Montreal Audio Show - anyone hear the FR30’s?

Yes, PS audio have outsourced the design work.

I have been on the Montreal Show.

I think FR30 are good speakers. They can be a good competitors for Focal Utopia series and B&W 800 series. But these speakers are not my cup of tea.

I listen classical music and jazz I don’t listen to modern POP and EDM. So for me good high sensitive speakers with SET amplifier sound most natural and close to real acoustical instrument performance in terms of soundstage and instruments size as well as natural tone of instrument and a real musical performance.

I liked the Coherent Speakers / Allnic Audio T-1500 room. IMHO is was the best in this show. The 18 inch speaks sounded very dynamic with deep well defined bass. These speakers are really phenomenal. Unbelievable combination of high sensitivity and deep controlled bass, natural tone, transparency and texture.

New tech in speaker design…

 If you watch widely across YouTube, you can find Kenji at Kenrick’s Audio demonstrating  wire directionality and speaker diaphragm design as well as redesign of classic JBL. You can find diy guys designing open baffle designs with a variety of speakers and baffle shapes. The early work by Voxativ was ground breaking if not always dramatic improvements in cone construction and baffle design. There are some discussions by Chris who designed the FR30 discussing the design. And there are installation videos of their installations including full assembly positioning and tuning. 
Single driver designs have come a long way, cross over designs continue to develop.

Is anyone here contributing to speaker design? The Viking Acoustics L’Instrument speakers are in V3.0 now, use large handmade horns, resonator in the rear and David the designer is constantly innovating across his speaker range.

If you do the research then you will look at Aries Cerat, and many other designers across the globe. Devialet for example, of course they are segment or category specific in this case commercial.

Technology and skills continue to develop as do electronics and designs.

 

in 2004 i bought top of the line.. studio 100 v2 for $2000 can... now top of the line paradigm’s top off at $40,000 i would love to hear what $38.000 more, sounds like  .im  sure i would not be impressed and would find them very hard to appreciate there is no way in hell they could be that much better, bs to speaker manufacturers

Speaker design is in it's incremental phase-- improvements at the high end are especially incremental. This is truer today than ever before.

Manufacturers are no longer pricing based upon value-- PRICE IS THE NEW VALUE.  We live in the land of confirmation bias and hyper-inequality.

There are fewer people in the middle class people in the U.S. today as a percentage of population than there has been since the Great Depression-- and it's getting manifestly worse by the year. Makes you wonder whether most mfg.'s making high-end gear take this situation into account when designing product lines.

A lot of gear is simply designed and priced accordingly, knowing that true market size has shrunk, but those left who can by products like these often have more wealth than ever before.

Most billionaires pay little to no income tax-- fools think they're smart-- no the system has been rigged so that everyone ELSE pays their share for them.

Now having said all of this that does not mean that a set of speakers like the FR30's are price gouging-- they are not cheap to make-- but if you were to take a look at the true profit margins (and no, it has not always been like this) you would see that margins have not shrunk, they're larger! Larger than they have ever been before, at the top-end.

There's still a lot of value in the lower end of these kinds of products-- but price is also equated with quality of sound in audiophile-land that, and over time that helps build the confirmation bias that they knowingly or otherwise rely upon to sell the high-priced gear. Slap an extra 50-100% of mark-up on a top shelf product makes sense under our present scenario. More money for them and more confirmation bias for you! Not exactly a win-win, but if you have the dough, who cares!

In a land of haves and have-nots, you are what you earn. 

In the long run this is a toxic situation, a perversion of capitalism, and it will end very very badly as these trend keep rolling on, and the inequality reaches a level that is completely incompatible with a functioning democracy.

We're actually already there but most people are unaware of all of this macroeconomic data-- the U.S., by the numbers is more oligarchy than democracy-- and that means consumer spending power is right there with it.

Now back to the music!

2 points:

1 - smodtactical +1 re Amir

2 - And in hi-end audio circa 2022, <$30K isn't even considered an "expensive" speaker

Toured the MTL audio show several times so I may narrow it down to 4-5 rooms that sounded best. Eventually it came down to the Sim audio/Raidho & PS audio/FR30 as my two favorites. The speakers are quite different. The Raidho is a refined, reserved speaker that has depth, presence, & weight as its main sound impression, a sound that was totally captivating. The FR30 is an exciting, lively speaker that was enjoyable & fun to listen to. I kept going back & forth between the two rooms trying to decide which speaker would I choose if I were obliged to make a choice. I found myself wishing I could find a speaker that has the sound features of both. Speakers that come to mind as being well balanced do offer much of these sound features but not to that scale. The show ended Sunday at 5pm & at 4:40 a song by Junior Wells from Hoodoo Man Blues was playing on the FR30. My choice was made. This music sounded fantastic.

"The FR30's were maybe the Best Of Show"

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvf6sMGjd-A

This guy likes his new FR30's speakers better than his Rockport speakers 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrpYAMfB318