Koetsu USA Chario Academy Serendipity Speaker

Koetsu USA introduced into the U.S. market the Chario Academy Serendipity Speaker, which we'd have to say is one of the more beautiful products we witnessed at the Venetian during the 2009 CES Expo. The Italian-built Academy Serendipity Speaker is the top speaker in Chario’s flagship Academy line and brings together five outstanding drivers in a powerful floorstanding system housed in a beautifully carpentered, gorgeous cabinet constructed of thick, solid Cherry or Walnut.

The Academy Serendipity uses a Vertical Reversed Driver Array combining speakers with different frequency bandwidths, different gain levels and different group delays. They claim it generates some cross-talk signals that widen the soundstage while retaining localization cues in listeners' ears. To us it just looked like it was built partially upside down, with the tweeter on bottom and largest mid-woofer up top. Maybe you are supposed to listen to them while sitting on pillows? We're not sure.

The Serendipity is rated for 400 Watts into 4 Ohms, and housed in an elegant two-segment, 63.4-inch high cabinet handsomely finished in solid walnut or cherry and HDF. The lower section contains two 12.6-inch (320mm) subwoofers, while and the upper section contains one 6.7-inch (170mm) and one 5.1-inch (130mm) woofer, one 5.1-inch (130mm) midrange, and one 1.3-inch (32mm) Silversoft tweeter. Four proprietary, cylindrical elastomer puffers, designed to fit into special machined recesses, dampen vibrations by dissipating mechanical energy separate the sections.

The Chario Serendipity Speaker is available now at a suggested price of $32,070/pair.

For more information visit www.chario.it or www.koetsuusa.com.