The Audiophiliac

You get two of these for your $107,000.

(Credit: YG Acoustics)

You'll get no argument from me that $107,000 seems like a lot of money for a pair of speakers.

But the YG Acoustics Anat Reference II Professional is a lot of speaker. Stereophile magazine's Wes Phillips delved deep into the flagship speaker's build and sound quality in his review. It was a tough assignment, but somebody had to do it.

While $107,000 is definitely out of my price range, that doesn't mean there's not a market, albeit a very small market, for products that advance the state of the art. Great, but who buys these things?

Answer: rich people. You probably know some of their names. Rock icon Bruce Springsteen just signed a new $110,000,000 contract. The Boss could and should buy these things (maybe he'd make better-sounding records). And the last time I checked, Tom Cruise is still getting upward of $20 million to appear in a movie. A pair of YG Acoustics Anat Reference II Professionals would be a nice start for his home theater.

In addition, sports superstars are still signing megamillion contracts, and big-business CEOs are still eating at fancy restaurants. Even now, the rich aren't hurting; luxury markets are holding steady.

The Anat Reference II Professional is a three-piece modular loudspeaker. It is, shall we say, on the statuesque side of large; the Reference Main Module sits atop the Studio passive subwoofer, which, in turn, rests upon the Professional powered subwoofer. Each three-module array weighs 440 pounds.

Most of each module is made of aircraft-grade aluminum; the front baffles are a machined "ballistic grade" alloy of aluminum and titanium. The speakers are shipped in six custom aluminum flight cases.

John DeVore, a couple of cool cats, and a bunch of unfinished speaker cabinets.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Devore Fidelity, founded by president and chief designer John DeVore in 2000, builds state-of-the-art speakers in the Brooklyn borough of New York.

DeVore is one of the few speaker designers I've met who worked as a high-end audio salesman, so he can draw upon first-hand knowledge of what buyers really want. He's also listened to the very best stuff out there, and learned that components that measure well and sound impressive at first don't always sound great over the long run.

I've known John for a long time, and when he first decided to get into the speaker business, I was skeptical. Over the years, I've seen many try to get into the game--and almost all go bust. Designing a great speaker is one thing; running a business and getting your stuff out to market are huge challenges.

John not only succeeded where others failed, but he didn't cut corners. I visited his Brooklyn factory last week and was mightily impressed by his workers' craftsmanship. The speakers' wood veneers, made of walnut and cherry, are gorgeous.

Devore Fidelity is still a small operation, selling about 400 pairs of speakers a year. John puts a higher value on quality than on quantity, and his customers appreciate that. Even in these tough times, sales are holding steady.

John played his latest design, the 3XL, a two-way bookshelf model with a solid bamboo wood cabinet, in the factory's large listening room. The sound was vivid and musically engaging, and considering the speaker's modest dimensions, it produced very decent bass.

DeVore Fidelity speaker prices now start around $2,000 a pair. I reviewed the DeVore Gibbon 7.1 speaker for Home Entertainment magazine in 2004.

The X-32, Danish audio at its best.

(Credit: Dynaudio)

Of all the major high-end speaker-manufacturing countries in the world--the United States, England, France, Germany, Italy--Denmark is, in some ways, my favorite.

The Danes balance art and engineering better than anybody. I recently reviewed Dynaudio's latest series, Excite, for Ultimate AV magazine. You can read the complete review, but here are some excerpts:

The Excite system featured a pair of X32 towers (together costing $2,800), an X22 center channel speaker ($850), a pair of X12 bookshelf speakers (together costing $1,200) for use as surrounds, and a SUB 250 subwoofer ($1,000). None of them are very large or imposing; my nonaudiophile friends barely noticed the speakers' presence in my living room. That's probably a plus for folks looking for a 5.1-channel system that blends in with its surroundings.

All of the Excite models feature Magnesium Silicate Polymer cone woofers with die-cast aluminum frame baskets and aluminum voice coils. Dynaudio's specially coated soft-dome tweeters, with newly designed magnet structures, grace all the speakers.

The Excite speakers are available in real-wood maple, cherry, rosewood, and black ash veneers; my review samples came in the deep 'n' dark rosewood, which was truly stunning.

Anthony Gallo Acoustics never made box speakers.

No, Gallo speakers, from the company's earliest days in 1994, were always designed around spherical cabinets. Yes, others have followed suit, but Gallo was the first to perfect round sound.

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, which opens Thursday in Las Vegas, Gallo will premiere its latest speaker: the double-balled Strada ($1,000 MSRP each). Measuring a compact 6.5 inches tall by 12.5 inches wide by 5.5 inches deep, the Strada is jam-packed with unique technology.

Round speakers are no cosmetic gimmick; round speakers get around the inherent structural and acoustic problems of boxes, which, to a greater or lesser degree, always adversely affect the speakers' sound. Boxes tend to "sing along" with the drivers, smearing the sound. Gallo's hardened-steel balls are so incredibly rigid that all you hear is the sound of the Stradas' woofer and tweeter.

The Strada: no cosmic gimmick.

(Credit: Anthony Gallo Acoustics)

The thing is, small speaker cabinets tend to severely limit bass power and low-frequency oomph. So sure, the Strada would suffer from undernourished bass if it weren't endowed with Gallo's patented S2 Technology. Here's how it works: the balls are packed with polyolefin flakes (they look like snow flakes) that absorb significantly more energy than commonly used wool or synthetic stuffing materials.

The polyolefin flakes' denser-than-air mass also replicates the volume of a much larger enclosure, which allows the Strada's woofers to produce deeper bass, and the flakes minimize performance-degrading reflections within the speaker itself. The Strada makes enough bass on its own that there's no need to add a subwoofer for stereo applications, Gallo claims.

Nestled between the Strada spheres you'll find the latest update of Gallo's proprietary CDT 3 tweeter. Instead of the usual dome tweeter, Gallo's tweeter is a silver-coated cylinder boasting vastly greater radiating area than conventional tweeters. Gallo's tweeter forgoes most of the moving mass elements common to dome tweeters--a voice coil, coil-former, or a suspension--and maybe that's why it produces high-frequency response extending all the way up to 50 kilohertz (dome tweeters barely make it past 20KHz). The tweeter is another reason Gallos sound better than conventional speakers.

The TR-3 subwoofer may be tiny, but it gets the job done in style.

(Credit: Anthony Gallo Acoustics)

The company is also introducing a matching subwoofer, the TR-3 ($984 MSRP). It nixes the usual boring cube shape in favor of a cylinder. It's a little thing--just 10.75 inches tall by 12 inches wide by 13.5 inches deep--but since it also uses S2 Technology it delivers deeper and more powerful bass than other minisubs.

(Credit: Magico)

Times are tough, and even high-end speaker manufacturers are feeling the pinch.

Take Magico, for instance. Its soon to be released V2 speaker is $9,000 less expensive than the current entry-level model, the V3. The brand's probably most famous for its Mini II monitors that go for $29,600. The top of the range Ultimates run, gulp, $329,000! Don't worry, all prices are per pair.

The V2 is certainly built like a Magico; its got the solid aircraft grade aluminum front baffle attached to a 17-ply, vertically stacked Baltic Birch wood cabinet. The entire cabinet is stiffened with aluminum tensioning rods. I haven't seen the V2, but if it's anything like the other Magicos it will be a truly stunning work of industrial design. The V2 is 42 inches high and weighs 120 pounds.

The V2 is a 2.5-way design featuring a pair of 7-inch Nano-Tech woofers and a 1-inch Ring Radiator tweeter.

The V3 received a rave review in the May issue of Stereophile magazine.

Oh, there's one catch to the V2: it won't be available in time for Christmas; deliveries begin early next year. Magico was founded a decade ago in Berkeley, Calif.

(Credit: Davone Audio)

You've probably never seen anything like the Davone Rithm, whose swooping curves and daring good looks are a new take on Danish speaker design. The Rithm features an 8-inch coaxial driver with a 1-inch tweeter placed in the center of the woofer.

The Rithm's bowed shape is built up from many layers of thin wood panels; the form-pressed cabinet was designed with acoustic and aesthetic considerations in mind. Contact the U.S. distributor, The Signal Collection, to learn more.

Zu's newly reworked tweeter and woofer

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

You can't make your Nikon D200 DSLR into a D300. If you want the new one, you must buy it.

Even Steve Jobs can't transform last year's iMac into the latest, greatest iMac. And you can't add HDMI switching to your 4-year-old Sony receiver. But...that's exactly the sort of upgradeability that some high-end companies offer.

Take Zu Audio. The company offers an upgrade kit that'll transform any Druid speaker built from 2001 forward into the current Druid Mk 4/08 model for $600 ($800 upfront, with a $200 refund with return of original drivers). Since a pair of new Druid MkIV/08 go for $3,400, the $600 fee seems very reasonable to me. Complete new Zu speakers are sold factory direct with a 60-day money-back guarantee. They are manufactured by Zu Audio in Ogden, Utah.

Last year, I raved about the Druid MK IV speakers and dubbed them Speaker of the Year. So I was eager to install the kit and see for myself if the smart folks at Zu could actually improve this great speaker.

The upgrade kit includes a pair of new woofers and tweeters and all of the necessary tools to get the job done. Examining the quality of the parts and build integrity of the Zu's designs from the inside of the speaker only increased my respect for the design.

New woofers and tweeters

(Credit: Zu Audio)

Zu even produced a how-to DVD that shows the installation in real time. Druid owners who'd rather not roll up their sleeves can ship their speakers back to Zu and have the pros handle the job--for free--but the owner pays for shipping. I needed around 50 minutes to complete the upgrades, and I was taking my time. I wanted to get the job done right. The first time.

Cruising around YouTube, I found "Plasma Speaker/Singing Arc," an intriguing little video of a homemade "speaker" that makes sound by directly ionizing air.

It's not exactly high-fidelity, but it shows there are still a few tinkerers out there thinking about something other than the iPod.

The person behind the video describes the process: "This is a prototype of a FM modulated plasma arc speaker/tweeter. Have since built this circuit on a custom PCB & made an improved vertical discharge setup, using tungsten-tipped electrodes (see my other videos). This stops the plasma hopping about and causing the distortion you can hear..."

Neat!

Back in the early 1980s, there was a high-end speaker using this technology, the Hill Plasmatronic. (It sold for something like $8,000 a pair.) The plasma tweeter was mated with conventional midrange and woofer drivers; the treble from 700Hz up was produced by a ball of ionized gas. The massless tweeter was hailed as state of the art and has never been surpassed. I listened to a pair of them back in the day and mostly remember loving the tweeter and hating the speaker. You can find used Plasmatronics every now and then on the Web. Definitely a cult item.