Talon Khorus with no soundstage?

The last issue of Ultimate Audio thought they were the greatest speaker made and look where Ultimate Audio is now . Good thread Octopus enough said.

Glreno,

Glreno, No disrespect intended but exactly what is it that you don't understand? Based on my own observations, (I owned the speaker for 9 months)and those of several others above, the speaker has some serious faults. The loss I took selling mine also left a very bad taste in my mouth. As Octopus mentioned above, at best, its a $5K speaker selling for $14K. I can't think of any other product that drops in value as much as these speakers. How do do account for the drop in value?

The negative feedback is a positive sign. If Talon speakers were not viewed as a threat to customers, dealers, and manufacturers defending their own speakers, they would not write a single word in response.

As for the low price of the Khorus', Talon has been selling the Khorus' for 2 years. They were initially $12,600/pr and were raised a year later to $14,000/pr. (We have since recognized that we should have changed model names with the price increase.) So a pair of $12.6K Khorus' were sold for $5-6K, which in turn lowered the selling price of the $14K Khorus'. This reflect a 35-45% resell price ratio. While we do not like this, it is the norm for speakers that have been discontinued and are selling on Audiogon. You can purchase a pair of Wilson Watt Puppy V.1 for under $7K which reflects a 35% ratio as well. The internet has really helped the budding audiophiles buy for less.

While we did make some direct sales our first year(we did not have dealers, what do you do?), and we sold some demo speakers through our dealers at lower prices, we have since been loyal to our dealer network. Dealers are an integral part in the purchase of our speakers. Their are quite a few tricks to setting up a system to fully extrapolate our speaker's attributes.

We admit that we have gone through growing pains at Talon and were not prepared for the amount of positive press that would drive sales the first year. This placed us in the spotlight more than we had planned on with our original products. We have since introduced our X series and 2002 series with cabinets that are built in-house with much higher quality construction, as well as great improvements to their sonics. We have also siginificantly reduced the amount of break-in time(now 100 hours) by burning in the drivers at the factory and utilizing other techniques as well. We are very confident that our new speakers are worth every penny of their retail price.

As for the problems that were initially addressed, I would suspect that the system was improperly set-up. Break-in can cause a "murky" midrange, flattened bass and a forward upper treble, but if the sound is staying in the speakers, it is most likely phase. Either a speaker cable is not properly connected or a interconnect was improperly terminated(highly unlikely with Nordost). Other phase issues can occur with improper set-up. Please let me know where you listenedd to this system and have the owner get in touch with me, and we can easily resolve the situation.

Presentation is everything, and sometimes even the best of us are surprised what the real problem was. Just this week I was conversing with a hardcore audiophile manufacturer(he is serious about audio is what this "label" means) who was previously blaming the amplifier and the speakers for lack of oomph. When lo and behold he dropped a new preamp in and BAM!!, the system was great! Things are not always as they seem, that is why we rely on an experienced dealer network to help our customers maximize their performance.

Happy Listening,

Michael Farnsworth
Talon Audio

I am honestly very confused. Can you someone please tell me how negative feedback is positive? Thanks

Good math and bad typing on my part "3000 hrs of break in equals 125 days.

Mr. Farnsworth, I would question your assumption that all of this negative feedback is a good sign. It certainly hasn't raised their stock on the used market. There was someone recently begging for anyone to bid his $4200 reserve to unload his talons, 70% off retail. There were very legitimate problems sonically with the speaker and the back door selling dropped the price to a point where many customers had to take a big loss to get out of a speaker that they couldn't live with. As I said earlier the expectation to have the customer break these things in for 3000hrs is unreasonable and dare I say questionable.
As to the X, I heard it at the Stereophile show. Yes I know that is a compromising situation for speakers but many did a good job. The X's were miserable. Perhaps at a price commensurate with their perfomance they may get some positive buzz.