Comparison on Paper: B&W versus Tidal
- Thread starter Jeff Fritz
- Start date
A very good article which raises some important questions. I think you will get a good response here. It would be interesting if you updated us on the feedback you get. Thank you.
Hello Jeff
I find both set's of published specs to be very limited. The Tidal has no useful measurments at all and won't even give you a basic sensitivity figure. The BW has a much more complete spec sheet. But where are the actual On Axis Frequency Response measurements the Polar Response measurements, the Step Response, CSD and so on. I don't think either one of them gives you enough information to even get an idea of what the may sound like in a typical room. Plus or minus on a frequency range doesn't give you any real idea of what's actually going on.
Rob
I find both set's of published specs to be very limited. The Tidal has no useful measurments at all and won't even give you a basic sensitivity figure. The BW has a much more complete spec sheet. But where are the actual On Axis Frequency Response measurements the Polar Response measurements, the Step Response, CSD and so on. I don't think either one of them gives you enough information to even get an idea of what the may sound like in a typical room. Plus or minus on a frequency range doesn't give you any real idea of what's actually going on.
Rob
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The real eye opener for me was that the "parts" don't seem worlds apart, but the 6:1 MSRP ratio is quite dramatic. A problem for the consumer?
I find this very interesting and will be looking forward to following this thread. This is the very thing that Dr Earl Geddes states, that speaker manufacturers really give very little useful measurements of their speakers, and I wonder also why this is (geeze I can't imagine). Now yes I own Geddes speakers and he publishes very honest useful measurements on his website, am I going to say these are the beat all end all speakers, certainly not, and I am not going to say everybody should go out and buy a pair, but it sure is nice to be able to see an honest set of measurements to base your purchasing decision on right from the start. As for the 6:1 msrp ratio yeah it seems like marketing is more important than those measurements. Bose has sold a few sets of speakers on marketing now haven't they.
Let's go shopping at Madisound for the componenets. Just a ruff guess assuming they use stock Accuton drivers. The woofers are 2X $564 a pop, the mids at $563 and the tweeter is a whoping $2,900. So we have a little over $4,600 per cabinet in retail prices for the drivers. Crossover would be say another 2-$500 depending on complexity. No price on the cabinets which would include the palleted shipping cost as well as any special finish prices.
What is an acceptable mark-up for speakers?
Any idea what the drivers cost in the B+W??
In a practicle sense I quess it depends upon how much disposible income you have. If these systems have equivalent performance than the B+W are obviously a comparitive bargain. What are you purchasing for?? Is it looks, performance, value or all of the above?? Me I tend to look at all with an emphasis on value and performance. You will not find me dropping 60K on speakers so that certainly makes the choice for me. Now the real question is if I had the money for them would I look at the Tidals??
Rob
Great points Rob, and what the manufacturers will always fall back on as an explanation for the cost is R&D, and I have never bought that for an instant I prefer to believe two other letters B.S. I simply will not believe that assuming the parts are fairly close in cost for the two speakers that the R&D cost is anywhere near the amount of price difference between the two speakers, what do they want me to believe , that B&W has no R&D costs?
Jeff,
Quoting "The similarities between these speakers are striking." End of quote . After reading this paragraph I thought you forgot : both are made by B&W with the exception of the Tidal , as the paragraph quoted much more differences than similarities.
The article is very interesting, but looking for similarities, forgets to remember the reader that Mundorf, for example, lists several types of capacitors with several orders of magnitude in price for the same capacitance, not to speak about the inductor coils. I think that the main question will be - does the investment in "audiophile" quality parts lead to sound improvements that can not be obtained with lesser cost "normal" parts?
I have owned two "similar" designs of B&W - the old Silver Signature and the 805. The Silver Signatures performance blew away the 805s. And I do not believe it was only because of the silver.
Quoting "The similarities between these speakers are striking." End of quote . After reading this paragraph I thought you forgot : both are made by B&W with the exception of the Tidal
, as the paragraph quoted much more differences than similarities. The article is very interesting, but looking for similarities, forgets to remember the reader that Mundorf, for example, lists several types of capacitors with several orders of magnitude in price for the same capacitance, not to speak about the inductor coils. I think that the main question will be - does the investment in "audiophile" quality parts lead to sound improvements that can not be obtained with lesser cost "normal" parts?
I have owned two "similar" designs of B&W - the old Silver Signature and the 805. The Silver Signatures performance blew away the 805s. And I do not believe it was only because of the silver.
I think this is a key question.
The speakers are basically the same form factor, and things like the diamond tweeters will hit some folk's hot buttons. But ultimately it does come down to how they sound in the room. Maybe the Tidals are that much better, maybe not. I have the 803 Diamonds here now under review. Maybe I can get the Tidals. But the 6:1 price difference does raise the eyebrows when you look at the speakers. Like I said, two three-way floorstanders of similar sizes and driver arrays.
Really it was just a think piece for us gearheads
Tidal is definitely the european ceramic drive based speaker of the month. I will be curious to how they last over the next few years. their pricing is obscene.
Hi
I will allow myself some cynicism. From what I now know about our hobby, people will find a way to find "something", anything special about Tidal and try to justify the price . There is herd mentality in the high end. For some obscure reasons, we flock toward a certain brand and it is the gear brand to own. That there exist similar sounding products but at a lesser price doesn’t seem to ever register.. The gear of the day becomes “it “, the object of desire...
Examples..
You will not find much discussion about the Evolution Acoustics MM series from all accounts a superlative line of speakers, the MM3 in particular seem to be one of the best speakers around regardless of price. You can't however tune any reference to the Magico Q5 out of your web surfing.
Edge a USA manufacturer of superlative electronics is almost unknown, even for seasoned audiophiles... They are expensive but nowhere near the prices of the Audiophiles-gear of the day (I am not saying by that they are not good by the way) Solutions, Balaboo or Technical Brains.
Allnic Korean manufacturer of serious, different and from all account spectacular electronics is looked upon with some reserve. Yeah! They are good but the Tubes of the day are those in the 100 K category, since Allnic does NOT go there or not yet anyway, they are not entirely “it”…
And for Any Turntables to attract the interest of audiophiles, the price must be near 100 K… else how can it compare to the (plug your 100 K TT here)
There are much more examples …
Rather peculiar hobby we are in .. No wonder our numbers are dwindling …
I will allow myself some cynicism. From what I now know about our hobby, people will find a way to find "something", anything special about Tidal and try to justify the price . There is herd mentality in the high end. For some obscure reasons, we flock toward a certain brand and it is the gear brand to own. That there exist similar sounding products but at a lesser price doesn’t seem to ever register.. The gear of the day becomes “it “, the object of desire...
Examples..
You will not find much discussion about the Evolution Acoustics MM series from all accounts a superlative line of speakers, the MM3 in particular seem to be one of the best speakers around regardless of price. You can't however tune any reference to the Magico Q5 out of your web surfing.
Edge a USA manufacturer of superlative electronics is almost unknown, even for seasoned audiophiles... They are expensive but nowhere near the prices of the Audiophiles-gear of the day (I am not saying by that they are not good by the way) Solutions, Balaboo or Technical Brains.
Allnic Korean manufacturer of serious, different and from all account spectacular electronics is looked upon with some reserve. Yeah! They are good but the Tubes of the day are those in the 100 K category, since Allnic does NOT go there or not yet anyway, they are not entirely “it”…
And for Any Turntables to attract the interest of audiophiles, the price must be near 100 K… else how can it compare to the (plug your 100 K TT here)
There are much more examples …
Rather peculiar hobby we are in .. No wonder our numbers are dwindling …
KeithR,
I heard about Tidal for the first time in this forum a few days ago. But looking at their site (the company was established in Germany in 1999) and at the pricing of many similar speakers in the market, I think the remark is unkind to Tidal. As far as I could understand Jeff intention was only to trigger a discussion about the merits of expensive technologies in speakers.
Everybody knows or should know that the biggest cost of a speaker is the cabinet. The effect of the cabinet on the sound is also much underrated. It makes me wince overtime someone starts looking at the parts.
Sorry Rob, it's just that you are part of the very small minority that has the woodworking skills to build your own cabinets. You don't charge yourself for the labor. Your equation does not apply to us.
The reason Magnepan and Martin Logan are so "affordable" is they have no cabinets.
Now lets look at the 803D and the Tidal. What are they made of, how are they finished, but more importantly where were they made. My guess is B&W/China and Tidal/Germany.
Sorry Rob, it's just that you are part of the very small minority that has the woodworking skills to build your own cabinets. You don't charge yourself for the labor. Your equation does not apply to us.
The reason Magnepan and Martin Logan are so "affordable" is they have no cabinets.
Now lets look at the 803D and the Tidal. What are they made of, how are they finished, but more importantly where were they made. My guess is B&W/China and Tidal/Germany.
B&W nautilus series speaker cabinets are not made in China, period. Why you would insinuate that is beyond me.
More likely--you are the audiophools who perpetuate this insane pricing that Jeff is poetically trying to debate on his website.
And btw, the speaker that got all this high end questionable pricing started was the Kharma 3.2. a diminutive 2 way monitor/floorstander that retailed for 24k, correct? i believe they weighed a whopping 50 lbs each and were 36" tall. at some point, folks understand---look where Kharma is today.
Then I am mistaken regarding the Nautilus line. The rest of the lines are. Touchy today aren't we.
I'm outta here. Have a good life Keith.
I'm outta here. Have a good life Keith.
Keith is touchy Jack. B&W built a speaker plant in China and I was not aware that B&W was still building any speakers in the UK. Jack's point is still valid Keith with regards to the B&W speakers in question (not your snooty Nautilus) were made in China and the Tidal in Germany where labor costs are sky high. I would love to hear both to see which sounds better. And for whoever asked earlier, speaker mark-up by the dealer is usually 50%. That means dealers are paying around $29K for the Tidals and $5K for the B&W speakers. So now when you do your math to figure out how much the manufacturer has in his speakers and how much profit he is making, you have to start from what he is selliing them for to the dealer-not what the dealer is selling them for. And please don't forget, profit doesn't equal selling price to dealer minus cost of parts. You have overhead, utlilities, labor, health insurance, cost of money, etc.
Getting back to Jeff's original point, I think this could be a real horse race. B&W has an excellent R&D department and a vast body of knowledge to draw on. Their cabinet shape is interesting and I like the fact they have one more driver than the Tidal. I expect the speakers cabinets to be made of MDF in a $10K floor stander with a diamond tweeter. I don't expect to find MDF in a $58K speaker.
Getting back to Jeff's original point, I think this could be a real horse race. B&W has an excellent R&D department and a vast body of knowledge to draw on. Their cabinet shape is interesting and I like the fact they have one more driver than the Tidal. I expect the speakers cabinets to be made of MDF in a $10K floor stander with a diamond tweeter. I don't expect to find MDF in a $58K speaker.
Its an interesting article from Jeff.
Another aspect towards product cost is manufacturer line setup.
In the case of the latest 80x series from what I understand a new manufacturing line in England was created (moved the cabinet aspect from Denmark for this series), the cost I would think would be very high and require some sort of funding.
Now this is probably easier for larger companies with big holding companies, but while there is a noticable price increase in the new series it is not as bad as some other comparable speakers (I appreciate this ignores the technical aspects of specific component cost such as the various Mundorf/etc as previously mentioned).
Also I find it interesting even smaller companies can still manage to fund some sort of manufacturing setup without excessive costs, Salk speakers is a good example and if they had a distributor/dealer sales model would probably be close to the B&W/Revel prices but not higher IMO.
However scale also affects manufacturing line funding-implementation and logistics, so this may help some of the smaller manufacturers.
Ofcourse Salk are cutting prices much more with a sales model omitting distributor/sales network.
Jeff, when you talk to a manufacturer in an interview, is it possible to discuss the impact of infrastructure/logistics setup and R&D costs on how this can affect a model's pricing?
Other sectors publish this type of info so hopefully the audio companies would not be too uncomfortable to discuss this for an article.
Thanks
Orb
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