Good thing they haven't seen this site: http://www.higherfi.com/. Check out the $6,000,000 solid gold speakers! I was supprised at how many of the very expensive speakers they list being from companies I had never heard of. Some of them must be put ons or ego trips.

Speaker list here: http://www.higherfi.com/spkrlist/speakerlist.htm

Edited by user 20 July 2012 15:27:21(UTC)  | Reason: added material

If it weren't for the imerge product, that article would have been a clean sweep of Absolute Sounds distributorship! And there's no mention of cabling costs? At that level, the most likely cabling and stand costs would be more than most would countenance for a complete system and would give veracity to the 'bonkers' accolade...

Perhaps there is a shadowy cult of super audiophiles that we non zillionaires never encounter. I imagine them sitting around in their secret clubhouse at an undisclosed location: 1st voice "Basil's hedge fund must be tanking, he just bought a $10,000 Koetsu instead of one of the good ones". 2nd voice. " HA, chump change! I would never insult my Continuum with one of those". 3rd voice: You must hear my system now that the personal power plant I had built next to my country cottage is operational; sharing current with the common herd was just so degrading". And so on.


Of course the "country cottage" has 100 rooms and 2!!! car elevators. [American political humour: Mitt Romney is currently knocking down his multimillion dollar beach house to build a much larger one with---wait for it!--a car elevator. This would be defensible to me only if it were to facilitate delivery of hi fi gear that would not otherwise fit through the front door.]

Edited by user 21 July 2012 23:05:12(UTC)  | Reason: added insanity

Country Cottage??? Surely, supervillain's lair in the heart of a volcano, with pools with sharks with frikkin' lasers...?

I love the fun of the chase, I have not been idle since my biggie of about a decade ago, have even bigger and better ideas; alas the space and funds won't allow, fun to go through the exercise though much lessons learnt on the way in the last decade since them, still learning :)

That's fightin' talk

I would assert that musically, the case is fairly well proven - Peter Walker was right. Electrostatics - as part of the physics of their basic design - deliver the sort of time-coherent wave launch in the mid and treble (as HFC's recent hearing article suggested was important) that box-and-multiple-cone speaker designers have to work so hard to get anywhere near. At most price-points, I would assert, an electrostat launches a more coherent and co-ordinated wave than a multiple-driver system.

Where I agree that they have failed, and will continue to do so, is in terms of domestic acceptability. Both in terms of Wife Acceptance Factor, and in terms of their ability - or utter lack of it - to work in small rooms. These limitations are as much a part of their "physics" as their ability to launch coherent sound.

I'm lucky enough to have mine in a fairly lively 20 foot square room with a relatively high ceiling, and with a largely open "wall" on one side into another largish room. In that setting, they're still visually obtrusive (they're nearly 6 feet tall by a foot wide, and mostly black, all the see-through stators and oak trim panels in the world won't hide that bulk!) but not unacceptably so, and they sound glorious. I took them to visit a friend who has a pair of N802s in a much smaller room. We struggled to get even a basically acceptable sound out of them, and the only position we could find where the stators worked was one where there was almost no bass, so his big Velodyne was pressed into service. And, visually, they completely dominated the room in a way that made black N802s seem positively diminutive... The N802s were simply a far better speaker in that room.


Lest I seem overly opinionated, can I explain why I carefully wrote "multiple-driver" systems in the opening paragraph? I'd always had certain opinions, best described as "unflattering", about single-driver systems, based on sounds I'd heard at shows. I can't stand the "I'm a HORN" sound. But then, last year, at Whittlebury, I spent some time in the Voxativ room. I'm happy to admit that my preconceptions were shattered, I learned so much in that half-hour. I heard the same things that I love in my electrostatics, at least on the music that Ines and her colleague were playing. But mine were cheaper :-)

Pete,

Musically, all panels sound broken to me, including Peter Walker's much vaunted creations. This is most likely because their bass reproduction is usually so off by comparison to their (beautiful and nicely in phase) mid/treble performance that it just sounds like those instruments are at another party. So, fine, they launch an excellent wave form in the mid/treble, and forget to bring along the bass wave form which of course ruins the timing of the whole thing and falls to pieces.

There must be something wrong with me as I like both; each type has its virtues. No, they don't sound alike. I have used planar [Quads] off and on since about 1964 [ordered direct from C.C. Goodwin] and was a dealer for years. Don't have any now but still have the Apogee's; which I really like but don't have the room for. If it wasn't for Bose I would say that about every type of speaker. properly executed, could sound good. The choice is yours; you do not have to denigrate one type to exult your preferred type.

^ Some sympathy with that view; Overall I prefer a consistent performance but on the other hand I can live with some tonal aberrations only if that comes with excellent dynamics and timing

Edited by user 06 August 2012 13:54:30(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

ML have learned over many years how to join up near monopole and monopole bass to dipole mid-treble

but in my view there are still minor lingering issues with hybrids as a whole.

Coherency is important in its own right , consonant transducer technologies do help the smooth blending of driver outputs.

Martin Colloms