And we thought audiophiles had gone nuts over turntables. Those costly contrivances are chickenfeed compared to what those ambitious audiomaniac Swedes at Transmission Audio just announced: speakers that cost $2 million for two channels. They're calling them Ne Plus Ultra (no more beyond). Each channel consists of six 7-foot-tall panels, with the smallest one on the outside handling the super high frequencies, two with high-frequency/midrange, one with a bank of twenty-four 8" woofers, and then two with ten 15" subwoofers each.

It gets even crazier. To accommodate two channels of this gargantuan system (that means twelve of these 7-foot panels), you'll need a 37-foot-wide listening room, and altogether they weigh four tons. Driving this madness? The included system of power amplifiers crank out a total of 31,000 Watts. The result of all this overkill is a sound pressure level capability of 146dB. That's well beyond the threshold of pain.

Wow. I would like to hear this setup. Sure, it can crank out high volume, but imagine what it can do with the delicate sound of a dinging triangle, the sound of a cat's paws padding across a mahogany floor, or the sound of a tree falling in the forest when no one is there to hear it. Never mind that, I want to hear the way it reproduces the sound of an explosion on a Blu-ray movie. But then, that would cost $4 million for a 5.1 surround setup.

Ultimate AV Mag, via The Audiophiliac