Both and a beer. Plus George
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My days I’d pounding back shots and doing hearing damage are long gone. I feel the hangover before I even go to sleep.
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Did you get lost from the Drinks thread, or does the FR30 drive you to it? ; )
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Pepcid AC
I think it’s the hangover.
Definitely scotch!
I like the fact that the design is ‘different’ (seemingly the intention).
I’m looking forward to hearing how they sound, and whether the price point will be around $15k (as Paul intimated).
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Thanks. We have no need to run a poll because we’re committed to the design. We understand not everyone’s going to love them. I love them, our team (mostly) love them, many who have seen them are enamored with their look and feel. But not all. That’s a good
sign to me.
When we showed the original design of AN-3, we had about the same percentage but noticed that the demographic had shifted heavily towards older males. Their female companions rolled their eyes and politely smiled. Now the opposite is true. So
yes, I get that many audiophiles look at these and don’t find them as expected. They don’t look like speakers. That’s the design criteria we asked the designers to arrive at. It’s what we wanted.
I for one am tired of another “same old look” and want to move on, set new standards, get people to think a bit different. I don’t want anything wild, nothing too off the wall, nothing too far from center, but far enough to be iconic. It’s gotta
be pleasing to the eye, functionally perfect, proud, respectful of design, and iconic. If you can’t look at the speaker and say, “aha! PS Audio”, then we failed.
Too far out from center is where we don’t want to be. I still have painful memories of Genesis with Arnie and me. Mark Schifter had promoted the idea of round speakers and Arnie loved them. I, and many others, really disliked them. Too far from
center without any aesthetic value. Iconic? Certainly. But so too are the B and W Nautilus or crazy looking horns - they are just too whacky for me and I suspect many others.
Aesthetic design is a challenge. In the end, you gotta take it personally. There’s no other way to make a decision. Polls and marketing surveys might work well for mass market “please the average Joe” products, but they only steer you towards
the boring. Trying to smooth the edges so you don’t offend anyone means you also don’t please anyone either.
In the end, it’s personal and I love it.
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Thanks. Yes, Chris is currently working on a series of videos to help explain the system and answer people’s general speaker questions.
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It gets exciting when the speaker is completely finished and becomes available to the Hifi people. More love Denmark and congratulations on the new amplifier.
“In the attempt to satisfy everyone, you run the risk of not satisfying anyone”
Thanks for sharing, Falling Leaves. This kind of feedback is exactly what helps us so much. When we’re in the middle of design aesthetic decisions, we look at what people
are buying and why, and then try and fit all that in with our own values. (Of course, all this has to sound the way we expect!).
I had never heard of Cube Nenuphars and went to their website to see. Attached is a picture of what they look like.
So, for $15K the pair, you get what’s in the picture. I’ll bet it’s really coherent and probably sounds great.
I downloaded the picture because it helps me understand. This LOOKS like a speaker and that is exactly what we’re hoping not to achieve.
It’s so helpful to know what someone likes when they’re not “feeling” our design, and what they
are feeling is right.
With many thanks for the insight.
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I respect that, mostly like the design and I think that the thing which is most polarizing (stands) is easily changeable by folks.
What puzzles me is that you only apply this design philosophy to the speakers. Certainly they are most relevant in a room and certainly e.g. the P20 design has reason in carrying it around.
But having a modern, integrating, „don’t look like the usual expectation“ design at the one piece of equipment and a (exaggerated) „vintage redneck Hi-Fi“ design or „common tech design“ for other pieces of the line seems a bit uncoordinated and not in the sense of an overall design strategy in a way you now defined it for the speakers. I see this more coherent at other companies offering both, front end gear and speakers.
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Quick Paul - redesign everything! That won’t cost us anything, right? ; )
Would be interesting enough to know if this design philosophy is planned to be applied to the whole spectrum in future 
I reckon waiting until they see if it is a success would be a good move.
This is what design by Market Focus Group drives one to.
When I worked for GM that was the excuse they had. I see it’s still made it to the Wikipedia page. Their excuse for the hatch window design was the housewives driving a rounded glass rear window were literally getting motion sickness and vomiting. Luckily the designer saved it so you then vomited just looking at the two piece rear glass from afar approaching it.
The Aztek was styled under the direction of Tom Peters, who would later design the Chevrolet Corvette (C7).[1][2][3] According to an analysis in 2000, BusinessWeek said the Aztek was to signal a design renaissance for GM,[3] and to “make a statement about breaking from GM’s instinct for caution.”[3] One designer said that during the design process, the Aztek was made “aggressive for the sake of being aggressive.”[3] Peters, the Chief Designer said “we wanted to do a bold, in-your-face vehicle that wasn’t for everybody.”[3]
But hey it was popular in Breaking Bad later on
This is a good sign.
High end audio, Corvettes, Harleys, etc. have always appealed primarily to males and now these males are superannuated and dying out. These hobbies/interests will die with them if companies fail to respond to the changing market.
My prediction is Harley will not survive, the Corvette will do better with the new C8 and the age of its buying demographic will drop from its current average 61 years-old, and high end audio will remain the small niche market it is currently with manufactures coming and going depending on how well they respond to market forces.
I both like PS Audio’s design focus and believe it is the correct move. Plus it is fun and interesting.
I concur!
The Aztek’s styling got even worse when they added all sorts of plastic body cladding. The unfortunate thing is the car itself was good and very versatile.
I love Bob Lutz’s comment many of GM’s vehicles at the time looked like “angry kitchen appliances.”
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Exactly! Thanks, Mark. Speaking of which, it’s interesting just how entrenched you can get working with a design. Refining what you have just takes oodles of time in ways people never get to see.
Chris was struggling with a perceived suckout in the lower voice/chest area of the speaker around 300Hz that was driving him crazy. Nothing in the measurements showed anything but flat, yet he could hear the lack of midbass. After a few weeks
he finally discovered a single resonance in the cabinet at…wait for it…270Hz. You could feel it and that was where all the energy was being lost. He coupled the two 8” midbass couplers together with a special brace and bingo! Zero cabinet interaction and voile!
The midbass is perfect.
So yes, after putting all the energy into getting this cabinet perfect, it’d make sense to tray a few new cabinet designs. 
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