History of the Nautilus loudspeaker

As you know, classical music is layered. It can be scaled for different sized orchestras, which can be akin to tessellation in graphics. You can add more nuanced scores or details if your orchestra has enough members. Of course this has a limit, which is the full score written by the original composer. Similarly, you can remove some layers or simplify the piece if you're smaller orchestra without compromising the piece.

What I tried to say is, if you've listened the piece from or performed with a relatively big orchestra, you'll know that which instrument shall be there, where the small optional triplets are, how the piece should sound or where's that little oboe shall come in, where the little cymbal adds that little crash, or how the harmonics affect each other and create that atmosphere.

So, you'll notice something is missing or off or not as it should be especially in the high end. Classical music has a lot of perceptual tricks under its sleeves to create a specific ambiance and sense of space and most of this lays in the higher end of the spectrum, and they get shaved off first with lossy compression.

Hope this helps, because it's something more felt than can be said with words, how you can't really hear the double bass but feel how it's there. It's that kind of perception.

Edit: Just wanted to add that one musician's or orchestra's specific style of course will be different, but a good orchestra is very faithful to the original score of the piece. Even if an orchestra is playing a little fast or more aggressive, or a simplified version, base instrumentation and atmosphere is the same (as long as the orchestra is not doing Metallica S&M style play the right thing with wrong instruments kind of deliberate arrangement).

Another extreme example would be the band Pink Martini. They have an on-stage audio magic which allows them live with the exact sound of their studio recordings, albeit live. It's surreal to experience.

Also, to be able to create the same crossovers in the digital domain, you'd have to go pretty high end again, because, passing through a single DAC at the end of the chain is not same as a DAC -> ADC -> Crossover -> DAC chain at the end of the day.

All in all, you'll come pretty close but you won't be able to create the exact same device at the end. Also, some stuff's (like good drivers built in small numbers) price doesn't come down that easily.

Yes, dedication and tuning of a special room with 8x 500W mono amplifiers requires a hefty sum and these speakers are may not be expensive when all the price is factored in, but throwing in modern plastics and a couple of DSPs cannot replicate all that, all the time.

I half believe it was the presentation - dramatic, but also extremely clever choice of SACD source content with some theatre thrown in for good measure. However, that 12 minutes in a room in conference hall in London with the Nautilus speakers was something I will never forget for a "this is what money buys you" experience. Warm, huge dynamic range, concert hall experience - comfy chair and dim lights helped as well :)

At Tag, we built the "tag mclaren speakers f1" that had a lot of elements I feel borrowed from the B&W industrial design (but made F1 grade) - I used these daily for several years, but was never able to convince myself they were as good as that one time experience.

Those speakers being the old-school big boxes with 12-15" woofers, sometimes multiple and usually 3-way designs, sometimes 4-way. Large, heavy, imposing and punchy, big speakers for big music. I know modern speaker drivers have come a long way, but you just can't get that from 6" or 8" drivers in the same way.

DIY PA speaker designs do provide some of this, but I'll have to tweak the aesthetics more in a "living room-friendly" direction, because nobody seems to want big beefy speakers anymore.