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JM Labs original utopia speakers

Does anyone out there own these. They are the ones with the light wood side panels and a wood strip at the tweeter. They listed for about 30k when they came out. I am interested in purchasing a pair, but havent been able to find out much about them in comparison to the latest versions, which are quite a bit more expensive.
manitunc

Showing 2 responses by rgs92

rgs92
974 posts
 
Am I nuts, but back around 1998-2002 I always felt the original JMLabs Utopias were awesome (I heard the plain Utopias and the Mezzos several times at dealers and the Stereophile NYC shows).
Since then, when I heard the Be models and forward, something was always off, like too much forward bass or some piercing high frequencies or a bit of metallic sound, reminding me a bit of Wilson or B&W. Does anyone else have this impression?
rgs92
974 posts
 
Yeah it's funny that I also felt the old Focal titanium tweeter was natural and extended and invisible in the original Utopia line but metallic and a little buzzy in vocals and strident in strings in Wilson speakers (I had Watt Puppy 6s).
I also thought this tweeter was too piercing in the Kharma 3.2s.
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