Lngbruno: I have all of the various Audio magazine buyers guides dating back to the mid 1970's. If you give me a specific year, i'll look up the MSRP ( Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price ) that Ohm submitted for that given year. I had a 1980 "Complete buyers guide to stereo / hi-fi equipment / speakers edition" handy and it showed a price of $2300 per pair. This was using the standard finish with other finishes rising in cost.
Having said that, i have talked to MANY people that have told me that the F's were marketed at WAY, WAY above MSRP by specific dealers i.e. much like Harley's were in the past. Due to their unconventional looks and specific performance attributes that no other speaker could match, some dealers jacked the price of the F's WAY, WAY up. This not only made them appear to be even more "exotic" i.e. the average person couldn't afford them, but also made them more desirable for those equating price with performance.
Between price gouging and discounting, MSRP's are simply a reference point that may / may not be of any value. Some look at it as reference to deduct percentages from, others ignore it all-together and charge what the market will support.
Line: The German Physik's DDD driver HAS to have some type of suspension to it. You can't rigidly mount the mouth of a dynamic driver and expect it to work for any period of time, especially if feeding it any type of measurable power. The fact that you have to displace larger quantities of air also dictates that the driver has to be able to move a reasonable amount in order to produce "reasonable" spl's. If the drivers were rigidly mounted at the mouth and driven by a free floating voice coil, they would literally be "trembling" or "ringing" when fed signal. The end result would be a driver that was phenomenally limited in output, extension and linearity.
The bottom line is that you are reading WAY too much into the marketing hype from a couple of different manufacturers. Sean
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