I mentioned in a recent blurb that the TAS recommended product listing issue made me feel so ill that I threw the issue in the trash. That… was a first for me.

I’ve read the magazine since issue #1. To see recommended products that were 95% unattainable for a working man… I was just disgusted. What a waste of time… twas completely out of touch.

When issue 370 showed up this week I was happily surprised to see speakers on the cover that are $5300 per pair. Even more impressive is that on p58 they reviewed the inspiring Atohm Sirocco 2.24 towers which sell for $3800 per pair. They’re flat out amazing!

There is still much insanity going on in the magazine.

*P24 discusses new D’Agostino amps for $125k pair

Just what we need to read about- more unaffordable monoblocks.

*P28 has a home theater in a small room pushing $100k

Yikes! Perfect for the bedroom now open cuz a kid went off to college, right?

*P52 reviews smallish Wilson 3-ways for $29k.

Huge price for small, niche towers.

*P62 reviews stats for $175k.

Sheer madness. A topic for Popular Mechanics. Get your repair tools out.

*P92 reviews a vibration reducing platform for $16k.

Holy cow. A $16k box to put under a component?! Pet rocks are extra.

Enough of the silliness of never never land. Let’s move on to the interesting topic of fine speakers that a guy might actually be able to buy:

Atohm Sirocco 2.24 ($3800pr)

Atohm’s Sirocco 2.24s (designed in 2024) are absolutely stunningly fine towers! First and most importantly, they have superlative definition. They’re modest in size but play to powerful volume levels. They’ll reward you for having an outstanding vs generic amplifier. A guy can always extend the bass with a subwoofer. But if you don’t have magnificent detail and imaging to start with, I don’t care about adding more bass.

The 2.24s are fabulous speakers to build your system around. If you love singers and acoustic instruments, you can’t go wrong starting with the Atohms.

The reviewer has done a good job of deciphering Atohm’s excellent white paper to tell you how they’re built. As you read most reviews you don’t get accurate nitty gritty of nuts/bolts= the stuff that matters. I like having this info because, there are thousands of speaker brands out there. You can only audition a few. You CAN make some worthwhile guesstimations of how a speaker will sound given what’s in the construction.

Please note that Atohm builds its own speakers in its own house in France. Driver accuracy is the best I’ve ever encountered. Drivers are QC’d within a quarter of a dB. This means your loudspeakers play in focus. If the variation of your woofs/mids/tweets can be several dBs off kilter, your audio “glasses” are out of focus. Detail and imaging are vague instead of precise. Kudos to the reviewer for recognizing that this is a vital point of DIFFERENTIATION- Atohm vs the other guys.

In a recent hi-fi News, some Monitor Audios were measured. The left vs right tweets were more than 3dB off balance with each other. You can thank Chinese build quality. That’s before the mids and woofs were thrown into the equation as well.

I’ve lived with Sirocco 2.24s for a good chunk of time now. Their definition exceeds that of the highly regarded Magnepan MG-1.7i that sells for similar money. I’m delighted to be able to offer true reference level resolution for the money in a beautiful cabinet of small size and price.

THIS is a tremendous asset. You can get a set of modestly sized and priced towers that give you crystalline detail. Their performance is like a chameleon. What you run with them tells the tale.

If you run them with garden variety Chinese electronics, they’ll sound “good.” If you run them with something special (I didn’t say EXPENSIVE), they will reward you with goose bumps.

In the realm of singers/guitars/pianos, the 2.24s are competitive with just about any speaker out there- assuming you aren’t playing acoustic music at jet engine volume levels. This is an important point. I’ve heard many a show demo where the singer/guitar were far louder than the musicians would be live. Hey, they’re your ears. If you care to play acoustic music twice as loud as the real deal- go nuts. But great speakers like the Atohm 2.24s are made for realism- not color cartoons!

To cut through the fog, a stellar integrated amp like the Atoll IN200 is a great match for the 2.24s. The IN200 is so good, at such a good price, that I think 99% of our listeners will land here.

While the other guys are sweating component isolation platforms for $16k, you’re under $7k for this combo I’m starting with!

The reviewer is fair to point out that 2.24s don’t reach the bottom end of music. They’re dynamite to just below 40Hz. They actually measure within 3dB at 40Hz. If you see measurements on $6k towers from China (B&W, Monitor Audio etc) the typical 3dB down point is 50Hz. The manufacturer will try to snow you with a spec of 35 or so, but actual measurements (hi-fi News) show they’re not even close.

With solid performance to 40Hz, Atohms will sound GREAT with ballsy amps like the Atoll integrateds. Atolls have bigger transformers, filter caps and matched output transistors in a class AB design. Any D amp will sound wimpy compared to the Atolls. Thus, you’ll get warm, powerful sound with an Atoll IN200, vs leaner / drier sound with any of the D module options out there.

Now, Atohm does make two excellent subwoofers. They’re made to the same standards as the 2.24s. That is, they play clean, tight bass that augment the 2.24s. They’re not thunder boomers. Virtually all competing subs are built with the HT crowd in mind FIRST. They’re not for us acoustic music lovers. Oh, and almost all the other subs out there under $3k are a conglomeration of parts out of a bin from a Chinese job house. THAT most definitely isn’t the case with Atohm- which is made in its own house in France.

GoldenEar T44 $5300 Pair

We sold GoldenEar when Sandy Gross kicked off the company in 2009. They made quite respectable products at downright cheap prices. One of Sandy’s values was the T3 for $2500 per pair. It was a 3-way with a powered 5×9 oval sub. To attain these cheap prices, GE was-is made in China. Good enough performance, cheap price- we dealers accepted the trade offs and lived with funky subwoofer amps that broke too much. It was part of the territory.

Sandy retired in 2020. He sold GE to Audio Quest who promptly broke the brand. Paradigm picked up the ashes and is trying again to float the boat. T44 is the new version of a T3 for more than double the money. No, I don’t sell GE.

I’ve just had it with Chinese vendored mass merchandise. You can do so much better with speakers like Atohm- which have much superior definition. Atohm lets female singers with light, clear voices sound like girls. The Chinese speakers, and many others, rule with a heavy hand and you just don’t get the unique vocal flavor, much less state of the art annunciation- from a true musician/singer like Stacy Kent.

In short, the Atohm 2.24 is a musical tool for singers, pianos and other acoustic instruments.

The T44 is a speaker that tries to do more things, but does none as well as Atohm. Adding the powered sub with an easy volume control is marketing excellence. The typical classic rock listener will turn the sub volume to 2 o’clock and rock out. This guy doesn’t care that a piano sounds a rumbling mess of wires in a box. I … care MOST about the lower register of the piano NOT sounding like a blurring jumble. Beethoven was the first to write for what was almost a modern piano in the early 1800s. I want to hear the timbre of what he had in mind- not just the rumble of bar band sound.