Alon Wolf- why horns for his SOTA?

[hvbias]

Does anyone know why Alon Wolf chooses to use horns for his SOTA, but direct radiators for all his other speakers? Someone must have asked him this at a show? They are one of the few big name manufacturers I can think of where their reference deviates significantly from the rest of their product.

Forgive me since I'm not up and up with the most recent show reportings or industry news. I knew the speakers generated buzz many years ago, but looking at recent news he clearly feels they are still his flagship.

 

[cjfrbw]

I remember Mike Grellman saying a few years ago that Alon liked horns, but thought that to perform correctly frequency range needed to be restricted for each driver and that a good horn would need many carefully constructed drivers in order to perform with transparency. I guess he just didn't think that most existing horns did it right.

Big horns in a bigga badda space. Hard to argue with that for ultimate dynamics, even compared to top of the line cones/box speakers.

 

[hvbias]

I remember Dave Grellman saying a few years ago that Alon liked horns, but thought that to perform correctly frequency range needed to be restricted for each driver and that a good horn would need many carefully constructed drivers in order to perform with transparency. I guess he just didn't think that most existing horns did it right.

Big horns in a bigga badda space. Hard to argue with that for ultimate dynamics, even compared to top of the line cones/box speakers.

In agreement with everything you've said

But it is possible to do a partially front loaded horn for critical areas like midrange, without too imposing of a footprint (ie some Tractrix or Le Cleac'h profiles). Even the Magico Ultimate uses a direct radiator woofer for the low bass. The other thing I find interesting with those speakers is I have seen them pictured with Pass Labs and Soulution amps; those are amps with very low output Z. In my experience horns like a bit of electrical dampening, but this might be a special case since I think his speakers use DSP correction?

 

[stereo]

When I asked Alon the same question, he said that he doesn't know how to do a horn which sounds good for cheaper. At lower price points, he still believes conventional speakers have the best performance. Because it needs to be full range to be coherent, and you need top quality drivers and narrow frequency range on each driver for a horn to sound better than traditional speakers. That means a big speaker, lot of expensive drivers and a very good sub driver to integrate well with horns.

You need to keep in mind that the Ultimate have a very different sound than any other horn I listened to (and I listened to very expensive systems when I was living in Japan and Germany).

 

[JackD201]

Having heard ALE drivers firsthand, I can see where Wolf is coming from.

 

[rockitman]

When I asked Alon the same question, he said that he doesn't know how to do a horn which sounds good for cheaper..

did you ask him what his profit margin is on a $600k speaker ?

 

[stereo]

did you ask him what his profit margin is on a $600k speaker ?

you can always tell what speakers people own by their comments…

 

[hvbias]

When I asked Alon the same question, he said that he doesn't know how to do a horn which sounds good for cheaper. At lower price points, he still believes conventional speakers have the best performance. Because it needs to be full range to be coherent, and you need top quality drivers and narrow frequency range on each driver for a horn to sound better than traditional speakers. That means a big speaker, lot of expensive drivers and a very good sub driver to integrate well with horns.

You need to keep in mind that the Ultimate have a very different sound than any other horn I listened to (and I listened to very expensive systems when I was living in Japan and Germany).

All very good points, with more drivers also comes more complex crossovers and integration becomes more difficult.

What is the recommended listening distance for the drivers to integrate?

 

[rockitman]

All very good points, with more drivers also comes more complex crossovers and integration becomes more difficult.

What is the recommended listening distance for the drivers to integrate?

That is exactly why these speakers were a static display at CES IMO. The complexity of setup is too much to risk the speakers not sounding their best at the show.

 

[rockitman]

you can always tell what speakers people own by their comments…

Your a manufacturer's dream...Drunk on the Kool-aid. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[zztop7]

Photos please

Request for links to photos of the $600K Sota horn speakers.
Thank you in advance.
zz.

 

[LL21]

Request for links to photos of the $600K Sota horn speakers.
Thank you in advance.
zz.

Enjoy.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/sea...?p=magico+ultimate+3&fr=yfp-t-901&fr2=piv-web

 

[rockitman]

Request for links to photos of the $600K Sota horn speakers.
Thank you in advance.
zz.

Yes the are huge...the envy of the big penis club....

 

[zztop7]

Enjoy.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/sea...?p=magico+ultimate+3&fr=yfp-t-901&fr2=piv-web

SOTA = "Summits On The Air"
Result of a little Googling.

I did not realize the thread was about the Magico Ultimate. OR, am I mistaken?

zz.

 

[LL21]

SOTA = "Summits On The Air"
Result of a little Googling.

I did not realize the thread was about the Magico Ultimate. OR, am I mistaken?

zz.

I honestly thought it was...am I mistaken?

 

[zztop7]

I honestly thought it was...am I mistaken?

I do not think you are mistaken.
I did not put 2+2 together because Magico & Ultimate were never mentioned in a context that I associated properly.

zz

 

[stereo]

Your a manufacturer's dream...Drunk on the Kool-aid. I wish you the best of luck.

In my job, I spend significant amount of my time doing Design to value studies for consumer electronics companies, with a full lab doing product tear downs and clean sheet analysis on mechanical and electronic parts. So, unlike you, I have a pretty good estimate of what they cost...
If you take into account the fact that R&D, casting molds and drivers tooling are amortized on a very small production volume, you would be surprised that the % margin they make on a pair of Ultimate is MUCH lower than ALL products in Wilson range. Actually I estimate that Wilson makes minimum 25% more gross margin on your Alexandria than Magico on an Ultimate. Anyway, most important is you are happy with your speakers... even if it did help financing the Ferrari of Mr Wilson

 

[rockitman]

In my job, I spend significant amount of my time doing Design to value studies for consumer electronics companies, with a full lab doing product tear downs and clean sheet analysis on mechanical and electronic parts. So, unlike you, I have a pretty good estimate of what they cost...
If you take into account the fact that R&D, casting molds and drivers tooling are amortized on a very small production volume, you would be surprised that the % margin they make on a pair of Ultimate is MUCH lower than ALL products in Wilson range. Actually I estimate that Wilson makes minimum 25% more gross margin on your Alexandria than Magico on an Ultimate. Anyway, most important is you are happy with your speakers... even if it did help financing the Ferrari of Mr Wilson

I respect that reply. I had no ill intent on my original query. $600k gets you only the speakers. I guess depending on what type of crossover config you choose, the number of amps is another significant cost issue. I do look forward to hearing about your final setup configuration.

 

[ddk]

In my job, I spend significant amount of my time doing Design to value studies for consumer electronics companies, with a full lab doing product tear downs and clean sheet analysis on mechanical and electronic parts. So, unlike you, I have a pretty good estimate of what they cost...
If you take into account the fact that R&D, casting molds and drivers tooling are amortized on a very small production volume, you would be surprised that the % margin they make on a pair of Ultimate is MUCH lower than ALL products in Wilson range. Actually I estimate that Wilson makes minimum 25% more gross margin on your Alexandria than Magico on an Ultimate. Anyway, most important is you are happy with your speakers... even if it did help financing the Ferrari of Mr Wilson

In your estimation how much of this justified cost do you attribute to R&D and how much to actual production? $600k buys plenty of castings and tooling, at least outside of the lab world.

david

PS I'm not being sarcastic, I was in manufacturing for many years and curious to see how you break down their costs. As far as the $600k goes, all the power to them if they can get it, I'm all for capitalism.

 

[stereo]

In your estimation how much of this justified cost do you attribute to R&D and how much to actual production? $600k buys plenty of castings and tooling, at least outside of the lab world.

david

PS I'm not being sarcastic, I was in manufacturing for many years and curious to see how you break down their costs. As far as the $600k goes, all the power to them if they can get it, I'm all for capitalism.

Keep in mind that in audio more than half goes to the dealer (and in case of cables, we are talking about 70%...). So Magico would receive only less than 270-300k. Bill of material makes around 180-210k (my guess). By respect for Magico I prefer not to publish the split of my estimate... as an example, just the CNC-machining of the mid horn will cost them circa 15-20k per piece (and you need 2!), it is a very deep piece, there are only very few CNC machines able to build that and their production volume is so small that they will get hammered on pricing by the few shops who can do that! And the 10 drivers alone cost significantly more than the full production cost of a pair of XLF. If you add assembly cost, shipment, cost for Alon flying over for set up at your home... you end up below 30% Gross margin, i.e., less than 90k. That's very little to pay the rent, your accountant, your people managing suppliers, quality and testing dpt, the R&D team who developed the bass and midbass drivers as well as the XO, sales & marketing, amortization of tooling...
For a reference, the large audio companies like Harman, D&M (Denon& Marantz) or B&W are barely making any money on traditional hifi (they only make money on crappy China made iPod docking stations or headsets....), and they operate at around 50% gross margin.

Bottom line, as surprising as it can be, I think that the Ultimate is more of a product statement for marketing purpose and the dream project of a guy addicted to perfection than a big money maker (or they need to sell 200 of them to get some scale effect...). There is zero cost-driven trade off being made, they just build the best speaker they can, to see what is possible in sound reproduction. Not the best way to become rich