IF YOU’VE BEEN HUNGERING FOR A HOME SPEAKER SYSTEM THAT’S ROUGHLY THE SAME PRICE AS A BENTLEY MULSANNE, HERE’S A HUMBLE SUGGESTION

BY TIA KIM

A relatively new name in the ultra high end home media ranks, the German company Acapella Audio Arts has been, among other things, engaged in a brand of operatic speaker design that makes standard rectangle enclosures sound just as boring as they look.

Standing over eight feet tall, the mountaintop of its performance line is this Sphäron Excalibur, which features, among other audio drivers, four 15 inch woofers, which take part of the load from gorgeously tuned red bass horns (with a total of 36 square feet of metal resonance material) for a lower end that is thunderous, certainly, but also full of nuance.
The Excalibur demands a considerable sound stage (rooms should be no less than 250 square feet), as well as floor integrity, given their 1,400 pound weight, but represent the most astonishing front facing theater speakers one can readily get hold of capably reproducing everything from whispers to detonations with a dexterity that simply has to be experienced to be believed.

“When the music is soft, the sounds caress your skin,” the maker put it with a decidedly non-Germanic romantic air. “When it changes into a powerful fortissimo, the listener will be swept away to the epitome of joy.” Though perhaps a little florid, this assessment is not at all inaccurate. Better yet, the Excalibur can be fed with as little as 15 watts of power, though we’d recommend 100 minimum to get anything like the kind of experience you deserve.

Acapella Audio Arts Sphäron Excalibur
$360,000, acapella.de/en