Magpie0001

Just thunk Id share this with youz,








WEBPAGE

I have to stop typing now, my keyboard is coverd with drool.

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Music is my first love & It will be my last.

Jeff

This is the first time I've ever gotten a boner for something other than a chick.

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For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
--Charles Bukowski

bullgoose

Two years ago, I sold a pair of what were, at one time, considered to be the best loudspeakers in the world: Ohm Model F's. My pair had sequential serial numbers; I bought them from the original owners, and had new suspensions installed professionally. They were absolutely beautiful sounding BUT they required a MINIMUM amplifier power of 100 W. at 8 ohms; they were rated to 400 watts at 8 ohms, which must have been mind-boggling (and dangerous to ones hearing!) As I said, they had a beautiful sound, but they were physically too large for my home.
I first saw them in the early '70's; it took 25 years for me to get a pair. The original price was $4000.00/pair; I bought mine for $500.00+ another $125.00 for suspensions. I loved them, but they were impractical for me; the end of the story is just too painful to relate (the speakers were ruined) and I don't want to go into it.

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"If I had it to do all over,
I'd do it all over you."

Magpie0001

Condolances bullgoose, Im sorry for your loss.

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Music is my first love & It will be my last.

Leander

Where in Hell's name could I possibly put those behemoths?

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Just me and God, watching Scotty die..

Mr.Deflok

Bah! Not even true surround! Pretty though.

clonmult

I prefer the old Infinity IRS V 2 pair per channel towers. I can't for the life of me remember the pricing.

Can't find any images on the web of the blighters.

The HF units had 30+ of the Infinity Kappa drivers per side, each bass tower (6' + tall) had 6 12" bass drivers. They were awesome.

The Wilsons are amazing, but I don't quite think they are the most expensive speakers around.

bullgoose

I'm not sure if Gusdorf is still in business, but in the late '70's early '80's they built a HOME system that went for $100K; of course, it was so big, they sent a structural engineer to evaluate your home to see if it could support the system. The thing was internally powered, and I believe it had in excess of 3000 watts of total power. It came in 4 modules, each in excess of 6' tall and it weighed in at roughly 1500 lbs (I'm reaching back on this, my numbers may not be exact, but they're close.) The big advantage to something like this would be that you'd never need a vasectomy; just turn that sucker up, VOILA!- instant sterilization!

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"If I had it to do all over,
I'd do it all over you."

Magpie0001

For anyone who wants to know these babys cost a grand total of $250K. That is just speakers!
Two hundred and fifty THOUSAND dollars! Theyre in the Guinness book of world records too.

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Music is my first love & It will be my last.

brandon11983

TRUE SURROUND!!! AAARRRGGHHH!! I'M THINKING OF THE THINGS I WANT TO BLUDGEON YOU WITH RIGHT NOW!!

SURROUND IS NOT FUCKING AUDIO. IT'S A NOVELTY. HOW OFTEN DO YOU GO TO A CONCERT TO FIND THE GUITARIST STANDING BEHIND YOU??

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Well behaved women rarely make history.

Magpie0001

I dont have surround, to be honest I hardly have anything since I moved. Can you explain why you believe surround is a novelty? I dont disagree with you but Id like an explanation.
Thanks.

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Music is my first love & It will be my last.

dimes

Magpie -

According to the site's linked reviews, these are only $75k/pair. Where are you getting the $250k number?

I've personally always lusted after a pair of Dynaudio Evidence at roughly $82k/pair.

brandon11983

There is 1 time and 1 place in which surround is acceptable. Movies. The end.

A true audiophile has no interest in surround. A true audiophile wants open and spacious music with a huge soundstage that puts you front and center. Sound from behind and to the side of the listener detracts from the source material. One begins to focus more on what sounds are coming from where and less on the music itself. The "surrounding" sounds must be out of phase with the stereo channels and probably employ extensive (and expensive) processing to truthfully recreate the music.

To me (an audiophile in training), the flawless reproduction of music is an endless task. The soundstage can never be big enough, the vocals can never be crisp enough, transients can never be seamless enough, the bass can never be tight enough.... the list goes on.

I am, however,limited by my budget in my quest for the absolute fidelity. I devote the vast majority of my money to audio components.

I hope this helps....

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Well behaved women rarely make history.

Magpie0001

Guinness book of records, I guess these arent the model they were talking about, but the pic in the Guinness book shows what looks like a set of these.

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Music is my first love & It will be my last.

Mr.Deflok

Screw 2.0, if I can music/sound in 5.1 I'll go for that, besides I'd rather have a surround setup that I can use for both DVD's AND Music instead of seperate speaker systems for each.

BTW it's not so much of a novelty anymore, the number of people with surround/home theatre setups nowadays is growing at an exponential rate, it's becoming a normality.

p.s. You should breathe before posting comments... and you should never post in caps.

brandon11983

its not much of a novelty to Joe Schmo on the street who has no clue of true audio. but to a true audiophile, stereo is the only way to go. that person probably will have a home theater setup, but i can almost guarantee it will be separate from his stereo setup.

and why do you say i should breathe before posting comments, and whats wrong with caps?

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Well behaved women rarely make history.

zfleebin

Brandon11983: I dont know your credentials but the statements youve made are pretty outlandish and ignorant. I dig the fact that your learning but I have to ask you who is teaching you about true sound because they have obviously only gone to rock concerts and have never visited a symphony. If you prefer to listen to music in the manner you have described I have no problems but when you keep referring to concerts as a base for purity you sell yourself short of a audiophile.

brandon11983

I never once claimed to be pure. Why do my statements seem ignorant to you? The only reason I haven't visited a symphony is because there aren't any in my area. What does going to rock concerts have to do with anything in this instance? I used a concert (once) as a rebuttal for the "advantages" of surround.

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Well behaved women rarely make history.

bullgoose

Having owned equipment made by Denon, Onkyo, Sherwood (when it was good) Harman-Kardon, Techincs, Genesis, Cerwin-Vega, Ohm, Mission, JVC (when it was good), Ampex VofM, Revox and others I can't remember, and having lived through the "Quadriphonic" era, I can honestly say that he mos stunning sound recording I ever heard was made by JVC in the late '70's. They termed it "Binaural"; it was recorded by placing the microphones in the center of a concert hall, roughly 4 feet from the floor, spaced at 8 inches apart; about the same location of a seated human beings ears; there was a realism in the sound I've never heard from any other recording since. I always wondered why more recordings weren't made this way.
As far as "Audiophiles" are concerned, I'm of the opinion that sound, like music, is so subjective that what sounds great to one pair of ears, sounds like shit to the next pair; I don't see an individuals preference as a point to argue. And I'll be damned if I've EVER heard a "pue" sound; it's like the elusive perfect amplifier: a straight wire with gain.

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"If I had it to do all over,
I'd do it all over you."

Derwood

surround may be a "novelty" for the audiophile, but maybe you've never heard The Flaming Lips album "Zaireeka". Not surround in the typical sense, but instead it's 4 CD's with the same track listing, but each CD contains different elements of the song. So you need 4 audio systems (ideally identical) and start all 4 CD's at the same time to hear it. If you get it right, it's totally unbelievable.

People have bounced the 4 CD's into single mp3 files, and the result is muddy, because it's just too much sound for one pair of speakers

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zfleebin

Brandon: Maybe you were just excited but in this statement you said "surround is not fucking audio. Its a novelty" That is an arrogant statement. We all have views but in that post you were attacking someone elses views with an arrogant statement which prompted my rebuttal. I have been in multimillion dollar studios where people have put in the time to make the rooms suitable for the speakers before the speakers even entered the room. I have put a lot of effort into my speaker setups which include technic SBPro9's, A Bang and Olufsen beosound 3000, and my 7 speaker surround sound setup. Still, I dont go trashin on people for there setups because music is subjective and people are just as subjective about hardware. People used to say the same things you said about stereo and look at music now.

brandon11983

I too have been in mega buck stereo/theater systems, so I know all about rooms recieving renovations for better audio. I wouldn't go so far to say that I was attacking someone's views, but I was merely expressing mine.

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Well behaved women rarely make history.

MaverickMattC

URM m8 you didnt see the subwoofer, the XS. It's 8 ft tall and 700 lbs.
dunno html

http://www.wilsonaudio.com/products/xs/index.html

and the review is SO funny :

http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/wilson_xs_sub.htm

MaverickMattC

woah it linked it for me! how cool is TFP. well done halx for thinking about us HTML no-nothings.

YourNeverThere

they may not be true surround but they could be if you bought four!
plus:surround + sound quality is what make the system in my opinion.

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The Above post is a direct quote from Shakespeare

Scipio

I can understand spending 10 grand on a pair of nice speakers, but the prospect of spending $75000 or more seems excessive. I never understood the attractiveness of being an audiophile, because it's so hard to judge speakers without comparisons. You might listen to mediocre speakers all the time, and they'll sound fine to you. Then you listen to some nice speakers, and you're like "damn!," but if you spend the cash, all you'll do is get used to the expensive speakers.

On topic, those speakers are pretty sweet. Too bad I'm not rich.

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Spektr

If there is a word for being sexually attracted to an inanimate object, I'd have to use it for those Wilson speakers...

Eiresol

With a subwoofer that big I'd say most stuff on the floor would fall over and you'd be bounced out of your seat.

hilbert25

Those might be the most expensive, others can cost about similar, and I've heard of customs going up to about $1million.
Check out a set called pipe dreams, not sure by who.

Or check out the B&W Nautilus (they're not as expensive, but simply nuts).

What that doesn't include is the $500k in amplifiers, cabling at $1k a foot, and $100k record player.

Realizm

Thanks all.. for the listing of so many good speaker systems.. Now I have a list to choose from..