Owners of speakers by obscure companies chime in

Zu surely is an obscure company. A few others I'd like to suggest are B&W, Focal, Thiel, Vandersteen, and Wilson.

Kind of ironic that a company named Focal makes speakers, isn't it? I would have figured they made binoculars. And, this Wilson company supposedly makes a speaker called the WATT/Puppy, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not sure it can achieve any commercial success or notoriety, but, hey, who knows? People do like puppies, don't they? Oh, and B&W; be careful to not confuse them with BMW, a company who build cars (you know, like those things we drive) as sometimes, people speak quickly, and they sound alike. Remember, B&W makes speakers, BMW makes cars. I know, I know, it's all so confusing...

Seriously, I'd like to nominate the speaker a good friend of mine, Vytas Viesulas, makes - Rex Speakers http://www.rexspeakers.com/ I partnered with Vytas at CES2008. Lots of interesting and unique technology in them - round construction former tubes sprayed with a type of indestructible truck bedliner, MTM alignment using series crossovers, woofers operating in opposing fashion (hence, the "boxer" terminology) in the top and bottom plates of the speakers powered by an outboard BASH amplifier, and weighing in at just 35 pounds. No professional relationship between us, again, we're just close friends.

As Dodgealum states, Daedalus are some really nice sounding speakers. Lou is a true gentleman as well.

Zu speakers are hardly known outside the US I think. I have been to some hifi shows in the Netherlands and I am acitive on some Dutch forums but no one even mentioned Zu.

The measure of obscurity, in this context at least, is how well known you are. The Zu name has some recognition but the posts I read here on Audiogon would testify that familiarity with their products is still quite minimal.

A-16 Audio Euridia and Roksan Ojan 3X's are 2 of the more obscure speaker pairs i own.

Regarding how us obscurians promote our products, I do audio shows and take my speakers to people's home for an audition if they don't live too far away. I have had some success with Audiogon ads, but zero results from a year's worth of Stereophile classified ads. But most of my action has come from word-of-mouth, a lot of which can be traced back to audio shows.

I'll second the nomination of Rex speakers. I've heard them twice now at audio shows, and they punch well above their weight class in many areas. Vytas has done an excellent job as far as price/performance goes, not to mention their tiny footprint. Credit also to Trelja's amps. And speaking of Trelja, he didn't mention it but he imports an excitingly obscure line of speakers that I haven't heard yet but I like the philosophy behind them as well as the configuration:

http://www.opera-consonance.com/products/barque.htm

Duke
dealer/manufacturer