What's the big deal? Diamond tweeters were brought to the market by B&W three years ago! They've been making a full surround package in the 800 series of speakers since them. They are nowhere near the price of these speakers, and probably not in the same league sonically, but they have been innovators for the last four decades.

I never said these were the first speakers to use diamond tweeters, but they are rare and the concept is interesting, which is why I wrote about it. In any event, I've thought of featuring the B&W 800s here, so thanks for the reminder!

Scott, do you know how they can form the diamonds into the shape needed for a tweeter? It seems amazing to me that they can do something like that. Also, any additional charge for color and clarity? (just kidding)

I assume they start with a mold in the shape they want and put it in an environment that encourages carbon atoms to form a diamond matrix on the mold's surface, but I don't really know. I'll try to find out...

The review I would like to see: A completely blind speaker review. Imagine a situation in which speakers with similar sonic characteristics are compared. The reviewer would know them as ABC and X. X being a random choice of ABC one of which could be a reference system. Testing both the sound quality & whether the reviewer could even tell the difference between the three systems under review. The editor & reviewer would spend a few days finding the ideal positions for each speaker system. Each day the editor would then move one set of speakers into their location behind an acoustically transparent screen the reviewer would have to evaluate the speakers being only told they were listening to A B or C. Giving the reviewer a couple of weeks to learn the "sonic signatures" of the respective systems, the editor would introduce the random X. Many observations later we would learn the truer sonic characteristics unaffected by price. I don't think these million dollar speakers would beat systems @ 1

Joe, this is very close to what they do at the Harman International Multichannel Listening Lab. Several speakers are mounted on pneumatic platforms behind a visually opaque but sonically transparent screen, and their positions are randomly shuffled after each listening run to eliminate the room-location effect, which strongly influences the perception of frequencies around 300-400Hz.

Jerry, This was taken from the B&W website. I believe the company making the tweeters is DeBoers. "Diamond in limited size and shape has been made artificially since the 1950s and we realised some time ago that if a diamond dome could be made it would potentially raise the break-up frequency to around 70kHz. All we could do however was wait for diamond manufacturing techniques to catch-up with our aspirations. That happened recently in the guise of Chemical Vapour Deposition. CVD is a technologically sophisticated technique that enables pure diamond to be “grown” in complex shapes. The CVD principle is analogous to ice-crystals forming on a window. In CVD however the temperatures involved are equivalent to those on the surface of the Sun, and the role of water is taken by carbon. Intensive development with the World’s foremost industrial diamond producer finally bore fruit and we created a tweeter that literally approaches perfection."

Actually, it's not Deboers. (Scott, do you mean De Beers?) According to the B&W white paper on the 800D, "In developing the tweeter dome, B&W worked closely with one of the world’s foremost producers of industrial diamonds, Element 6, based in Ascot, UK."

Scott, You are absolutely right. I don't know where my brain came up with BeDeers (Your right again, DeDoers isn't the right spelling!). I did a quick search to find Element 6 and they show the same picture of the tweeters in what looks like a clear plastic holders that B&W uses on their website! Yikes, that site has more info on diamonds than I would ever need to know! I'd love to see your take on the B&W 800 series. I can't think of any review I've seen on the entire surround package (B&W doesn't list any on their website), usually just they mains.

Actually, B&W was not first to market with a diamond tweeter. Thiel and Parter (according to themselves) made the first loudspeaker driver in the World aleady in 2001. They also make diamond midrange elements, and as far as I know, the only loudspeaker in production with a diamond midrange are the Marten Coltrane Supreme from the Swedish loudspeaker manufacturer Marten.

Correction to post above: Thiel and Partner made the first loudspeaker driver in the World with a membrane of pure diamond. (not the first loudspeaker driver ;)

Guess I can't be to surprised that these prices are coming from Kharma. I remember going to an audio show (in San Fransisco, 2003 if I remember correctly), and playing "guess the speaker cost by how it sounds". Me and my friends awarded Kharma the prize for the biggest mismatch. We thought it was comprable with a number of $5000 speakers we had heard, but it had fancy cabinet work so we upped the price a bit. Imagine our surprise to find out they were $25,000 apiece. Sure, this is something of a cheap-shot. Shows have sub-optimal setups all the time. I've had people tell me that they have great micro-dynamics. That is something I actually rather prize myself, but perhaps I just did not notice its great qualities because of the music they played. Still I am amused that this is the brand that has million dollar speakers. If the factor of 5 still holds up, that would mean they only sound as good as other brands $200,000 speakers :-)

in the late 80's until the late 90's i owned a pair of sony apm 66 es speakers which had vapor deposited amorphous diamond tweeters. they sounded great.