Editors’ Choice: Loudspeakers $50,000 to $100,000

Vimberg Tonda D

$50,000–$57,000 

Designed and built by the same folks who make ultra-high-end Tidal Audio loudspeakers, the Vimberg line is intended to offer Tidal quality at a lower price. The three-way, five-driver, ported, floorstanding Tonda D is Vimberg’s flagship. With a gracefully angled HDF-laminate chassis and a substantial aluminum faceplate, the Tonda D is quite handsome looking. Parts-quality is first rate (all Accuton Cell drivers, including a pure diamond tweeter, as well as Mundorf and Dueland caps). The sound quality is outstanding, with excellent imaging, resolution, transient behavior, dynamic contrasts, and undiminished energy. For listeners who crave full-range transparency to sources, the Tonda D is a must-audition. 

Legacy Audio V with Wavelet II Processor 

$55,000

This digitally optimized, multiway floorstander with a highly sophisticated processor is one of the best speaker systems AHC has heard—one of those rare innovative approaches to high-end audio that is so good it almost compels serious audiophiles to audition it. AHC was truly impressed with what the Legacy V could do in making subtle improvements in the realism of imaging and depth, and the smoothness and clarity of the bass with a wide range of classical music and acoustic jazz. The Legacy V does have some truly great competition from speakers without any of the features of the Wavelet II processor, but to quote AHC’s conclusion, “The Legacy V is really good!” 

Wilson Audio Alexia Series 2

$58,000

The Wilson Alexia Series 2 is scarcely cheap, but it does bring much of the technology and sound quality of Wilson’s far more expensive speakers to a much more affordable price point. The Alexia is the first relatively compact Wilson speaker that provides Wilson’s Aspherical Group Delay, which allows it to be fully time-aligned for a specific listening position. The result is a speaker that comes far closer to the imaging and soundstaging accuracy of an ideal point source, with a smooth and revealing overall frequency response, no hardness or artificial warmth, and a woofer that provides extraordinary power and low-frequency extension with room reinforcement. 

Kharma Elegance dB11-S

$60,000

This reference-quality, three-way, four-driver floorstander uses a specially developed beryllium tweeter that is exemplary in its sonic purity and control, and a 7″ carbon-composite midrange driver that employs Kharma’s sandwich-cone technology, designed to push break-up frequencies as far up as possible, thereby eliminating colorations in the drivers’ working ranges. Two 10″ aluminum woofers complete the package, housed, together with the other drivers, in a handsome yet inert cabinet. This is an extraordinary speaker with wonderful coherence, terrific low-level detail, gorgeous timbre, smooth yet extended highs, and surprisingly explosive bass. 

Von Schweikert Audio VR-55 Aktive

$60,000

The application of VSA’s pioneering (and remarkably cost-effective), patent-pending, noise-reducing cabinet technology combined with specially developed custom-built drivers from Accuton and ScanSpeak results in a level of performance that GW feels breaks new ground in resolution, transparency, and transient response below the $100,000 mark. The VR-55’s resolute yet sweet and extended high frequencies, vibrant and expressive midrange, and astonishingly fast and accurate bass make it a natural at revealing finely detailed pitches, rich harmonics, and accurate textures. 

Magico S7 

$63,800

An extraordinarily revealing speaker that has very neutral timbre and does not exaggerate or fail to reproduce any aspect of sound quality. Its deeply extended but very uncolored bass can seem slightly weak until you realize how far down that bass can go and how clean and tight it is. Dynamics are truly excellent, although the S7 does need real power to show how good it can be. The only drawbacks are that this level of quality is anything but cheap, and the S7 offers accuracy, not romance or euphonic coloration. Here, however, its lack of any trace of hardness in the upper octaves makes its accuracy as musical as the recording, the rest of the system, and listening room allow. A great speaker. 

Vandersteen Audio Model 7 Mk II

$63,999

Based on unique drivers made from carbon-fiber-clad balsawood, the Model 7 strips away a layer of coloration and artifacts, revealing a glorious purity of timbre. You simply don’t hear the cones when listening to music through the Model 7, which is electrostatic-like in its clarity, transparency, and openness. The extensive bass adjustments, made possible by the powered woofer, allow the Model 7’s response below 120Hz to be tailored to your room. Extremely coherent from the center-of-the-earth bass to the top treble.

Wilson Benesch Resolution

$69,500

This unusual design, employing carbon-fiber enclosures and isobaric woofer loading, excels in a few specific areas, but it’s the sum of the parts that makes the Resolution such a joy to listen to. This tall, thin speaker is simply nonpareil at unearthing cloaked bass lines—and revealing everything about them. Thanks, no doubt, to the in-house-made, carefully matched drivers and an equally well-thought-out crossover, these speakers possess uncanny coherence. Rounding out the Wilson Benesch’s virtues are a deathly quiet noise floor and low overall distortion. These traits, too, add to the speaker’s sense of musical suspense, since dynamic bursts seem to come out of nowhere. The Resolution can deliver long-term musical satisfaction. 

Sonus faber Lilium

$70,000 (Gloss Red Violin finish)

The Lilium marks more than a ceremonial step by Sonus faber into a superb sonic era of speed, transparency and coherence. This svelte loudspeaker is extremely well suited for classical music and jazz. It presents a seamless sonic tapestry but also possesses a good deal of punch, which its excellent design, based on a tuned mass damper and a multilayer resonance-control-optimized cabinet, seeks to highlight. Its tweeter is beautifully detailed and enticingly airy. While it does not plumb the deepest bass octaves, this transducer is potent enough to fill very large rooms. 

YG Acoustics Sonja 2.2

$76,800

The Sonja 2.2 is a two-module design (main unit and bass unit) and is now available only as a fully passive system. There are three main changes over the previous Sonja 1.2. First, and most significantly, all Sonja 2 models have a new kind of tweeter, a soft dome with an aluminum frame. Second, the crossover has been changed to accommodate the new tweeter’s electrical and acoustic properties and to allow the speaker to perform more efficiently in the lower frequencies. Third, the bass module cabinet is now 25 pounds lighter and stiffer. What has been added sonically to the 1.2’s already superb performance is even greater resolution, ease, and general felicity. The Sonja 2.2 is a speaker that serves the music, no matter what kind. A major achievement. 

Avantgarde Acoustic XD Series Trio/Basshorn

$81,000 (with two Sub231), $92,500 (with two Short Basshorns) up to $178,000 (with six Basshorns)

A gorgeous, three-way, spherical-horn system with top-to-bottom coherence, bloom, three-dimensional body, air, natural focus, and sensational stage width and continuousness to go with the phenomenal dynamic range, lifelike speed of attack, and the superb resolution that such speakers have always excelled at delivering. A horn system with bass—thanks to its powered, quarter-wave-horn-loaded, digitally corrected subwoofers—that finally matches the beauty, speed, and presence of its midrange. As JV said in his review, what’s not to like? 

Estelon X Diamond Mk II 

$83,000

This three-way, hour-glass-shaped floorstander with a literally rock-solid enclosure from Alfred Vassilkov of Estonia is not just a great direct-radiating loudspeaker; it is one of the greatest direct-radiating loudspeakers. Building on the virtues of the original X Diamond (which already had the best disappearing act and the best low end JV had heard from a direct-radiating multiway loudspeaker, sealed or ported), the X Diamond II adds astonishingly realistic timbral warmth and body to what was already a superbly phase-and-time coherent package. With its new tweeter, crossover, and wiring, the X Diamond II has no audible weaknesses—no matter what kind of listener you are or what kind of music you prefer. TAS’ 2022 Overall Product of the Year Award-winner. 

MBL 101 E Mk II

$84,500

Always the thrill rides of the high-end audio amusement park, with sensational dynamic range, superb transients, high resolution of inner detail, and the most surround-like soundstaging this side of a full-bore home-theater system, the four-way, omnidirectional MBL 101 Es had three weaknesses: Their ported bass was a bit overblown; their upper midrange could be a bit bright, and their imaging at centerstage could be a little vague. The Mk II version of this unique omni loudspeaker ameliorates these problems, without losing the unique Radialstrahler virtues. The result is a genuine improvement in a genuine classic. Though not a word we often use in audio criticism (more’s the pity), the MBL 101 E Mk IIs are more plain fun to listen to than just about anything else out there, short of their much bigger (and much more expensive) brothers, the MBL X-tremes. 

Magico M3

$84,600

Disappearing like a planar, this demure dynamic offers a superb blend of drivers, thanks, in part, to an improved carbon-fiber-and-aluminum cabinet derived directly from the Magico M Project and, in equal part, to the company’s high-tech diamond-coated beryllium tweeter and graphene-carbon cones. Combining Magico’s traditional virtues of transparency and ultra-high resolution with a beguiling touch of timbral warmth, the M3 simply sounds more “real” on more music more of the time than previous Magicos (none of which were slouches in this regard). Cone speakers just don’t get much better than this one. 

Legacy Audio Valor with Wavelet II

$86,000 

Legacy’s Valor with the new Wavelet II processor brings high technology and advanced digital engineering to the loudspeaker category. This powered DSP speaker is physically large, with a massive driver array including dual 12″ subwoofers, dual 12″ passive radiators, dual 14″ woofers, a 14″ mid-woofer, a 1.5″ coaxial midrange/tweeter, and dual 4″ tweeters. These are powered by integral 1kW, 750W, and 500W amplifiers. You need to supply one additional amplifier for the upper range. The Wavelet II outboard processing contains the DSP circuitry as well as Bohmer Correction, which provides optimized in-room energy/time alignment and ideal acoustic transfer in both the frequency and time domains. The Valor demonstrates the effect of removing the limitations in dynamic range and low-frequency response of conventional speakers. It realizes a new level of dynamic detail and contrasts, regardless of the music. The sound is highly detailed, with natural rendering of timbre and precise placement of images within the acoustic. 

Zellaton Stage

$89,975

The beautiful three-way, floorstanding Zellaton Stage pushes the state of the art in a couple of important sonic dimensions. Its transparency is breathtaking, and its coherence sets a standard among multi-driver speaker systems. A key to its remarkable coherence is that its three handmade sandwich cone drivers, including the tweeter, utilize the same materials and ultra-thin aluminum diaphragms on a foam substrate. The multiple drivers sound “as one.” The leading edges of transients are sudden and crisp with no smearing, and instruments and voices have natural timbre and palpable presence. The Stage has an uncanny ability to put performers in your listening room. 

Raidho TD3.8 

$99,000 in piano black ($111,000 walnut burl) 

The three-way (with ribbon tweeter), ported Raidho TD3.8 is a speaker with truly excellent sound, whose conventional appearance and size do not reflect its exceptional performance. Priced at the very top of the high end, it looks a lot like traditional cone floorstanders, give or take a panel tweeter. And yet, as listening to it quickly makes clear, this external visual modesty is deceiving. The TD3.8 has exceptional internal technology and components. Most importantly, it does not sound ordinary in any way when you listen to it. Priced at the luxury level, it delivers luxury-level sound. Moreover, it does not dominate the room visually, disappearing into the music rather than trying to dominate it. 

MartinLogan Neolith

$99,999

MartinLogan swung for the fences with the Neolith, mounting a roughly 4′ x 2′ XStat electrostatic panel atop an enclosure that houses a front-firing 12″ driver and a 15″ rear-firing woofer. Once you’ve heard the transparency, resolution, and sheer sense of nothing between you and the music that the Neolith’s big panel delivers, you’ll be spoiled for life. Surprisingly, these virtues of electrostats are combined with seamless integration with the bass, resulting in a speaker with full frequency extension and dynamics along with fabulous transparency. The Neolith is beautifully built and finished, highly flexible in room-matching, and backed by a solid company with more than 40 years of experience building electrostatic loudspeakers. The Absolute Sound’s 2015 Overall Product of the Year.