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How much did your speakers cost relative to what’s driving them?

Power=800
Noise=4000
20% or 5 to 1
A 5 to 3 is the minimum I could live with and not wonder if the source was a bottleneck. As it is I easily hear the faults in the 20%.
 
One of my least expensive good systems ( DIY Frugal Horn Mk3's )

I sheet of MDF - $35
2 Fostex Fe126en drivers - $90
1 APPJ Miniwatt amp - $99

Almost 50 - 50 but that's with DIY speakers and an exceptionally low price for a new SET amp.

If you bought a pair of comparable speakers ( full range single drivers ) like the the Frugal's you could expect to spend a lot more. The Pearl Acoustic's Sibelius sell for thousands.
 
Speakers are worth about $1600 so that comes up to about 20% not taking into account my headphone collection except the 3 I use daily.
 
Both my favorite speakers (JBL L150) and my favorite amp (Yamaha M-2) were given to me for free.

But taking into account my entire system, I definitely have more money invested into my speakers. Much of that cost comes from my JBL 590 speakers which I bought new as well as my passive Dayton subwoofers which I bought new and assembled the cabinets myself. In contrast, all the amps in my system are vintage amps, with my newest amp being my subwoofer amp (Yamaha P3500) from the early-mid 90's. I got most of my vintage gear before it came back into style again and all the hipsters caused prices to sky-rocket.
 
All my systems have amps which cost much more than the speakers. This is mainly because I mostly have speakers which I built or refurbished myself, while the electronics are mostly newer.

The extreme case is the system I have on now. The speakers are Ohm Fs which I bought refurbished on Bartertown, and were a great deal. The pre and power amps are McIntosh I bought as recently discontinued models from Audio Classics about 15 years ago. I probably have 5x as much into the amps as the speakers. And it’s probably the best sounding system I have. I like the Ohms more than the Martin Logans they replaced, and which had cost me maybe 2/3 the cost of the amps, purchased used. The new cost of those were about the same as the amps.
 
Living room`s system: probably well over the speakers purchase price.
Though the new purchase of Mc. XRT-30s speaker system in late Nov. 2003) were quite pricy. (just south of $30,000.00 with the inclusion of the timbre matching center channel speaker.
With the 2006 purchase of the (2) brand new Mc. MC 1201 mono block SS amps, that expenditure was about half the XRT-30s purchase price.

But the 2011 brand new purchase of (4) Mc. MC-275LE tube amps easily alone exceeded the 2003 speakers original purchase price.

I don`t mind, having easily saved up (no wife, or children ever), as all of this Mc. audio equipment has performed glitch and issue free since their purchase, and is my final for my life, audio upgrade for the living room`s 7.0 system.

And most importantly, sounds wonderful to all ears who`ve listened to it, in it`s current configuration.
 
Cost to me?
I have 3 systems;
Main system; SpeakerLab6(s) 0% of the cost, free to me from a friend. { Turntable,CD,Tuner, Tape, Tube amp}
Computer System; ADS630(s) 0%. Free at our "Take it or Leave it" at our local recycling/dump center. { iMac, Marantz receiver}
Wood Shop System; ADS400(s) 0%. Another free-bee From the recycling center {Marantz CD/Tape, Marantz amp}
All were in excellent cosmetic and operational condition.
 
Speakers were store demos built in 1984 but purchased in 1986 for $1700
Amp & pre-amp were built in 1990; purchased used in 1998 for $2500 for the pair.
 
The speakers are JBL 4365 and when they came out they were for the Asian market only, had a MSRP of $21K. I think when they did become available in the US it was $16K.

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Have a pair of Velodyne HGS 12 subwoofers to augment them. They had a MSRP of $3500 each. hard to pin down my cost on them lets call it $800 each.

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The current electronics? Well there might be some changes coming down the pike. But what I currently have and had in place.

AVM Audio Amp Essential Monoblocks. Mine are silver, but here is the black image. They were $10,000 Euro in mid 2000s. I got into them for $2K

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Halcro DM8 pre-amp. Just sold it, and am not sure what is replacing it. These were $16K in mid 2000s My cost was $3.5K

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Phono stage is Esoteric E-03. They were $6K MSRP Paid $2K

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Turntable is a SOTA Cosmos Eclipse with SME V arm and Transfiguration Audio Proteus cartridge. Table is $10K, arm is $5K (depending on age) cartridge is $6K Eh I am tired of remembering prices.....

Sota9.jpg


The second table is a Scheu Audio Das Laufwerk No2. Have two Dynavector DV505 arms on it. One arm has an Ortofon MC2000 cartridge, the other typically has a ZYX4D, but I rotate cartridges on that arm.

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Finally the DAC is an Audio Magic Kukama. Getting long in the tooth, but never found anything I want to replace it with yet. Mine has had some revisions that most units do not have, could call it a SE I guess.

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Quite oddly my Simaudio Moon headphone amp/DAC is and by far the most expensive item in my stack. $12,000 new but I got it from my BIL who had used it as a demo in his store for a year or so. Paid $4k for it and it is worth the sacrifice. Later I noticed that Tyl Hertsens used the exact same equipment for his headphone reviews. Working with Simaudio gear surrounded by at least 200 headphones would be a dream job for me :cool:

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My outlay for speakers and amplification has been fairly conservative, relatively speaking...and each has cost about the same. I look for maximum bang for the buck in the $1000-1500 range with each...and I think that gets you into some pretty sweet gear if you buy used, are willing to do some repair/refurb, and are patient. That budget got me into stuff like
Altec 19, Altec 17, Infinity QLS-1, Infinity IRS Beta...fully restored and modified Threshold s/300, Pass Aleph 5 clone that I had someone else build, and a few nice tube amps...nothing there cost me more than $1.5k.

My biggest single investment in electronics has been my DAC...a Denafrips Pontus II at around $1700.

But my room takes the top spot for money invested in the hobby at around $20k. That seemed the right place to spend the big bucks so I can make sure I'm getting everything my gear has to offer.
 
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My speakers plus upgraded drivers and crossovers cost 1/4 of what I paid for my power amp.
 
My speakers cost me $3000 and the amp and pre amp cost $6200. If you take away the $3795 I made on selling the speakers I had before them you could kind of say there were free
 
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