Anyone heard the new Focal Grande Utopia EM?

Highend audio is well on the way to pricing themselves in to extinction.I am thinking of pulling the plug entirely as it is simply becoming absurd.

Yea the new Focals look nice but it they don't knock the old models out of the water they will be WAY over price. I though the Alto (at the time 18,000) was about $8,000 over priced. $25,000 for a pair of Altos is a joke. I could name at least 5 speakers that are BETTER for half the price.

As for highend audio pricing them themselves into extinction..... I don't know. It if all the big brand's prices keep going up unjustified (no real increase in manufacturing cost, etc.) it will leave a lot of play for smaller lesser know brands to step in and under cut them.

As much as I like the idea of Focals (they look great! and are efficient). I don't think I would every buy a pair. The sound was just not there for me. I thought they (Alto, 1037) lack driver integration and the bass need to be smoother. For small scale music like Jazz the driver integration was not an issue. But for big flowing music like classical and large scale rock it was an issue.

Here is a site with some good pictures, it is in Japanese though.
http://www.avcat.jp/avnews/index.html

I am not sure in what type of setups you have hear dthe Utopias but comparing it to the usual suspects made them shine as the clear winner for me and i listen to mostly classical music. Real and complete dynamics without exageration of the lower octaves or fatiguing top end. Real staging, trasnsparency, and just plain enjpyable. The prices do seem to be going up. For example, the W/P 8 is now $30k. I think it makes the purchase of everything in life has gone up and european product seem to have suffered from the currency situation. But then, why has Wilson raised their price? The bottom line is we all are buying toys for our hobbies and the monies spent is not going to put us in the poor house or we would put the entire hobby aside permanently.

James63- "here, here"

The Wilson Sophia was 12.5k when the Alto was released. Revel Studio same price.

Even Dynaudios competing C4 is 18k, 25% less then the current Focal---for a european speaker with just as good cabinets and drivers. SophiaII and StudioII are 16k now to put their recent reiterations in perspective.

Bar81 may not think 31k for Focals' lowest 3-way is expensive, but i find a basic 3 way costing as much as a 3-series appalling and terrible for this hobby.

KR

ps. i have Focal car audio speakers which are a bargain but if they double in price, they would never sell