Status Acoustics 8T Floorstanding Loudspeaker Preview

Check out our Full Review of the Status Acoustics 8T System with measurements.

Got $50k to splurge on a new sports car?  Status Acoustics is hoping you'd spend it on loudspeakers instead. Status Acoustics, a Utah based manufacturer of high-end speakers and audio gear, this week unveiled their new flagship tower speakers in their Venetian Hotel suite at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  The system is being demoed with a full array of Boulder electronics wired with Kimber Kable. 

The new speaker is named the 8T and it is Status Acoustics most radical design yet, incorporating a two-piece design that places the midrange and treble cabinet floating above the bass cabinet. If you look at the speaker dead on, the top cabinet actually appears to be suspended in mid air. The oval shaped top cabinet hovering over the triangular shaped bottom cabinet gives the speaker an almost phallic aura to it. Personally, it looks like a giant guitar. I think it would look stunning if Status Acoustics could figure out a way to make a grille cover with the appearance of guitar strings without hampering performance by causing unwanted diffraction.

“With the 8T, function follows form,” said Status Acoustics Technical Director Shane Rich of the company’s new design. “One of our goals was to minimize cabinet resonances that color sound. With the 8T’s two-cabinet design, the low and mid frequency enclosures are effectively isolated from each other, nearly eliminating cabinet resonance in the speaker system.” The 8T’s upper cabinet is held in place by a custom bracket which also inconspicuously carries the wiring from the lower cabinet to the upper cabinet.  Due to their design and the complete absence of parallel internal walls, both upper and lower cabinets are exempt from standing waves, thereby increasing performance.

1" Scan Speak Beryllium Tweeter & Status Beryllium 6.5" Midrange (left pic); Status 10" Aluminum Bass Driver (right pic)

Status Acoustics’ engineers designed the Status 8T around the company’s proprietary 10-inch aluminum cone subwoofers (found in their RBH Sound T30-LSE system and 1010-SE/R subwoofers), 6.5-inch Beryllium alloy cone mid-woofers and 1-inch Scan-Speak pure Beryllium dome tweeters. The tweeter is a brand new design and company flagship for Scan Speak.  Past RBH flagship speakers employed the fabulous Scan Speak 9500 tweeter which is arguably among loudspeaker designers, one of the best dome tweeters on the market.  The new Beryllium dome design is said to have over twice the output capability of the 9500.  This allows for the new design to have the similar type of dynamic output capability in the top end as the RBH T30-LSE multi-tweeter design while using only a single tweeter.  In theory this should minimize off-axis lobing and create an even sweeter sweet spot for audiophile listening. 

Status Acoustics claims it uses Beryllium because of its high stiffness and superior acoustic properties.  Working with Beryllium as a cone material is a tedious and expensive process reserved for some of the very best loudspeakers produced today.  We have no doubt that Status Acoustics has employed some of the best driver technology available in these speakers.  We certainly look forward to learning how this design effort has paid off when we conduct our formal review of this product.

Status Acoustics 8T Bass Module internal cabinet view

Another unique aspect of the 8T is its method of cabinet construction involving the bonding of multiple layers of material together. This expensive process gives the 8T its unique look while also allowing the cabinet wall thickness to be varied without the limits typically imposed by traditional panel construction, and also grants more extensive internal bracing. The end result of this method is cabinets that are acoustically inert for optimum sound quality.  Cabinet panel resonance simply doesn't exist in this design and it translates into incredibly tightly controlled bass response.  It's quite obvious to us that Status Acoustics has spared no expense on the cabinet design of these new super speakers.  They employed many of the methods we discussed in:  Identifying Legitimately High Fidelity Loudspeakers - Cabinets Myths & Facts and Detailed Loudspeaker Cabinet Bracing.

What isn't shown in these photos are the two 4" flared ports located on the back of the bottom cabinet.  The system's three 10" high excursion aluminum cone drivers (roughly equivalent surface area of an 18" driver) is tuned at around 23Hz.  Each driver sports 100 once strontium magnets per side to ensure they can muster enough motor force to produce meaningful below 20Hz output levels for a truly tactile and room shaking experience.

The crossovers utilize all of the highest quality parts available from Jantzen Audio and Kimber.  The cabinets offer an optional wire harness from Kimber Kable to connect the top and bottom modules.  Magnetic grilles are included though we don't expect anyone would want to use them.

Status Acoustics offers the 8T in any of 30 different wood-grain veneers, and has placed the price of the towers at $50,000 per pair. Orders for the 8T are being taken now, with the first production models slated to ship this spring.  Expect matching surround and center channel speakers to be released shortly thereafter.

 At $50k/pair these speakers don't come cheap, but as a dear friend of mine whom recently passed away used to say "it's never cheap to be hip and trendy".  If you want Ferrari level performance in a loudspeaker, the Status Acoustics 8T seems to offer it at Corvette pricing!  We are patiently salivating for our chance at a test drive of these new beauties.  Our first taste of the performance the Status Acoustics brand offers was with their venerable Decimo bookshelf speaker system over a decade ago.  To this day, we still haven't met its rival.  It's been too long since the Status Acoustics division of RBH Sound has released a flagship statement loudspeaker like this.

For more info on this product, download the: Status Acoustics 8T Datasheet

About Status Acoustics

A Utah-based company, Status Acoustics is privately owned and operated by the founder, Roger B. Hassing. Status Acoustics was created in 1998 by Mr. Hassing as the high-end division of RBH Sound, with the goal of developing cost-no-object ultra high performance audio products. Since 1976, Mr. Hassing and his staff have been designing, engineering and crafting high performance speakers and custom audio products. For more information, please call 800-543-2205, 801-543-2200, or visit www.statusacoustics.com.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.