You prefer that one, top subwoofer from Rel.
Small (relatively) but perfectly formed? Somewhat unconventional in appearance, and unique in internal design:
510mm diameter, 430mm high, and weighing 54kg, this is the latest version of Wilson Benesch Torus, now called IGx. It’s an Infrasonic Generator, aka Subwoofer, a mere £13k each (incl seperate amp).
Since first learning of the original Torus this has seemed to me to be tge sub to have if going the non-full range main speaker route. I wonder if they’ve upped its peak output, as that was a potential limitation of the original, at least if you only had a single unit.
Well, at the price, you could easily have three or four of them no problem…
Since we are talking unconventional subs, while it looks pretty normal, the KEF KC-62 is anything but, nearly defying the laws of physics to do what it does with two opposing concentricly wound deivers sharing a common magnet to do 11Hz in a sealed enclosure. No MDF. Enclosure is solid machined aluminium doubling as a heatsink for a 1Kw amp.
Quite a few of us on the forum have them.
They can only hope that super rich are also super blind.
There is a hotel in Hokkaido that has that in the lobby. Spoke to the manager about them. They had McIntosh amp and a turntable that looked like a Thorens.
My local cafe on weekdays has a Triod tube amp into KEF speakers, and my Saturday cafe an ancient McIntosh preamp into Altec monoblocs from the 1950s driving in-Wall Mcintosh speakers from a similar era downstars and probably first generation Klipsh upstairs. It’s a different world out here.
You are lucky to live there. And to have cafes like that.
Kissa?
They can’t be all that good to need that amount of toe-in
No. A kissa is a tea house though it’s pretty generic. I go to cafes. Which is odd because I’m a tea drinker. But cafes smell better and have a better vibe.
My cafes are not even audiophile cafes or anything like that. Having a proper hifi in a cafe is just seen as totally normal. I think it’s probably practicality. Owner opens a cafe. It costs a lot less to bring in older gear from home than have a typical custom install done. So they do that.
Ah when I read up on it I found coffeehouses and bars playing loud jazz, sometimes having a rule that you can’t talk during certain times. Most seem to have started between 1950 and 1970 and some are still active from back then. Interesting that the systems used most likely came about being cheaper. It sounds plausible to me. They were also sometimes called or are called Jazzu Kissa.
Quality of speaker sound reproduction is unrelated to toe-in. You can have excellent speakers that in any given room setup are best toed in to point directly at the primary a chosen position, or in other setups best not toed in at all…
Well a “Kissa” was used pretty generically back then. So anything that was casual and served beverages had “Kissa” suffixed to it. Manga-Kissa etc. If it had a theme, it was a something-teahouse… even if they served coffee. New types of mashup are more likely to be something-cafe.
But as far as audiophile cafes/kissa go, they will use pretty expensive or esoteric equipment. I don’t generally frequent them because I go for actual lunch or a snack. A regular cafe, will still have proper hifi, but those are the ones where the gear is scrounged up from home. So unless it is chain, to foreign eyes, they probably all appear like audiophile cafes.
Even my regular with McIntosh, Altec Lansing, and Klipshe is absolutely not an audiophile cafe. They told me it’s just what they scrounged together. The gear is near a stove and caked in decades of polymerised grease.
Thank you! I love hearing things like this from people who actually live there and know first hand.