Elac’s and Sprout do well together (I think they used to sell a package with Elacs once). I got a pair of Elac 4.1’s on sale from Amazon awhile back for $88 a pair(!). Got them on a lark, but they now reside with the Sprout100 in the bedroom (with a 10" ML sub) and they sound GREAT. I mean really great. Pretty amazing.
I too look forward to what PSA can do with a Sprout level speaker.
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Yes, we are working on this and will likely be targeting a similar price point as those UB52’s or a hair more, This is a challenging and competitive market but I think that w can still have something that makes sense to come to market to and brings some of our speaker tech form the larger models into these price points.
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My son is counting on it!
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How close are we to the FR5 release?
John
The units are in mass production now and we should be launching the website soon which will have product information and release dates etc.
Here are a couple of teaser pictures from the product photo shoot that we just completed.
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Hi Chris, stunning work and nice photos. It is very probable these are my future speakers! Can’t wait.
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Interesting. Any high level eta on a potential release timeframe for those speakers in that particular class (the ones targeted to be paired with the sprout)?
Can’t
Can’t wait.
John
We are still early on this project (in the design phase) haven’t send design stuff of to a vendor and so it’s not a product for this year. It’s next on my list so we’ll let folks know when we have more information.
Thank you
Are FR 5s in showroom for a listen?
Hello,
Yes, we have some pre-production samples that we have here at PS Audio in Boulder.
We have a few reviews lined up and so we should be getting review samples sent out within the next month or two and you should start seeing some third party comments from there as well.
Thank you. I will call and see if I can set something up. Look gorward to reviews as well
Any chance you’d leak a clue as to the type of high freq driver it will use?
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Well, we are currently looking at using a soft dome tweeter for our sprout bookshelf speaker.
I think that they are hard to beat for the price point that we’re looking to hit and I want to use the best tool for the job and not just put a planar magnetic in there unless I have sufficient driver budget for that to make sense and add value.
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I think that’s smart. Planar Magnetic is great if you have the budget for it but it’s not essential. Soft domes can be pretty great as well.
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Absolutely nothing wrong with a good soft dome. They can be quite excellent.
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I am a contrarian on this point.
I hope you make a concerted effort to find a way to get a planar magnetic or some other sort of “ribbon-like” HF transducer into the sprout book shelf.
My experience over the years has led me to the point where I don’t think I will ever purchase a pair of speakers for my stereo channels that does not have some sort of similar driver for the “tweeter”.
Speakers with these types of drivers are just “better” to my ears, in many respects.
YMMV/IME/IMO, etc., etc.
I hope you can find a way.
Regardless, I expect you will design an excellent performer based on your and PSA’s recent track record.
Best regards.
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What about an AMT? I have not listened to one but I think that several companies have started using them since the original patent ran out.
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I appreciate the feedback. I’ll certainly consider it but spending an additional 3-5X on the tweeter (as opposed to a lower distortion woofer or better cabinet/crossover) might not be the best design trade-off for overall performance.
The problem with AMTs and planars is that the cheaper ones are often worse that the equivalently priced domes. In particular, the cheaper AMTs tend to not to be able to cross over very low and so they work better with smaller midranges/midwoofers.
The folks that are assembling our planar tweeters also build for ADAM, goldenear and dayton for their AMTs and so I’ve evaluated some of their OEM options in the past.
In general, while design philosophy and story are important, I think that it can change with the designs and price points (trying to maximize performance). Folks like Elac sometimes used domes, AMTs, concentric drivers etc. Still, I’ll do my best to keep things consistent and give our sprout customers as large of taste of the high end performance as I can.
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