Diamond Tweeter?

[S20]

I genuinely can't figure out if this is a late April Fool prank or not.

[theophile]

I genuinely can't figure out if this is a late April Fool prank or not.

No prank, HERE it exist!!

Seems Dave put it out there to determine what interest the Ascend loyalty may have with what could be described as the "world's best tweeter"! The RAAL investment has been a huge success for Ascend and if the auditory gain of the Seas Diamond Dome can be as significant as the RAAL was over the Sierra 1 dome (at a reasonable cost), audiophiles could come away with the possibility of a "World Class Monitor/Tower"!

Ted

[SGCSG1]

No prank, HERE it exist!!

Seems Dave put it out there to determine what interest the Ascend loyalty may have with what could be described as the "world's best tweeter"! The RAAL investment has been a huge success for Ascend and if the auditory gain of the Seas Diamond Dome can be as significant as the RAAL was over the Sierra 1 dome (at a reasonable cost), audiophiles could come away with the possibility of a "World Class Monitor/Tower"!

Ted

I don't think 'reasonable cost' is part of this equation. I think this is new territory - 'cost no object'.

[theophile]

I don't think 'reasonable cost' is part of this equation. I think this is new territory - 'cost no object'.

You're correct SG. For Ascend's equation, this does seem like a "cost no object" growth toward audio reproduction perfection. However, after reviewing the world audiophile speaker systems market place (ranging from $10K on up through $1M...and yes, totally out of my interest and pocket book... see HERE ), then Ascend and Dave could bring to that top-end speaker elitist group a true "Reasonable Cost" product that certainly would not give up Anything to the top end speaker market in the way of realistic home audio speaker musical reproduction.

Probably like most here though, wondering would an incremental increase a diamond high end could offer, be worth 3x+ the price tag of their already superb RAAL high end systems? I can't answer that and seems Dave is in the beginning stages to determine answers to the same questions. But I'm sure if he goes for it, between Seas and Ascend, they'll obtain a world class transducer system that for it's final price-of-admission, befuddle the speaker industry with the question, "how'd he do that"?!

Ted

[davef]

I genuinely can't figure out if this is a late April Fool prank or not.

LOL - definitely no joke. My thoughts on this are that we will likely see a few more speakers on the market using this tweeter and selling for tens of thousands. Using our existing bamboo cabinets, we can likely release a pair of bookshelf speakers using this tweeter and an appropriate woofer for somewhere between $5-6K /pair, while also offering an upgrade option for current customers. This tweeter has a really unique sound that is quite addicting.

The first step is that SEAS must find a way to offer the tweeter to us such that it would be the correct mechanical fit into our existing cabinets. If they are able to accomplish that, Claus agreed to memo loan me a pair of the tweeters and from there, I would design the speaker and upgrades. At that point, I would be able to truly compare to the RAAL versions and determine if pursuing further development is worthwhile.

It is not a project that I would expect to bring us any reasonable revenue -- but I often find myself designing products just for the pure love of it