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The $1,000,000 speaker

A million dollars doesn't buy a pair of these uber speakers, no, the Transmission Audio Ultimate goes for a million bucks per channel! The state-of-the-art speaker is made in Sweden.

Steve Guttenberg
Ex-movie theater projectionist Steve Guttenberg has also worked as a high-end audio salesman, and as a record producer. Steve currently reviews audio products for CNET and works as a freelance writer for Stereophile.
Steve Guttenberg
This is one pair of Ultimates! Transmission Audio

High-end audio prices are getting crazy lately, but this $1,000,000 speaker--the Ultimate--may be the most expensive speaker in the world.

Please understand that $1 million buys one speaker, so you'll need to shell out $2 million for stereo, and at least $5 million for your Ultimate home theater.

The Ultimate is a rather large speaker--each one consists of six, seven-foot tall panels. Each Ultimate houses a total of forty 15-inch subwoofers, twenty-four 8-inch woofers, and massive arrays of 2-inch wide and 1-inch wide ribbon tweeters. All of this is for a single channel/speaker, double those numbers for stereo! A pair of Ultimates are nearly forty feet wide!

That pretty much rules out my chances of getting the Ultimate for review in my Brooklyn apartment, oh well.

Each Ultimate speaker comes with its own power amplifiers, with an output of 31,000 watts, and the manufacturer claims the Ultimate can generate up to 146dB SPL, that's a lot louder than a jet plane taking off. And just because it can play that loud, doesn't mean it has to. Just because a Ferrari can go 200 mph, doesn't mean it can't cruise at 55.

I first read about the Ultimate, where else, on the Ultimate AV Web site!

What's the most expensive speaker you ever heard?

Ever drive a Ferrari? Was it really that much faster than a Corvette?