Acoustic Zen Crescendo


I'm pretty interested in these transmission-line, full-range speakers. Has anyone spent serious time with them? How do they compare to other contenders around $16K?

Unfortunately, I'd have to fly to SoCal for an audition, so I'd like to vet them as thoroughly as possible before committing the time and expense. Press has been very positive but also very limited, and user impressions are scarce on the web.

Thanks in advance,

Bill
wrm57
Shouldn't be a problem, my room is actually 15' x 40' with 6' wide fire place separating the two rooms and they play louder than I care to listen with 86 watts of pure tube power...:)
I'm not surprised by the many positive comments here regarding the Crescendo speakers. At CES earlier this year the system/room with these speakers were among the absolute top sounding in the entire show. I heard many speaker-systems that were 3-6x the cost and simply didn't sound as natural and musically convincing. This is a special speaker that presents music at a world class level without the astronomical cost of so called SOTA speakers that to me sound less impressive and enjoyable .

An added bonus is that this speaker is an easy load and sounded complete and just beautiful driven by the Triode Corp. PSET 845, a 50 watt amplifier in a relatively large room at CES. It delivers the whole musical picture with emotion and avoids the dreaded analytical, clinical and sterile sound that's prevalent in current high end audio.
Charles,
Nearly 4 years, and I still have my Crescendos. For someone that changes audio components rather quickly, this is by far a record.
I belong to an audio club, and I find the most prominent flaw(to my ears), is too analytical a sound.
The Crescendos give you the music without the sizzle; it's all steak. They are not "ruthlessly revealing" of equipment; I would put them in the forgiving camp, and to me, that's a great thing. I have thousands of cd's, and can't deal with "audiophile music."
A great speaker; I tried in-home auditions of 4 others from various manufacturers before deciding on the Crescendos. I spent about 1K on shipping the others back and forth.
So I'm approaching the 250 hr mark on my Crescendos and they are finally starting to "relax". I thought they were going to be to hi-fi sounding as I find most multi-driver cone speakers sound IMHO. For over 12 yeas now I've been a no crossover design lover (Beauhorns and then Ocellia) and yes these are "different" sounding than those crossoverless designs but they are anything but hi-fi sounding. (Boy am I relieved). They are dynamic, soundstage like none of my others, and the height of players and instruments in the soundstage are just right.

(Dealer disclaimer)
Lack of a hifi character is exactly what makes the Crescendo speaker superior sounding to the vast majority of the currently in vogue "audiophile" favored speakers that are frequently raved about.