: the speakers were facing a glass wall at a 90 degree perpendicular angle, with the audience seating area sandwiched between them. Massive cancellation issues. My impression is that the gear itself was performing very well, but absolutely torpedoed by the awful acoustics. If you ventured very close to the speakers, so you were getting mostly direct sound and very little reflected sound they seemed extremely impressive. All in all, though, that weekend I heard $200 bookshelf speakers that sounded better than the "million dollar system" auditorium. I don't envy the folks who set up the $1mil system. I'm sure they didn't have a lot of control over room acoustics. Can't really change the room just for a 3-day show. Also it's hard to experiment with speaker placement when the speakers each weigh 400 pounds or whatever.
Just by packing $3,999,750 worth of cash bills into a $100 pair of powered bookshelves then hooking them up to a $150 streamer, you've got yourself a $4 million hi-fi system!
At $4million that thing better sound like the philharmonic right down to the bad breath from the horns and BO from the conductor. For that much you could like get a live performance from your favourite band. LOL Interesting vid Randy. Hope the show was a blast.
I think it's cool that there are some crazy expensive stuff out there, even if it inevitably won't be for me. I do however think it becomes a bit weird to display them at audio shows where you just won't have all that good room acoustics. Of course you need to showcase your gear to get visibility but the room is a big limiting factor for audio systems.
I saw the Chinese horn system at Axpona it was fun to see . I did notice six powered subwoofers that were used to make the base audio. The giant base horns were not able to make the low frequency.
1:29 Haha! That's hilarious, Randy. Carlo and I attended Sheridan College together in the late 80's and early 90's and both of us graduated from the animation program there (Classical Animation as it was known then). We've known each other for a very long time and still stay in touch via Facebook. It's great to see the two of you hanging out together and I discovered Carlo's RU-vid channel a while ago too. :)
I popped my head in that room but can honestly say I didn't see or hear anything that made me want to stay. Now, the bookshelf speakers from Aretai...I didn't want to leave the room!
@cheapaudioman I think they were spaced about 12 feet apart and the imaging was shockingly good to my ears. Neat design...woofer on the front and back with the funky horn loaded tweeter(?). Not cheap (for me)... $10,000
@cheapaudioman last thing...I really liked the speakers from Atohm... And I really appreciated that they didn't have them powered by ridiculously expensive gear. As much as I liked the speakers from Aretai, they were powering them with $150,000 dollars worth of electronics. Maybe that makes sense for a $10,000 set of bookshelf speakers, but it would have been nice to hear what they could do with something more reasonable (in my world, anyway). Can't please everybody...and I can't afford them either way!
Neil is the man! Did you get the made bed from the Navy ? My dream is to have my speakers in a show someday. I don't want to make crazy expensive speakers I just make them sound expensive that the average person can afford
I have a lot of great guitar gear. I'm also getting much more into engineering and mixing. So I certainly understand the obsession over sound quality. I also love to hear a good high-end system sometimes. It can be quite magical. However, I have some ultra cheap headphone speakers that I love to listen to music with. There isn't much clarity with them, but I just love the way a lot of music sounds with them. My buddy has the same headphones and we both agree about the enjoyment we get listening to them. "Better" isn't always easy to define.
I liked it, although the room was pretty much a square box so the bass got out of hand. Could have used some room correction. I thought it sounded warm and vibrant. Very clear and detailed. Even though some of these things are bonkers expensive, it is fun to see them and go listen to them if you can.
*As a rock and roll child of the 60's I can tell you that by 15 years of age, loud music had made it so I could never appreciate a $4M system, EVEN if I was asinine enough to buy one....*
Been to the hi end in Munich, saw very hi priced gear but the sweet music was in the 40 to 80k total setup! Which is your favorite setup and was it better than all low price gear you have demonstrated on your channel?
*_If you have a near unlimited budget to spend on your amps and speakers, just find out what systems are used in the world class recording studios where the music you listen to was originally recorded, and get the studio monitors and amps used by them. Easy Peasy..._* 🤘🏻 😉👍
Like I told my stepson how serious what kind of sound do you want, for myself put in 10k on my Carver Audio I myself is one percent I know when to stop..
I spent a good 10 minutes in that room yesterday, it sounds clear no doubt about it, what bothers me is hearing individual drivers, nothing is blended in, best of the show was the Focal Utopia at $140k
This was my 3rd time there. I love going, but nothing ever sounds good to me. Obviously a lot that has to do with the rooms and placement, but every time I come home and fire up my Elac UniFi’s coupled to my Schiit Saga and Vidar and fed with my Wiim Pro, it sounds better to me. And not just a little. And I know what you mean when you commented on that one system that you said sounded too “forward”. I think I experienced that in every other setup there. Weird.
I listened to the $4 million system. Loud but didn’t float my boat. I too found it odd, really more of a put off, that the $1 million system room on the corner room never hit the on button once🤔
I feel the same way, Every time i get to audition a "high end" system at a audio store i always walk away thinking it sounds terrible. The most recent example is Paradigm Persona 7F. $13,500. each speaker on MAC gear. It was Sterile, Harsh and Lifeless and painful to listen to. And it was not just because they use Beryllium either. I have NS-1000 and love them.
Totem and metaxas impressed me far more than these larger brands at fractions of the cost. Totem had speakers playing for 8 grand that left me wanting more from systems I heard there over ten times the price.
I'm a (classical) musician and I always find it funny hearing people seeing people talk about classical music. People try to sound super sophisticated and praise the recording for their lyrical communication or whatever.. it's always bs. Although I don't know nothing about it, when people praise some multi million dollar systems to the moon I get the exact same feeling. x)) So thank you very much for being honest. 😂
Agreed on Morel. I’ve built home speakers using Morel drivers and they are excellent. The “Biggies” are great. How about Hsu? Seems ideal for the CheapAudioMan.
I guess money follows money. I also imagine these million dollar systems take days to dial in and room treatments are a BIG thing if you want the very best out of what you have. Thanks for sharing another corner of your world, Andy.
Exhibitors from all price ranges are rarely able to get their room setups right due to constraints and/or intent and the conditions are usually adverse to proper listening in any case. Hifi conventions should be treated at best as window shopping and any serious listening should be attempted at the dealers. Even then, it still won't be the same as having the gear in your listening room, playing through your system, playing your music.
I saw it, I made my wife stand next to one of the horn speakers just for shits and giggles of size comparison. I sat, I listened. And yeah. I mean, it sounds good. Defintetly. But it's not the end all be all. I was honestly more impressed by the ESL Martin electrostatic speakers than this, and that's just shy of 3k.
I saw you walking around but never had a chance to say hi to you. I can fully agree that the $4,000,000 system was terrible. I could tell they weren’t accurate at all when AC/DC’s Highway to Hell was played and the vocals sounded muffled and nasally compared to how it normally sounds on other system. In regards to the Morel room, I was very impressed with how those speakers performed and was blown away by the low end extension without distorting or chuffing. WITH THAT SAID, they were running those off of a $70,000 Hegel integrated and were using $50,000 Nordost speaker wire to run them. They also had a very extreme EQ running that was insanely bass boosted. Another thing I noticed is that they would only play one song on the Biggie bluetooth speakers. (I spent around an hour in their room and only ever heard 4 songs played). If you listen to the song Fading Sun on one of your personal setups you’ll find that even a system with a sub on with a flat EQ will fall short of what they were trying to sell people with in that room. I’m also sad to share that I strongly suspect that SVS was also running a rather bass boosted EQ when playing music in their room.
I know many of these shows are for wealthy people showing off. There are great inexpensive systems out there and you have showcased many. Of course inexpensive is relative. I prefer great sound with enough money left over for CD's, albums, streaming or whatever source you prefer. I also like to eat and travel occasionally. Keep up what you do.
I'm new to this and similar to the title, I recently bought modi, Loki, magni, and senheiser HD 660S2 and felt a bit underwhelmed by them for the price all together. I use the Apple lossless music from my PC and I thought i was going to have this amazing musical experience. Don't get me wrong, music is much cleaner and there is no distortion. I can definitely tell the staging or imaging (not sure which it is) on Thriller by MJ, The openness of certain music, and small details that i don't think I've heard in air pods pro, Sony XM5, or the 1more triple drivers. Is it cool, yeah sure. However, i have to sit there just listening to music and paying attention or listen to specific music where the producer had specific intentions. I normally listen to music as i work throughout the day but not exactly paying attention. It is pretty cool I'll admit it but i don't think it's this amazing experience for the price. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or my hearing?
To add to the crappy acoustics & lack of isolation, some of the rooms play EDM which to me doesn't show off any detail or anything but low end capability. If a room's not playing acoustic music, I keep walking. Maybe that's how I missed this room.
The point of diminishing returns hits really really early. Blindfold most audiophiles and you'll see that they will be impressed with a 6K system. The average person will be blown away.
