The Absolute Sound (affectionately known as TAS) has published its annual guide to high-performance loudspeakers. For the poor audiophiles out there, you may think this means speakers starting at over $12,000, but that’s not the case. Personally, I always find this annual guide fun to look at. It features speakers under $1,500, $5,000, $15,000 and $30,000 in full range and monitor profiles. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, there are also features for a $129 pair or Pioneer SP-BS22 monitors that look like an absolutely unbelievable value for someone looking to get a great speaker at a good price point.
A few things that I like about the guide is looking at the speakers that the reviewers think are the best within a price range and would buy themselves. It’s refreshing to see that the reviewers are choosing speakers whose models have been around for 3, 5, 7 or more years showing that when it comes to speaker design, a good design always produces good audio quality that remains unmatched over time. It also says to me that they aren’t putting new model speakers that advertisers are trying to push.
Other things to highlight in this issue that readers may find interesting include an overview of different speaker designs and also a roundtable of some of the top speaker designers in the business including Paul Barton of PSB Speakers, Michael Borresen of Raidho Acoustics, Yoav Geva of YG Acoustics, Andrew Jones of TAD, and Kevin Voecks of Revel.
I suggest taking a visit over to TAS and downloading your free copy. It’s a nice read and even if you can’t afford everything in the list (or can’t afford anything in the list!) it’s still a nice read. You can download the TAS Guide to High Performance Loudspeakers here.
