Ive owned several 5000+ speakers, all under 10k. I've had the pleasure of hearing several systems that are clearly a cut well above in the 20 to 40k range. I would agree that there is likely an inflection point in bang per buck in the 5k range, but SOTA they are not. There is probably another inflection at about 2k and yet another at 50k. I am hardly justifying their price, just suspect that these anniversary edition speakers are likely the company's best effort at a tour de force. Not sure why so many seem ready to write them off without a single data point--we are supposed to value science and data here.
I happen to like the cabs, and I suspect they are dead as can be. I'm sure developing these cost some $$. I also like the solution to a quasi concentric mid/tweeter. Arrays have been around for some time--Phillips paper written in 81 I think about a particular shading config that allowed the composite to behave as a giant version of the component drivers. I'd like to know more about the shading, if any, used here. Whether one has any use for this much output capability is beside the point--I'm sure they are looking to join Perlisten in having a THX dominus rating that can fill any home theater space one can imagine. They are not alone in this regard as many price no object speakers aim to do loud as you dare sans distortion.
And for sure, AMT tweeters aren't necessarily the best drivers out there--diamond, beryllium, even silk domes, ring radiators such as the Satori, ribbons, plasma, etc can all be made SOTA--but can be made extremely robust. I used a pair of Aurum Cantus AMT's in a DIY system that were nearly 95 dB efficient and able to hit clean 118 dB peaks. Part of the reason I chose those went way back to an audition I'll never forget and the first time I heard a pair in a mainstream audio store out in Tustin CA. Stopped me dead in my tracks when they fired up the ESS AMT-1's. (Impressionable boy that grew up had the opportunity to revisit a dream speaker).
