Interest in HIGH end speakers?

Hi. I'm trying to guage what kind of interest there would be in some real high end speakers. You see, I'm friends with the head of Cabasse North America and the head sales rep. The other night, I was over at the sales rep's house and he showed me his new computer speaker system. What he did was take a couple of Cabasse Xo satellites (round..about 5 inches in diameter) and the subwoofer that goes with these speakers and hooked them to an Atoll IN100 2 ch amp that he hooked to his computer (he reps for Atoll as well). Once I heard them, I was VERY impressed. Sound quality is FAR FAR above any computer speakers I've ever heard before (but so is price). Heck, I've listened to the reference Klispch home theater speakers and the Xo in a home theater setup, and I thought the Xo sounded better.

The reason for my post is that the Xo system only comes in a complete 5.1 'everything in a box' type of configuration (you get 5 satellites, a sub, mounting brackets, stands, wire, etc...). I personally think there might be a market for a 2.1 version of this for us computer people, so we're trying to find out if I'm right. Here's the big caveat: price is very high and the satellites are not amplified (you'd have to buy a 2 ch amp, such as the Atoll my friend was using). The speakers alone would probably be around $1000. But, I really think there is a market here...hell we spend way more than that on computer parts that get out dated QUICK...and these would last indefinatly.

Let me know what you think....Thanks!

i disagree with you. it's not very hard to wire a computer into a home theatre. if high quality sound is what you want you could just wire things this way and avoid computer speakers all together.

2.1 surround isn't very much surround at all. maybe a 4.1 package would be more attractive but considering $1000 for a 2.1 setup i don't think anyone would be willing to drop the coin considering a 7.1 setup with decent speakers would cost about $1200 amp included.

by decent speakers i mean polk (rti i beleive is the model.). may not be the audiophile quality of the Xo's but most computers aren't putting sound out to a room that's big enough to take advantage of those speakers.

for my money i'd rahter get 3 sets of polk Rti bookshelf speakers with 5" drivers for i think there were 230 a pair in crutchfield. times 3 is 690. plus a good center channel 200 and sub 200. makes 1100 for 7.1 speaker setup budget in 2-400 for a denon amp and your done in full 7.1 surround for the same price as your prosed setup.

I'm just not a fan of computer speakers. In my opinion a stereo set-up will out-perform the best computer speakers. I once had a cheap, used 2.0 system that performed very well for the money. I'm now using 5 full range speakers with a Denon 1802 reciever. I think I spent about $600 total. Great for DVD and gaming.

No satellite speakers are powered. Usually, the amp is in the sub for the satellites for computer speakers.

You can set up any amp/receiver and speaker system to your computer but how many people really need or even want that level of quality from your computer? I'm betting anyone that into music would rather get a seperate stereo system/ht setup.

Just my $0.02.

-Bobby

Personally if I needed such high sound quality then I would bite the bullet and just lay down the cash for a high end stereo system to run my pc through. I am not going to spend 1k for computer speakers but I have and would again spend over 6k on speakers+amp for a surround setup for my stereo.

Exactly. I have about 5k in my home theater set up. 7k if you count the TV.

I just can't justify paying more than $100 for speakers on my computer though.

-Bobby

yeah. why spend $1000 on 2.1 computer speakers when you could wire the PC into the $5000 home theatre.