New PS Audio speakers?

Thought you all might like to see one of the glamour shots we took of the FR30 on a recent photoshoot.


And, for those interested in the dark charcoal color speaker, here’s a sneak peek. These photos still have to be retouched and little flaws in the prototypes removed, but hopefully you can see past that to get an idea (like the little dimple imperfections in the dark speaker’s passive radiators which won’t be there in production).

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Very nice…again, huge improvement over that last iteration.

Love the look. What is the width and depth?

I’d say aesthetically these fit into the sweet spot that speaker designers should shoot for. Meaning, I doubt there will be many potential consumers who are offended by their looks enough to write them off based on looks. So it will come down to sonics, as it should.

Are they so visually striking as to cause many to say, I absolutely love the look and gotta have them because they looks so much better than 90% of other $25k speakers (for those for whom such aesthetic considerations play arguably a bigger role than they should)? No, I highly doubt that. But they look fine, much better than before as has been stated by many, and the risk with trying to create a speaker that many consider beautiful is that because it is so subjective in doing so you will also turn many off.

So I think these are right in the sweet spot that they need to be. Good re-engineer in that regard.

The side drivers worry me from a sonics perspective, as I’ve never liked a speaker that had a topology like that. But I’m open to having my mind changed.

GOAL! :grinning:

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They look so huge compared to this picture…I think I need Chris standing aside to make a decision what to prefer.

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Amazing looking speakers, can’t wait to hear them, great job team PS Audio :grinning:

Looking superb. I want one, hopefully the lower tier model is similarly good looking. Is there a way we can have silver feet for black speakers. I wonder how that will look.

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As far as the side facing circles that you see, these are not active drivers. They are custom passive radiators and function essentially like a bass reflex / port, though have certain advantages when it comes to distortion/output and freedom from midrange resonances. They are only “doing something” in the very deep bass and are horizontally opposed on opposite sides of the enclosure to minimize enclosure vibration.

The waves down at their tuning are ~45 feet long and are completely omnidirectional and so you don’t need to worry about their orientation affecting sound in some way.

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Got it, thanks. I know for some time one of the design iterations included active bass woofers like GoldenEar and Martin Logan do (powered woofer) and I couldn’t really keep track of how the design has changed over the iterations.

Yup. They all look the same, just smaller, etc.

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Will the bigger ones be line sources or not?

Chris has yet to decide but probably. He’s got some interesting concepts.

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Years ago there was a comment by John Atkinson of Stereophile about the Infinity Modulus speaker system, something along the lines of “to see them is to want to own them”. This mentality applies 10-fold to the FR-30.

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Geez, I really want to hear these.

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Maybe Paul and Chris will be coming to a city near you?!

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I think the Monkees promised the same thing in their theme song. :wink:

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When I see pictures like this, while very nice visually, just make me cringe from “user experience”. No one should set their speakers in front of a glass wall. Just poor set-up. The visual makes my ears bleed and now visually I cannot separate this design from bad sound :slight_smile:

Other examples of visual → poor user experience cringe was the luggage company loading luggage into the engine compartment of a 911 and Kohler’s Numi toilet ad that stuck the bowl in the family room of a penthouse with floor to ceiling windows looking over LA. oof. I already owned the 911 but I’ve never bought another Kohler product.

Otherwise… take another compliment from me… I do like how the speakers look… they’d look better in an appropriately treated listening room but that may just be the engineer in me yelling. Can’t wait to see them in one of your listening rooms with cables dressed out towards some BHKs.

Life has a way of causing all of us to compromise. I imagine that there’s more than one of us who have our rigs installed in less than optimal locations. All you need to do is scroll through the System Photos thread to see real life.

Just look @minnesotafats rig, beautiful gear and a beautiful view. I’d be very happy to compromise to have both:

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@ipeverywhere While I Iove the examples you share, I don’t think Paul’s photo is in the same league. It’s neither an advert and it is not a picture of a set-up speaker—unless it has wireless connectivity!