SOUND; How About a Pair of Loudspeakers Priced at $65,000?
By Hans Fantel
Published: August 30, 1987
I PONDER THE RELATIONS BE-tween price and value after reading an advertisement from a company called Countess Mara, which informs me that it is possible to buy a necktie for $5,000. It is also possible to buy a pair of loudspeakers for $65,000. I can do without the necktie, but this I've got to hear.
I approached this preposterous product with an air of faint amusement. This changed when I began to feel guilty about liking what I heard. For honesty's sake, I must forgo the temptation to be snide about a loudspeaker that costs as much as a modest house. I have to admit it sounds good.
To whom shall I recommend these speakers? Certainly not to people who regularly check their bank balance. But there is a kind of person who, when buying a car, would disdain a Mercedes and naturally order a Rolls. If that person happens to like music - and spends lots of time in concentrated, attentive listening -perhaps he or she is ready for a WAMM, also known as the Wilson Audio Modular Monitor.
The WAMM in full panoply consists of four ''towers'' - each 6 1/2 feet tall. One tower on each side is devoted exclusively to a woofer that rolls out sound deeper than the deepest, biggest and longest organ pipe - 16 Hertz, if you want to put a number on it. The companion tower handles the rest of the sonic spectrum and contains no less than 15 separate speaker elements, including nine electrostatic tweeter panels.
The WAMM is but one of several ultra-expensive superspeakers, although its $65,000 price tag definitely tops the rest. By comparison, the IRS seems a bargain at $37,500. IRS, by the way, stands for Infinity Reference System, though rumors persist that anybody who buys one will automatically have his or her tax return audited. The IRS boasts no fewer than 12 woofers, 24 midrange units and 72 tweeters, consists of four separate rosewood enclosures (two per channel) and weighs in at 1,550 pounds.
These are among the finest speakers in existence, and no doubt about that. Even so, it would be difficult to characterize them as rational products, for in terms of comparative value, they rate poorly. Whatever sonic increment they provide is disproportionately small in comparison to their elephantine cost. And speaking of elephants, it takes a very large room to accommodate them. It also takes a room of baronial proportions to absorb the abundant sound. These speakers create a sonic impact akin to that of a real orchestra - and you couldn't stash that in a broom closet either. An air space of at least 5,000 to 6,000 cubic feet, and preferably more, is needed to let these speakers display all their sonic riches.
Both the WAMM and the IRS surmount the challenge of an orchestral cataclysm with utmost ease, and it is their palpable nonchalance in the face of such sonic rigors that sets them apart from lesser breeds. Unlike most other speakers, they seem to revel in complex musical textures, such as joint proclamations by chorus and orchestra uttered at triple forte. To some affluent listeners, this justifies those speakers' prodigious bulk and price.
Less affluent listeners may be consoled by the realization that at ordinary listening levels, and in the rendition of less massive musical passages, these behemoths do not sound appreciably superior to many other fine speakers selling at a fraction of their cost.
Not surprisingly, both the WAMM and the IRS hail from California where - according to Eastern beliefs - space and money abound. There's also lots of space in Australia, where similarly massive yet superbly detailed sound has been achieved by a loudspeaker company called Duntech, whose products are just beginning to be known among stateside aficionados.
The Duntech Sovereign 2001 system carries a list price of $15,000, which includes shipping. It consists of two black towers standing 74 inches high on a 32 x 14-inch base. Each contains two 12-inch woofers, two midrange units and a tweeter in an unusual configuration that creates the impression of all sound issuing from a single point. This results in highly accurate reproduction of the spatial relationships in the sound of the original performance. Based on some highly original theoretical calculations by the Australian physicist John Dunlavy, the Duntech is distinguished by an extraordinary degree of what might be called sheer musicality.
Of course, speakers of this extravagant caliber depend on amplifiers of commensurate power and sonic purity. Typically, they would opperate in conjunction with heavy-muscled amplifiers made by companies such as Accuphase, Perreaux, Bryston, Crown, Krell and Mark Levinson -exquisite powerhouses whose prices also run into four figures.
Don't expect to find these items at your friendly neighborhood hi-fi shop. The WAMM, for example, must be custom ordered from Wilson Audio Specialties in Novato, Calif., and Mr. Wilson will come in person to supervise installation in your home. The other gear can be found in what is usually referred to as ''select'' stores in major cities. Manhattan's mecca for equipment of this kind is the East Side branch of Lyric Hi-Fi, where one may listen at leisure in a quasi-palatial setting, where customers seldom, if ever, haggle about the price and sometimes wear those $5,000 neckties.