Anyone heard the new Focal Grande Utopia EM?

sorry- there is a pair on a'gon saying Alto msrp is 18 and another at 22k.

since the Mezzo is the former Alto, you are saying that the new generation is almost 3x the old, so yes i believe that is relevant.

James63,

Yes, I'm sure; I've seen the pricelist.

Keithr,

No.

Highend audio is well on the way to pricing themselves in to extinction.I am thinking of pulling the plug entirely as it is simply becoming absurd.

Yea the new Focals look nice but it they don't knock the old models out of the water they will be WAY over price. I though the Alto (at the time 18,000) was about $8,000 over priced. $25,000 for a pair of Altos is a joke. I could name at least 5 speakers that are BETTER for half the price.

As for highend audio pricing them themselves into extinction..... I don't know. It if all the big brand's prices keep going up unjustified (no real increase in manufacturing cost, etc.) it will leave a lot of play for smaller lesser know brands to step in and under cut them.

As much as I like the idea of Focals (they look great! and are efficient). I don't think I would every buy a pair. The sound was just not there for me. I thought they (Alto, 1037) lack driver integration and the bass need to be smoother. For small scale music like Jazz the driver integration was not an issue. But for big flowing music like classical and large scale rock it was an issue.

Here is a site with some good pictures, it is in Japanese though.
http://www.avcat.jp/avnews/index.html