Posted by David Lee [ 71.149.150.204 ] on June 03, 2006 at 14:13:34:
In Reply to: Maxxhorn posted by manualblock on June 03, 2006 at 11:02:21:
Disclaimer: I am associated with the manufacturer and am intimately familiar with the design and the product.
I'm a skeptic, and I personally think there is an inordinate amount of BS in the hi-fi industry. I'm not impressed by the hype and hyperbole that permeates most of the advertisments, discussions and reviews in that business. Sometimes a thing is worth more than the sum of its parts, but to answer your question let me offer the following:
Standing about 5' high, 2' deep and a foot wide, the characterization of small is somewhat relative. It terms of sonic scale, small is definitely the wrong word for these things.
A horn cabinet is obviously more complicated to design and construct than a box, so yes, there is a lot of work involved in that. There is also a lot more work involved in developing the technology that makes these things do what they do. That type of research, effort and dedication is essentially priceless. And if it were easy, anyone could do it. Knowing what to do and how to do it to get the results is worth a lot more than the workmanship and materials involved in realizing the product. What you can buy for $13K is a beautifully realized product built by experienced craftsmen and finished to exacting standards. What you are getting is that beautiful product, which incorporates well over a decade of research and development, studying and testing, all of which led to the development of several unique horn loading technologies not available anywhere else.
This past year I have been to the CES show, THE show, Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and the Great Plains Audio Fest and listened to a great number of very expensive loudspeakers, many of them claiming to be horn loaded, some of them actually being horn loaded. It would do me no good to go out and hear all these speakers and then, knowing that there are better, cheaper products on the market, proceed to release the MaxxHorn Immersions for sale. The truth is, this is not the case. There are some very good sounding loudspeakers out there, but in all of my experience and investigation, none of them can deliver the comprehensive performance that the Immersions can. Most can do one thing well, but do something else poorly. It seems to me that many loudspeaker manufacturers believe that if they get one thing really right, make that one thing great, they can sell their speakers to people who are looking for that one characteristic as their highest priority. The problem is, you have to compromise something down there to get the magic up here, or vice versa. What makes the Immersion unique is its ability to do so much so well. And when you look at the prices of the loudspeakers that come close in performance in just one area or another, you find they are usually more expensive than the Immersions. In terms of price comparison based on relative performance in the marketplace, the feedback we have received has told us that the Immersions are priced at half of what they could demand, and with the introductory special at $8600, they are selling for about one third of their perceived performance value.
To put it plainly let me say this. You can buy a lot more BS for a lot more money. In my view, the Immersion offers really good value.
David Lee
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