These speakers are for sale and are currently located in Louisiana. The story is below...
Here are some pictures...
And a close-up...
THE STORY
When we completed the SoundScape 12 and SoundScape 10 designs, we needed to develop a surround speaker for use in a home theater application. That speaker was the SoundScape M7 monitor. It played down to 42Hz which was perfectly appropriate for use with a subwoofer in a home theater environment.
At the same time, I thought I may as well do a floor-standing, dual woofer version of the same speaker. The above speakers were the prototype for that design.
As word of this speaker leaked out, people began asking if these could be used for left and right main speakers. Of course they could. But the F3 was 42Hz. If someone was going to spend about $7000 on a floor standing speaker, they would probably expect it to play a bit deeper. So rather than release this design, we developed the SoundScape 8's. While they are slightly more expensive, they play down to about 25Hz. So that is the design we introduced and placed on our web site.
These prototypes, however, sounded great. So I took them home and used them in my home theater. Since I have a pair of large subwoofers, they were perfect in that application.
Recently, Mike contacted me asking about a lower cost version of the SoundScape 8's. I showed him a picture of these and told him we could build him a pair. But a new pair were not in his budget either. So I offered to sell him my prototypes and we shipped them to Mike in Louisiana.
Mike received the speakers about a month ago and loved them. But he quickly realized that in order to take full advantage of them, he would probably want to upgrade his source gear. After thinking about it for a while, he decided he would rather not go down this path and would, instead, put them up for sale.
Mike is asking $4500 for this pair of speakers. It is safe to say that it is unlikely that a pair of speakers with these components would ever be available for that kind of price.
They feature the same open midrange design as the SoundScape 8's and basically only differ in terms of the woofer section. These are rear ported and play down to 42Hz. Other than that, they perform exactly like their big brothers, the SS8's. The front panels are Mexican cocobolo and the rest of the cabinets are finished in black satin.
If you are interested in these prototype speakers, you can contact Mike directly at maasen at cmaaccess dot com (change to email format).
- Jim
