Stereophile: PBN's Montana Master Reference

In my opinion, the relation between speaker size and performance tends to be a curvilinear one: performance improves with size up to a point (assuming good design), but when speakers are really big they’re often disappointing, sounding merely "impressive" but not natural. I’m always delighted, therefore, to find an exception to this rule, and that was the case with the PBN Audio Montana Master Reference speakers at the outboarding THE Show at the San Tropez Resort. These speakers are 84" tall, weigh 500 lbs, and feature two 18” subwoofers, two 10" woofers, two 5.25" midrange units, and one 1.125" tweeter. Demoed by PBN President/Designer Peter Noerbaek and Vice-President Patty Noerbaek, these speakers, driven by PBN's own amplifiers, sounded impressive and natural. The price is $65,000/pair, but you do get a lot of speaker for the money. Peter Noerbaek says they sold four pairs last year—to people with baronial homes, I’m sure.

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Posted Thu Jan11, 2007, 7:53 PM — By Ken Sheehan

Big is Better? Yes, guys and gals know it, and apparently PBN, JBL, Sound Lab and Klipsch to name a few, have agreed. However, with all these new monsters often weighting in at 500 pounds plus, a fork lift truck becomes a mandatory accessory. Forget about tweaking a speaker�s placement, unless you put them on roller skates. Also needed is a room size that comes close to a small community social hall, or as often commented on, a �baronial home�. This all takes me back to the demo�s that Western Electric used to do in Carnegie Hall with huge speakers that provided three channel sound. So is that what all the �small� speakers have been chasing for the last seventy years? Welcome to big, big, big. Included with �Big� is pricing that now in some cases goes north of $300k. Who will be the first to break $1 million for a pair of production speakers? Will a fork lift truck be included? GlobalMarket Research estimates that there is demand for approximately 100 pairs of speakers costing mo

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