This is the third time I’ve wandered into the ESD Acoustic room at the Munich show, and I’m still impressed with sheer audacity of it all. ESD, if you don’t know, is a Chinese hi-fi company that makes some of the most esoteric and daunting hi-fi gear out there–not only do they feature gigantic horn-based loudspeaker systems that probably won’t fit in your house, they often have electronics that are issued in identical cases so that the rack looks like it’s being powered by 30 or 40 amplifiers. I’m a little too jaded to be surprised by this company, but I still feel a rush when I see something like the ESD Super Dragon. It’s super crazy in the flesh.
Words and Photos by Marc Phillips
The ESD Super Dragon is the company’s flagship horn speaker system. The retail for the Super Dragon is 811,111 euros. I can’t even say 811,111 per pair, because each side features at least four separate enclosures. That’s certainly a shocking price for a set of transducers, but it was only the second most expensive pair of speakers I witnessed in Munich–remember, the Aries Cerat Contendo II horn system costs a cool million.
What kind of people buy these systems from ESD Acoustic? Rich people, obviously. The one name that gets dropped is billionaire Jack Ma, who probably has a palace somewhere big enough to accommodate the Super Dragon. This is as ostentatious as high-end audio gets–the ESD people were all dressed in beautiful ceremonial gowns, which added to the sense of grandeur–and I always feel completely discombobulated when I’m able to walk into an exhibit room and actually hear something like this in action. But this year, I noticed a couple of additional twists to the story.
One, ESD Acoustic seems to be getting away from the “dozens of small identical boxes” and working more toward larger, condensed products such as the digital transport you see here. I think that guides the motif toward something a little less ethereal and something a little more practical. Second, the longer I listened to the ESD Super Dragons, the more I liked them. Once I found the relatively small sweet spot in this enormous, crowded exhibit room, I started thinking of words like “coherent” and “refined.” While I can certainly recommend a hi-fi that’s coherent and refined for a fraction of the price of the Super Dragon, I still feel a bit giddy when I know gear like this is out there, waiting to upset the suburbanites.
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