[Aether Audio]

Hey Folks,

Happy New Year!!! I know it's been a while since I've shown my mug around here so I thought I'd better drop in to let everyone know we're still open for business.  Please pardon my absence as I've been VERY busy.

On that note, I'd like to share a little about our good fortune.  The way I figure it, the BOSS must have decided there wasn't any point in letting us continue to beat our heads against the wall any longer.   (You can only beat so much sense into some people). Anyway, in order to put an end to the madness - he sent an angel.  An angel with some $$$ to boot!!!  I know the scriptures say that "the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills" but I guess He's diversified his portfolio since that was written.

The upshot is that you're going to see a whole new SP Technology Loudspeakers in the coming months.  Yahoo! That means a whole lot of new possibilities for us and some good things (hopefully) for some of you.  I have mentioned in the past that we we're going to come out with a lower cost product line.  Well, that's a pretty sure thing now and we'll also be offering some pretty cool A/V designs as well.

We're talking some serious bang for your buck here.  How's a Timepiece type monitor using our same exact waveguide for under $1K sound?  No, it won't have constrained layer damping or the metal cone woofer BUT...it will have a sensitivity of 90dB (you tube guys will love it) with the same (or real close) RMS power handling.  The finish won't be real wood veneer or come in high-gloss and it won't have fancy caps, coils, wire or binding posts either.  But it will still kick some serious butt on the low end and the mids & highs will be reminiscent of the Timepiece along with the imaging and dynamics.

I expect there will be a real cult following of modifiers out there that will have a field day tweaking them to the nth degree.  At that price you could almost think of it as a kit speaker that you don't have to build in order to enjoy right away.  For the average guy (or gal) it will rock as much as they would ever want, but for others it will represent an opportunity to experiment to their hearts desire.  AND YOU WON'T HAVE TO PAY A LOT FOR IT!!!  There will be other models in the line-up as well along with a subwoofer based on the same construction methods.  Oh, and let me not forget...we're bringing back the "No Risk Deal" on this product line.  No power limits or equipment requirements either!  May the former naysayers go pound sand!!!

Along with all of this we're going to be offering the Millennial Reference Series in a Studio Version that will have a black texture over-all.  No high-gloss front panel or wood veneer - you can have it in any color you want as long as it's black though.  This will allow us to lower the prices of these products a rather significant amount.  Of course they won't be as low as the new product line but it will still shave off quite a few $$$.  Would anybody be interested in a Revelation pair for under $12K?  I think we could do that.  It's the darn finishing costs that drive up the prices.  If we can lower that substantially then it means serious savings for those of you whose main concern is performance... no skimping there at all.

Add to all of this the fact that our throughput will be greatly increased and our delivery lead-time greatly reduced, and we're talking a whole new company coming out within the next few months.  We're still putting up walls, building spray booths and bringing in new machinery right now though, so it will be a little while yet.  Nevertheless, let the competition beware. We're at your heels now!

Well, that's about enough.  Let me know your thoughts guys.  I'll be standing by.

God bless,
-Bob

[Bill Baker]

Great news Bob,
 Glad to hear things are moving forward. Got any of that extra jingle ($$$$) for me
 Anyway, let me know when you have the <$1k speakers ready to ship and I will grab a pair from you. You know me, the tube guy. If it works well with tubes, I have to have it in my store.
  We'll talk soon!! Congrats.

[PeteG]

Bob,
  Great news indeed, I’d like to know how well the new A/V speakers would
match up as surrounds (or center?) for folks who have the Timepiece’s or Continuum’s.

Pete

[Aether Audio]

Bill,

Thanks!  We'll let you know as soon as the first pairs are ready to ship.

Pete,

Thanks to you as well!  The new A/V stuff (as well as the new  Home-Audio line) will all use the same tweeter/waveguide as the Millennial Reference Series has now.  Since we crossover below 1KHz, a large part of the midrange is covered by the tweeter.  That being the case, all of our products will be a good match with any of the others.  That means a guy could say...get the Timepieces or Continuums for a top notch front side for music playback and use the A/V/ surrounds for HT playback.  

You'd save some serious $$$ compared to using Timepieces for the rear without sacrificing much at all in the way of performance.  Actually, that would make it cheaper and easier all the way around as the rear amp channels wouldn't have to have as much juice due to the higher rear speaker sensitivity. This is part of the over-all concept we're putting together.  

If you need to save even more $$$ then you could just use the new entry level Home-Audio products for the front and still get increadible results. The upshot is that all our stuff is ideally suited for crossover into the HT market because of the ideal dispersion characteristics of our waveguide.  That's just a secondary spin-off of doing it right in the first place.  That's why the THX spec exists to begin with.  

Whether its music our soundtracks - you don't want to be randomly spraying sound all over the room with the dispersion angle of different frequencies constantly changing - especially at mid and high frequencies.  Or at least not if you want to have any degree of decent imaging and instrument localization. Oh, I know you can get reasonably good imaging out of conventional designs but you usually have to fart around with speaker placement to no end or minimally, place them way out into the room and/or use room treatment near the speakers.

The guys at THX figured that out a long time ago and determined that it's sort of important to minimize room reflections if you want to be able to tell where a gun shot or which way a jet flyby is coming from.  I know some folks don't think imaging is very important for music but they're WRONG!  Everybody has the right to be wrong - so that's cool.

The cool thing about our waveguide is that it "one-ups" the THX spec by controlling horizontal dispersion as well as vertical - and symmetrically, so it's the same (+/- 45 degrees) in either plane.  That means all our stuff is HT ready regardless of which model you get.  And according to the response at the Rocky Mountain Audiofest as well as many testamonials...they work pretty darn good on normal stereo too!

Sorry, didn't mean to turn this into a disertation.  Hope this helps.  I'll go quietly now.  Thanks for the feedback guys.

Take care,
-Bob

[Jumpin]

Bob,

Great news.  Feel free to offer up special introductory pricing to us audiocirclers   I for one am very interested in the HT loudspeakers.  We are finishing our basement now, which has drained most of our cash. Which is why your pricing strategy is especially appealing.

Regards,
Mark