2022 Golden Ear: PS Audio FR30 Loudspeaker

REVIEW
by Anthony Cordesman
Sep 13, 2022

PS Audio FR30 Loudspeaker

$28,500

I’d quietly sworn to myself that, after reviewing so many outstanding speakers for TAS, I wouldn’t buy any more and would stick with my Legacy Aeris. Well…chalk up one more resolution I’ve broken this year. The FR30 has amazing bass and far more realism and definition than mere room rattling. Its styling is ultramodern but so far has drawn almost universal praise. What really counts, however, is the smoothness and accuracy of its overall timbre and frequency response. It also offers truly superb soundstaging and a wide listening area. If you can audition it, do so but bring the most detailed and demanding recording you can and one with the most demanding midrange and treble possible. I should confess that I have kept part of my resolution. I set up my Legacy Aeris speakers in a second listening room. (Having your children get old enough to marry does have some benefits.)

Tags: FLOORSTANDING LOUDSPEAKER

By Anthony Cordesman

I've been reviewing audio components since some long talks with HP back in the early 1980s. My first experiences with the high end came in the 1950s at the University of Chicago, where I earned part of my tuition selling gear for Allied Radio and a local high-end audio dealer, and worked on sound systems for local night clubs, the Court Theater, and the university radio station. My professional life has been in national security, but I've never lost touch with the high end and have lived as a student and diplomat in Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, NATO, Asia, Iran and the Middle East and Asia. I've been lucky enough to live in places where opera, orchestras, and live chamber and jazz performances were common and cheap, and to encounter a wide range of different venues, approaches to performing, and national variations in high-end audio gear. I currently hold the Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and my open source analyses are available at that web site. What I look for in reviewing is the ability to provide a musically real experience at a given price point in a real-world listening room, and the ability to reveal the overall balance of musical sound qualities that I know are on a given recording. Where possible, I try to listen on a variety of systems as well as my own reference system.