Three of the Priciest Surround Sound Speakers Around!

When you write about audio and home theatre systems, you tend to wonder what are the best components out there that are currently available in the world, yes the world. So that being the notion derived for this article, we thought it frightfully exciting to take a look at some of the most expensive speakers that are currently on the market, well some are just mere concepts, but you get the point. We were quite surprised at just what we found, and the how immeasurably expensive some of these noise jamming thumpers were. That being said, we have outlined what we feel are three of the most expensive speakers that you could ever shell out your wad of cash on; and you had better have a pretty thick chunk of change if you wish to afford these beauties!

German Physik Gaudi’s
These pricey German-engineered speakers run a cool $250,000 per pair, and they do not come with a house, a garage or even a sports car, just speakers. Weighing in at monster 1720-pounds, with an impressive frequency range of 15-1900-MHz, these puppies will certainly blow the windows and doors off any manor they reside in. Here is the scoop: they use 4 DDD wave transducers in a line array on each side. If that’s not fancy enough there are 6-inch metal cones that accommodate the mid-bass and 4, 12-inch honeycomb flatcones, housed in steel frames, in the subwoofers of these gargantuan monsters; they are some of the biggest flatcones that have ever been created for any speaker. Finally, to top it all off the wood finish is created from custom and imported veneers that look sweet…to the tune of a quarter million dollars.

Alexandria X-2
Create by Wilson Audio, these are some of the best speakers that money can buy, and you will need a heaping amount of cash to get your hands on them, not to mention being on a waiting list about a mile long. So to get to the specs, here you go: there are two woofers in each speaker one that is 13-inches, and one that is 15-inches, WOW! These bass pounding buffs are complimented by two mid-range 7-inch custom beauties, augmented by a rear-firing super tweeter for the highs, and of course front tweeters on each speaker. They can carry 30-indents per speaker and will fill any room with robust and clear sound like you have never heard the likes of before. And they should, considering they will cost you roughly $135,000 a pair.

Sonnance “Three Wheeler”
When art, lots of money and audio technical engineering meet at an expo that everybody loves to see new gear arrivals make their debut, in enters the ‘Three Wheeler.’ While we were unable to find many specs at all about this speaker concept that was the brainchild of Sonnance and was demonstrated at the CEDIA trade show, we can tell you this: they look cool they are outdoor speakers with Bluetooth capability and they will cost you about $21,000 per speaker.

The Most expensive home theatre system We Could Find!

Think life in the fast lane is expensive, lauded and posh? Yep, you are most certainly right. The lifestyles of the uber-rich are always decadent, lovely and uppity. And the rich have the financial means to enjoy some of the most extravagant toys that one could ever dream or think of. So should it really come as any surprise, to anybody that famous music engineer and producer, Jeremy Kipnis, owns a $6-Million dollar home theatre system? Not really, even though the price tag is a bit steep, hey who is counting when you rake in the dough every month right? Needless to say, we were a bit intrigued and decided to take a bit of a closer look at just what six million smackers can buy you for a home theatre these days, and rest assured it’s pretty damned fine!

Viewing
Let’s start off with the viewing. Using a Sony SRX-S110 Professional Video Projector which offers amazing 4,096-by-2,160 clarity, ten times that of a standard HD TV, and all blasted upon a very large Stewart 18-by-10-foot Snowmatte 1.0 Gain Laboratory-Grade Motion Picture Screen, movies are as big as they are in the theatre and more realistic than ever before. Of course a Blu-Ray player, PS3 console and other goodies compliment one of the largest in-home screens in the world.

Total Viewing Specs:
Sony SRX-S110 Professional Video Projector (4,096-by-2,160)
Stewart 18-by-10-foot Snowmatte 1.0 Gain Laboratory-Grade Motion Picture Screen
Players and Sources:
Sony BDP-S1 Blu-ray Player
Sony PlayStation 3 Gaming Console
Toshiba HD-XA1 HD DVD Player
JVC HMDH-5U D-VHS Recorder
SATA Drive (72 HDTV Hours Total)
Mark Levinson Reference N°33 and N°33H.
Pioneer HLD-X0 Hi-Vision HDTV MUSE Laserdisc Player
Surround Processing and Decoding:
Theta Digital Generation VIII 32-bit 8x Oversampling Dual Processors (13)

Power
Using signature Mark Levinson N° 33h, McIntosh MC-2102 Amplifiers and Crown Macro Reference Gold Amplifiers, the theatre sounds come to live as each woofer, mid and tweeter has its own dialed in amplifier to direct the perfect signal at the right amounts of power. No getting out cheap here, the amplifier setup is worth its weight in gold, actually more!

Amplifiers:
Mark Levinson N° 33h Amplifiers (2)
McIntosh MC-2102 Amplifiers (30)
Crown Macro Reference Gold Amplifiers (3)

Sound
Okay, this is where it gets really crazy. The theater is equipped with count them, 16 Snell 1800 THX Music & Cinema Reference Subwoofers, 8 Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference Towers, 10 MuRata ES103A Super Tweeters and 3 Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference LCR-2800 Center-Channel Speakers. So basically, as you can see in the picture, you are entirely surrounded by some of the highest quality speakers in the world that are being driven by the best amplifiers money can buy.

Speakers:
Snell 1800 THX Music & Cinema Reference Subwoofers (16)
Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference Towers (8)
MuRata ES103A Super Tweeters (10)
Snell THX Music & Cinema Reference LCR-2800 Center-Channel Speakers (3)

The Bottom Line
This home theatre is pricey and very impressive. However for six million dollars, we would much rather own our own real theatre and be earning the big bucks off that venture. But we must say, this is the nicest home theatre system that we will probably ever see, and that it can easily rank amongst the world’s finest. Of course, stomaching the price is quite another story. But when you are uber-rich, who cares, or even thinks about money, right?

How to Select the Right Home Audio System for Your Needs (Part Two) The Placement of Speakers

Continuing where ‘Part One’ left off, now that you know what types of speakers that you need to buy for optimal home audio enjoyment, it is time to touch on how to best place those speakers that you just bought for optimal audio clarity. We feel that most people will shy away from technical aspects that are least understood by the masses. So, we have striven, with this four-part series, on trying to keep the language as normal and as easy to understand as possible. What follows is how to place your speakers and how to determine what speakers that you find are actually worth buying. Courtesy of all of us audio nuts out there!

More Information on Buying Speakers and Home Audio Gear

The Placement of Speakers
The placement of your speakers is essential to your home audio needs for the best delivery of sound. Most 5.1 surround systems will come with 5-6 speakers that can really make your movie experience shine, if you know where to place them properly. There are some simple tricks that you can use to place your speakers effectively around your living room to maximize the audio signals that are being driven to your ears. Here is how.

Free Guide To Practical Home Speaker Placement

Center speaker:
You want to always place this speaker either on the top of your television set, some TVs have a flat screen and this is not possible, in this case place it below, in the center of your TV, so that the sound will emit towards you from the center. The center channel will direct all center signals to the room, and therefore needs to be centered.

Front Left & Right Speakers:
You want to make sure that these front speakers are always placed left and right corresponding to the signal that is being delivered to them, don’t put the left speaker on the right side of your TV. You want the speakers to be at least 6-8 feet apart from each other and you want the facing directly towards your couch. Make sure that there is even space between your left, right and center speaker for optimal sound delivery.

Surround Speaker Placement:
You want to place your surround speakers at least 2-3 feet above the ear level of where you are seated. You ideal want them positioned along side and towards the rear of where the back of your listening area envelops to create the optimal soundstage for your ears. Surround systems with to extra surround speakers can also have those extra satellite speakers wall-mounted for optimal audio clarity.

How to Place Speakers and Setup a Home Theatre
The good guys at ‘Best Buy’ demonstrate, in this instructional video that we found on the popular video file sharing website, Youtube.com, how to place speakers and how to effectively setup and connect your new home theatre system. While we always recommend shopping around online for your home theatre needs, as the internet doth bring us the best deals to be found ever, this video can serve as a great reference point for what professionals deem the best way to install and setup any home theatre system with multiple speakers for optimal sound. Use the advice in this video to properly setup your home theatre system and effectively place your speakers.

We Take a Look at the TSAT-2000 High Performance Satellite Speaker System

When you are looking for high performance audio speaker setups, the first thing most people think about is brand and the quality that is directly related to an established major brand. But in reality, there are many great brands out there which may not be as well known as the next, but which offer some truly innovative and high quality setups that won’t take you to the bank and drain your account in the process of acquiring them. Brands like The Speaker Company have been producing high quality home audio setups for years, and they never charge nearly as much as the other major brands. In fact, this brand has plenty of user reviews that testify to the high quality, yet low price. Prompting us to take a look at their offerings, and guess what? We found a pretty snazzy system for that we liked for cheap!

TSAT-2000 High Performance Satellite Speaker System
If you are looking for the perfect and cost-effective addition to that snappy audio receiver that you just dumped hundreds into, look no further than this awesome system. Where to start? All of the connectors are gold plated for optimal signal delivery and clarity. It comes with five speakers total, all with a powerful 120Hz-20KHz frequency range, and lot’s of tacked on features. Like 2 aluminum mid-woofers in each speaker, that will bounce bass off your walls like no tomorrow. High cell efficiency dome tweeters compliment those 3.5” woofers with the perfect high end tone. Depending upon your receiver, you can dump anywhere from 15-125-watts into each speaker. And, the best part is, that they are wall or ceiling mountable in just minutes; and they come in a shiny brushed wood finish! Well priced online from: $449.97.

Specs:
• 2-way Acoustic Suspension on-wall Satellite
• Priced as 5 pack
• 3.5″ Aluminum Mid-Woofer (x2)
• 1″ HiCell High Efficiency Dome
• 120Hz-20KHz Frequency Range
• Mid-Woofer(s) 3.5″ Aluminum (x2) 
• Tweeter Type  1″ HiCell High Efficiency Dome 
• Frequency Response 120Hz-20KHz
• Crossover Frequency   
• Impedance in Ohms 8
• Power handling (watts) 15-125
• Sensitivity 87 dB

The Bottom Line
For the money, especially when comparing these speakers to pricier major brands like Bose, you can not beat the deal offered here. Small and compact, slick and shiny, awesome audio clarity and they are mountable. The bottom line is that you don’t have to spend a thousand bucks on the same speakers from a company like Bose, when you can get these puppies for a whole lot less and they do the same thing!

How to Buy a Stereo From a Retail Shop
This awesome video demonstrates how you, the normal retail customer, can find the best deals on speakers. There is an art to shopping for speakers, most certainly, and this candid video, courtesy of Youtube.com, offers some true insight and shopping advice. Know what to look for, specs and what is a good or a bad deal. Learn how to test stereos out in the store, and what to listen for.