You've never seen the B&W Nautilus before?
Wicked speaker.
Based on the concept that conch shells maintain the perfect interior geometry for sound, in theory.

Check out the site.

There's a bunch more here.

Well, actually it turned out that it wasn't a quail at all. It was a mocking bird from New Orleans. The mocking bird is doing fine and has been heard repeatedly singing his song that goes something like this "f@#k you Mr. Cheney"
Hey, don't kill the messenger
oz

Do they include the Batcar with that?

At the price they charge for those things, they should include a car...

Chesseroo, Bridgman, all,

When a group of reasonably well designed speakers are tested in a really controlled environment, with double-blind protocol like the tests I participated in for 25 years at the National Research Council in Ottawa, the cost of the speakers becomes irrelevant and does not correlate with "better-sounding". For all of us on the listening panel, the operative phrase became "comparably good, " which we used when there were slight preferences between different models depending on the type of music being played.

In such cases, the rankings we gave would seldom differ by more than a fraction--something like 7.9 out of 10 vs. 8.0 out of 10. This was statistically insignificant after many rounds of listening. Often the rankings would shift a bit if we moved into a different seat in the room.

During the years I edited Sound&Vision Canada, we did all our loudspeaker measurements and listening tests at the NRC, and regularly found floorstanding models from Axiom, Paradigm, PSB and Energy typically selling for between $800 and $2,500, which would match and often exceed the rankings of large very costly British and American tower speakers, including the B&W 801, the KEF 105, Thiel and others that in the early 1990s sold for up to $7,000 per pair.

If proper controls are in place, and you can't see the brand or know the price (speakers are simply numbered), there often is little or no correlation between price and sound quality. However, once you see the speaker and know the brand and/or price, even experienced listeners will become biased.

I'd also point out that we reviewed some very costly speakers that received terrible rankings, far below others that sold for as little as $300 to $500 per pair.

Regards,

So I guess the moral of the story is:

Trust your ears, but not in combination with your eyes.

I have heard more than one person say that they bought a certain speaker because it "looked" good.

The Nautilus received design awards! And does look like some "art" I've seen.

Alan makes an excellent point about the fact that there's little or no correlation between price and sound quality in audio(i.e. often you don't "get what you pay for"), even in items such as speakers where audible differences do actually exist. Audio mythologies seem to require that not only do differences have to be heard in items which if correctly designed are audibly identical(e.g. players, receiver/amplifiers, wires), but that actual differences have to be exaggerated, sometimes to a gross degree(e.g. one good speaker "blows away" another good one). A further illustration of Alan's point can be found in Dr. Toole's paper where he demonstrates, especially at p.10, how the major differences listeners reported between the speakers listened to in open view narrowed greatly when the same speakers were then listened to blind.

If you get the chance, I'd love to hear your opinion chesseroo!

Just looking back through the archives and came across this thread. Very interesting topic and discussion.....