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PS Audio FR30 speakers

thewas said:
By the way his answer about the same factory that makes Sonus Faber and B&W is partially deceiving as the from price class comparable 800 series is still manufactured in UK and from what I had read Sonus Faber returned even the production of their cheaper series back to Italy.
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Yes, if you go to the link I provided you can read all about that statement.
 
jtwrace said:
You were never led to believe that as it was NEVER announced until yesterday when I asked as seen below.

View attachment 172921
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well, at least he's honest and not 99% made in china and ship back to them to put on the badge and call it made in USA.....

But hell, China can have some really good OEM factories producing high quality build is one thing, having some seriously high end costing a few organs not made in the home country of the brand is another...
 
FWIW Aurum Cantus was completely manufactured, assembled and finished in China. The products sound great and the beauty of the cabinetry rivals any country in the world. There is Chinese junk and there is first rate product. I'm giving PS Audio the benefit of the doubt that it will be in the latter class. My personal favorite speakers used the B&G Radia 75's. Paired with dual 7" ScanSpeak bass bins and a humungously capable IB sub, that was some sweet sound. With luck the mids here will be of similar caliber.
 
JRS said:
FWIW Aurum Cantus was completely manufactured, assembled and finished in China. The products sound great and the beauty of the cabinetry rivals any country in the world. There is Chinese junk and there is first rate product. I'm giving PS Audio the benefit of the doubt that it will be in the latter class. My personal favorite speakers used the B&G Radia 75's. Paired with dual 7" ScanSpeak bass bins and a humungously capable IB sub, that was some sweet sound. With luck the mids here will be of similar caliber.
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well, but at a even higher price than competition, being all Made in China he better have the speaker sounding and measuring much better than competition, there are certain justification of the price due to labor cost in the west or so which is fine for me for the better general reputation of quality.

This is much like cars, yea Japanese cars like the GTR or even the 1990s Subaru STi, Mazda RX7 are all very fast cars, but if you sell for the same price as a Ferrari, you better be faster than them on track minus the brand/factory location premium
 
Paul makes a big deal of transparency. Yet, PS Audio can be sorely non-transparent. Case in point is the number of FR30s reserved in the three rounds listed. The problem is there are no numbers, which makes the whole marketing angle that rounds one and two are sold out meaningless. For all we know there could be three pairs in each round and only six have been reserved. I suspect the lack of a number means the number is very low. Why not publish this metric otherwise? Sometimes we learn more about a product from what is not said than from what is said. The credibility of other marketing claims is also thrown into question.
 
The one thing that was obvious is the wall on one side and open space on the other, which is not great at all. If it were me, I'd turn the system 180 degrees and have the speakers where the couch is, and there would be at least a chance of symmetry. I'm surprised their high powered speaker engineer didn't point that out. However I'm sure the audiophile approved speaker cables made everything alright - no problem. :oops:
 
I'd move the lot into the bigger room they walked through to get to the listening room.

His house must have at least ten times more floorspace than mine but he's just as compromised as I am for speaker width using that room.

The suggestion about using diffusion instead of absorption on first reflection points has got me thinking though.
 
jtwrace said:
You were never led to believe that as it was NEVER announced until yesterday when I asked as seen below.
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Plan was to be made in China since 2016 by the way...

I don't think your question revealed any breaking news.

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There's a new video online now of another installation. I'm still kind of baffled that PS Audio apparently doesn't send information ahead of installation on how to make the acoustics optimal for the speakers. The room in this new video is very dead; I would think that it would have been wise to have the customer remove some of the damping ahead of delivery instead of having the speakers set up in less than optimal acoustics, especially since they're obviously taking all the time to install the speakers personally and making a video of the event.

When the customer sits for the first time to have a listen, the body language I see, and his subsequent comments is that he isn't all that thrilled with the sound.
 
JRS said:
FWIW Aurum Cantus was completely manufactured, assembled and finished in China. The products sound great and the beauty of the cabinetry rivals any country in the world. There is Chinese junk and there is first rate product. I'm giving PS Audio the benefit of the doubt that it will be in the latter class.
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Where a product is made is not an intrinsic identifier of fit and finish, or internal quality, for that matter. Here on ASR we are familiar with Topping. I believe those come from Shenzhen. I have a Chinese tube amp with first rate fit and finish. It's never been a problem for me.

What you expect from Asian manufacturing is lower overall cost. Will this PS product offer that?

What I am not happy about is the price differential of companies that use low wage rate countries for manufacture, and then sell their product at a premium-- a premium that is totally unrelated to production costs. JBL (IMO) is guilty of this, with their 'classic' L100, made in Indonesia. Indonesia has excellent manufacturing facilities--for instance, guitars. We find first rate instruments coming from Indonesia, but you don't expect to pay made in USA prices for them (ex: Paul Reed Smith Indonesian v USA made; or Ibanez Indonesian v Japanese made). So the JBL could well be a fine speaker in the fit and finish department. However, coming from Indonesia, the L100 should be selling for a thousand dollars, or fifteen hundred dollars at the most, and not four large.
 
FWIW, the lead speaker engineer @ PS Audio, Chris, reached out to me a couple weeks ago to see if I would be interested in testing/reviewing the FR30. Unfortunately, I had to decline because it's just too large and too heavy for me to test on my NFS. I heard back from him last night and he let me know Ron @ NWAA Labs is going to conduct their testing. I wish I could have but there was no way. So, the bottom line is we will (or should, I would assume) get to see some independent 3rd party testing of this speaker.

(I asked Chris if he minded me sharing this info and he said he did not)
 
hardisj said:
FWIW, the lead speaker engineer @ PS Audio, Chris, reached out to me a couple weeks ago to see if I would be interested in testing/reviewing the FR30. Unfortunately, I had to decline because it's just too large and too heavy for me to test on my NFS. I heard back from him last night and he let me know Ron @ NWAA Labs is going to conduct their testing. I wish I could have but there was no way. So, the bottom line is we will (or should, I would assume) get to see some independent 3rd party testing of this speaker.

(I asked Chris if he minded me sharing this info and he said he did not)
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Broken back averted.
 
anmpr1 said:
So the JBL could well be a fine speaker in the fit and finish department. However, coming from Indonesia, the L100 should be selling for a thousand dollars, or fifteen hundred dollars at the most, and not four large.
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The price of those puts me off so much I'm working on my own pair, nothing exactly complicated about them. I don't really get JBL's pricing but that's why I don't own a international audio company.

Speakers like the FR30 for me fall into the category of "We could probably fix some shit in the world if we didn't waste time making this". Doesn't bring anything new to the table, just another product to raise PS bottom line.

Part of me used to be jealous about folks with speakers like this, but it seems like they consistently just get tossed into garbage rooms by people who don't know what they're doing.
 
Vini darko said:
Broken back averted.
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Yup. It is funny... I was so curious about how they performed I was talking myself into believing I could make it happen. "Well, I could buy a lift and build a platform to hold it"... but I bailed on that. :D
 
hardisj said:
Yup. It is funny... I was so curious about how they performed I was talking myself into believing I could make it happen. "Well, I could buy a lift and build a platform to hold it"... but I bailed on that. :D
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Quitter.
 
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