I saw the video this morning and for the price, they seemed really impressive. Smaller and lighter than Clayton's previous models yet they go deeper, tighter and now with a seamless crossover.
All the best,
Nonoise
New speakers unveiled from Clayton Shaw - Caladan
As I understand it, Clayton developed these speakers after he parted with Spatial Audio. At a cost of ~$3K, which is astounding, and a beautify wood baffle, they look sensational. I heard the sound of them in the video below on my cans and was super-impressed. They go very low in response as well. I can't wait to hear more reviews of them as I am sure that they will be excellent performers for a really affordable price. You have lived until you have had OB speakers in your room, which is just my humble opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrgJ-_npls
122 responses Add your response
Two things will have some light shed on them when people hear the Caladans at Capital Audiofest… 1. How do they sound in a real room…not close mic’s…. and, the speaker is a lot smaller than the big Spatials and other panel speakers… so how large is the image from the new speaker? As a former Spatial owner… my expectations are pretty high. |
I am a HUGE OB fan. My Emerald Physics 3.4s (43" tall) throw an amazing 3D soundstage, outboard XOs. Sadly, no longer made, but the Caladans seem to slide right in, and at a super price point. from the video it looked like the jumpers were very thin. The OEMs when I first got my 3.4s was CRAP wire. I quickly upgraded it to amazing improvement See them in my Virtual System |
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Well, I jumped in and ordered my pair in Maple. It sounds like I am in the December production run, so a couple of months out. Add to my current staple of speakers: Thiel CS2.3s, vintage Infinity RS Kappa 7s (GR Research updated crossovers), and Buchardt Audio S400 MKIIs. All very different with different strengths and weaknesses, why not an open baffle from a manufacturer with an impeccable history of OB speakers |
I am also interested in these new speakers. But someone mentioned what will be the availability of speaker driver replacements if ever needed. This is one of those things I would not have thought about. I am spoiled in that my older speakers use currently available Scanspeak classic series drivers and I have replaced same in the past. |
Specs and information:
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Hope his new company knocks it out of the park! Design and materials look solid enough. A beacon in the fog of ‘me too’ mediocrity. Sadly, I will not contribute in the immediate future as I’ve long since committed to my stable of mostly Brit and Swiss based kit. However, I can encourage others to shun the mass marketers of dreck. Look forward to the first impressions. |
Can you say loss leader? Sure! I knew you could!! |
Conmoto, It refers to selling a product at little or no profit, or even at a loss to attract customers to a new product or company.....often times to get a good public response and "buzz" for the company. Not really a derogatory term, unless intended that way. The Gaia feet alone are $50 each retail, or $300 for all six, the WBT binding posts are $45 each or $180 for four.....that's just about $500 just for the feet and binding posts per pair. It appears the caps, resistors, air core inductors, and wiring are also rather high grade....though I can't recall exactly what they are off of memory. Not sure about the driver costs. Overall he seems to be selling a very high quality product for an extremely fair price, Having no middle man (dealer network) also helps greatly. |
Yes, also the drivers (no incidental expense in a loudspeaker), wood baffle, hardware, finish, labor, packaging, cost of doing business and a little thing called profit margin which keeps the doors open. This might have been borderline doable in 2019 (although I doubt it) but in 2023, no way. As a side note regarding my bonafides, I was in wood products manufacturing for 40 years. Which isn’t to say I’m am right, this is just my opinion based on some rough calculations. And, unless I missed it somewhere, there are no images of the rear of the speaker so hard to factor in the base, rear support, how many footers per speaker etc. so I can’t really accurately calculate all costs. |
@woodsage So, what’s your point here cause I don’t see one. A guy with more speaker design “bonafides” than you’ll ever know in your lifetime puts out what looks to be a potentially very high value product and you have to crawl outta your hole and call it a “loss leader” with no evidence to support such other than being a woodworker??? Gimme a break. |
He is making plenty of money. He would not sell it, if he were not. 4 woofs.....$700, 2 tweeters $150, 6 caps $80, 4 inductors...$50.....4 binding posts $200, wire $100, 6 footers $300. All prices above retail....wholesale 50% less so = $800 max. Two pieces of wood machined....$200.....four brackets.....$150.....shipping boxes $200....so $1500 max plus his labor. He can assemble one pair easily in a day and pack and ship it. The speaker is super simple. The baffles are all cut on a cnc machine and then he just finishes them 20 at a time with paint or varnish. The wire already comes twisted together. He just runs it in the channels the cnc machine makes. He can assmeble 5 pairs at once....if he has enough tables. Not bad.....maybe? $1500 a day more than cost parts.....working 6 days a week that is $468K a year over parts.......That is NOT a loss leader!!!!!!!! Of course, he has expenses and a partner and it costs a few thousand $ to go to the show. I know what it cost to run a business. However, when the business is small like his.....you can make seriously good money if you have steady business. This is what he is counting on.....and he is getting a very powerful promo from Ron. Free advertising is best! The above costs are what I know about the speaker from seeing the review and knowing what those parts costs. This is just a quesstimate (the actual cost of parts and labor may be much more). Selling direct has many advantages. The speaker is very smart.....he is very smart. I am sure he will sell a ton as this is a massively great speaker for the money. However, you have probably seen my post about making your own bi-amped fully eqed time aligned fully dipole speaker for the same money that uses the same woofs but uses 4 planars from 400hz on up.......mucho better....but you have to build it.......and if you bi-amped using 2 modded GaN 1 digital amps.....OMG! |
Ozzy62, How do you see it? What are your calculations of money in the speaker? Must be way different than mine. I have been in the high end audio business since the late 70s. From what I see, he is making good money selling them at that price point. Look at the picture on Clayton’s site of him soldering the speaker. That thing is super simple and light. The speakers from Spatial (Clayton’s old company) are way heavier and thicker (3 inches thick of exotic baffle material), have way heavier stands, have way, way more parts and more expensive parts. That is why they are more money. He probably has less people to split the money with now that he is on his own. I don’t see him raising the price. He is going to crank them out.....just like the Mofi $3600 retail bookshelf speaker. The Mofi has ordinary jacks, wire and lots of ordinary Chinese xover parts. The Caladan has way better sounding binding posts, wire and xover parts. The Caladan also goes lower in the bass and is more efficient. Because it is open baffle and you can get to everything super easy.....you could bi-amp the speaker real easy to make it sound even better. The Caladan is also way simpler and easier to manufacture.......and can be done here in the US of A.......and the Caladan is going to sound way better. Some people need/want box speakers. Me, I love me an open baffle speaker. No box.....no box sound. This looks like the tweeter he is using: |
@soix I think my point is pretty clear and I stated it was just my opinion. Second point was to see how long it would take for someone who disagreed with me to start hurling disparaging personal insults. Didn’t take long did it?? 😂
@ozzy62 That’s quite a bit better assessment of my post. Not meant to denigrate or compliment, just calling it as I see it. Carry on folks, it’s time for me to crawl back into my sawdust laden hole!
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pennfootball71121 posts Open baffle is midfi
I don’t think I can go along with that at all. Sounds like an uninformed opinion to me. |
When you mind and heart are not open......then you react from your ego.
These are probably the woofs he is using: https://usspeaker.com/beyma%2012BR70-1.htm Here is the wire he is using: For $1200 you can buy the 4 woofs, 2 tweeters, wire and all xover parts.. This would be usng an even better coil on the midrange (Jantzen 12 gauge waxed paper foil). Then you make a baffle and wire it up. I would not use binding posts. I would hardwire the speaker cable to the wires going to the xover parts. Another possibility would be to cut off the back of the tweeter so there is no chamber. This would lower the resonant frequency of the tweeter and probably allow a more transparent sound. However, power handling could be compromised. I do this to my Vifa tweeters that are sitting on top of my two way speaker. The Vifa tweeter sounds way better with the back cut off. However, it is not doing real low frequencies like the one in the Caladan. However, if you used a digital xover and used steep slopes then you could cross it over at 1K and play 110db. Another possibility would be to make the speaker with just the woofs and then put a shelf on top and mount the tweeter on a recessed baffle with felt on the top of the speaker to time align the tweeter with the woofs. Mucho better than just tilting the speaker back a bit. Of course, everything I suggest has to be measured and listened to. You can just make the baffle with the drivers mounted and use a $500 Minidsp Flex as the digital xover. Then you need two amps (modded Fosi V3 would be great for the bass and inexpensive). This way you can time align the tweeter to the woofs and equalize the whole speaker and use whatever amps you want on the woofs and tweets......but if you are going to go that far then you might as well use a stack of 4 planars for the mids and highs and cross over at 400hz as explained before and on my website. Only about 5% of audiophiles are DIYers......so this info is not hurting Clayton's pocketbook. Most of you are rolling your eyes after reading all this.....he he. It is good eye exercise. Have fun! |
You can get as much bass as you want with open baffle.....you just need more woofer area than a woofer in a box. The Caladan with its two 12s has great bass for most people. You can also do the open baffle servo subs and get 15 hz. You can use 6 12s in a stack on each side and a line source of planars to the ceiling and digital xover and biamped and have a speaker that costs less than $10K and is better than most Wilson or Vivid (overall). If you can afford Wilson or Vivid, you certainly have the living room space to put the speaker out where they belong. Wilsons and Vivids sound way better when they are WAY out in the room. Open baffle speakers can image like crazy.....but you have to know what you are doing to make it work. Look at the IO Design speaker from Italy. No baffles at all......and great sound and imaging. There are those that put the woofers in a box and have open baffle mids and highs. This way you get more bass out of a smaller driver. The Qualio IQ comes to mind. Great speaker.....and with mods would be world class. There is no "system". The ego makes limitations. The mind and heart explores all possibilities and does so experientially. |
Not sure how this disintegrated into a peeing contest, but somehow it did. Clayton appears to be making high quality OB speakers at a very fair price, we should hope that more manufacturers did the same....for our pocket books sake. Are the speakers perfect? I seriously doubt it, but I put my $3,000 on the table to be able to see for myself, in my system. I'm perfectly comfortable to take a chance, especially from someone with a well known track record like his. I already know he uses high quality components, because they are exposed and not buried in a cabinet. Will they compare to a $20,000 pair of Kaya or Wilsons? God I would think not, otherwise some owners have a serious gripe. And yes OB has it's strengths and weaknesses, but imaging and soundstage are not two of them. |
I think "loss leader" was meant as a compliment, these seem like an evolution of the M3 Sapphires which started a little under 5k I think. So at 3k that's a pretty good deal, and I suspect prices will go up as he makes further refinements and cosmetic updates. The current X4 from Spatial starts at $7,800 and they are discontinuing their entry level Q series so it will be a while before Clayton's new company is competing directly with Spatial. Perhaps this was part of the separation agreement. |
@woodsage Well, I hope your woodworking skills are better than your writing skills because if you were more lucid upfront this would’ve never been an issue unless your initial goal was to intentionally stir the pot, which is another issue entirely. I hope it’s the former and that you maybe take some writing classes to learn how to write what you really mean to say. Good communication is a valuable skill to have, especially here.
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@woodsage Well, I hope your woodworking skills are better than your writing skills because if you were more lucid upfront this would’ve never been an issue unless your initial goal was to intentionally stir the pot, which is another issue entirely. I hope it’s the former and that you maybe take some writing classes to learn how to write what you really mean to say because several people here were kinda guessing what you really meant here. Good communication is a valuable skill to have, especially here.
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