Don't know if anybody else has mentioned this, but I was thumbing through the April/May edition of TAS and happened upon the CES coverage, which included a nice glossy photo of associate editor Jonathan Valin experiencing an Epiphany, i.e., bowing in front of one of the smaller models. The writeup and space given to Epiphany seemed more than devoted to anything else. For those who don't have access to the magazine, I quote:
"You don't have to be an audiophile to hear what the Epiphanies do right. Describing it is a little trickier. the Epiphanies put more air between and among vocalists and instrumentalists than virtually any speaker I've heard. At the same time, they have superior image focus, on a par with any speaker I've heard. By superior image focus I do not mean the too-tight, "edge-enhanced" images of certain speakers and electronics, but the bloomy, soft-edged, three dimensional presences that voices and instruments create in life -- the kind of presences that makes them 'pop out' from an ensemble when they are playing individual lines in certain registers or playing forte.
The complex, ever-changing interrelationship of presence, perspective, and dynamics is precisely what I mean when I talk about instrumental 'action,' about the way that instruments seem to leap into the foreground (or recede into the middleground or background) depending on how forcefully they are being played, the register they are played in, and the musical lines they are playing, and the Epiphanies were simply exceptional at reproducing it...Happily, the Epiphany 12-12s weren't just marvelously three-dimensional. Once again on the basis of the little time we were able to spend with them, they were also fairly neutral, full-range, detailed, and lovely sounding. To sum up, I think the Epiphanies may be high-end contenders--and, at $14.5k, high-end bargains, at that."
Well, I have to say that anybody who thinks $14.5k is a bargain must be a little nuts, but still-high praise. At one point he mentions Ken Gates, Epiphany's owner, and sais that whatever he's done with the ribbons, woofers and enclosures is a proprietary secret. Guess we know what that secret is. Kudos! It's nice to see an AC guy doing well, even if he isn't mentioned.