A balanced speaker from top to bottom. Excellent value even at full retail.

None

Well said Ray. Tim seems like a disgruntled individual that needs to flaunt the fact that he owns extremely expensive (and I am sure quite good) speakers. Enough said.

I purchsed a pair of original Stratus Gold speakers several years ago (in a very nice no longer available walnut finish). I have always been very pleased with their performance. Recently I moved and my intent was to place them in the family room, but the Golds were simply too large for the room given the other furniture we had to place in it.

Therefore I decided (wrongly) to sell them. In the meantime I purchased a pair of Stratus Bronze speakers (a very good speaker) which fit the room better. At the same time I also upgraded my amplifier (Sim Audio Moon I-5 integrated). During this time while trying to sell the Golds I simply stored them in my basement and listened to the Sim Audio and Stratus Bronze which sounded very nice.

A fellow who lived close to me saw my ad for the Golds (on this website) and wanted to listen to them. So I hooked up the Golds to the I-5 (for the first time) and simply could not believe what I heard. I had to do a double take to make sure I was not in an ultra hi end audio shop listening to a super expensive system. I simply did not realize the full potential of the Golds with my older amp. The sound just came alive with detail I had never heard before on familiar recordings.

This was just a few hours before the gentleman came to listen to the Golds. As he was auditioning them, my wife commented how good the Golds sounded. She has never made this sort of a comment before so I knew it was not just my imagination. Needless to say the gentleman wanted to buy the speakers and that he would pick them up on the weekend. I reluctantly agreed and he left.

I am very thankful he did not take them on the spot because my wife and I decided we simply could not part with them. I emailed the guy the next day and told him that I just could not sell them. He was disappointed but very understanding.

I have since returned the Bronze and I am now building a home theatre room in my basement which is a nice large room suited to the Golds.

Sorry for the long winded story but it is to prove a point. The better equipment you connect these speakers to, the better they sound, contrary to what Tim said below !

Simply put the Stratus Golds are an excellent speaker at any price. They just happened to be priced very reasonably which is a bonus for all of us deaf dumg and blind folks living in the real world. Five stars no question.

Similar Products Used:

PSB Stratus Bronze

Lack of coloration. Bass extension and control. Accurate sounstaging.

Very slightly wooly bass (I'm reaching on this one).

I've been involved in the retail side of audio for over 20 years, but have never sold PSB and have only listened to them in passing at tradeshows. I purchased a pair for myself unheard, on a whim. I'm not sure what Tim was hearing, but his description of the speaker certainly doesn't fit what I hear. The Stratus Gold i is one of the best voiced speakers I've had the pleasure of owning, ever. This includes some far more expensive highly regarded models. It sounds alot like the Aerial 8. Only, it doesn't suffer from the shelved down treble and lack of bass definition. I would certainly rank it as one of the best values available today. It's certainly a testament to Paul Barton's abilities to voice a speaker.

Regarding the finish, I've never seen a cherry veneer darker than mahagony. It's certainly an attractive finish. But I'm not sure I'd call it cherry.

Similar Products Used:

Theil CS3.6, Martin Logan SL3, B&W Matrix 802III, among others.

Excellent reproduction of any kind of music you want to throw at it. Movies - OUTSTANDING!

Zero

Go ahead, look em over. You won't find more speaker for the money.

Similar Products Used:

Too many to name.

Nice woodwork!

Woefully inadequete audio peformance for a speaker of this price.

While auditioning a Mcintosh MC 352 amplifier (350 Watt per channel solid state)I had a chance to listen to the PSB speaker. For $2,900(the price the PS Audio's were listed at) its quite possible with a bit of creativity and imagination to assemble a stereo sound system of excellent quality, as a result its not unreasonable to expect a stellar performance from the PSB's. In addition with a McIntosh amplifier and a rather nice Onkyo Integra CD player present at the demonstration I was literally and figureatively expecting the world of this speaker. Even with the assitance of such expensive electronics its almost miracle that this speaker managed to sound so ..........mediocre. The sound emanating from the PSB's certainly wasn't intolerable or horrid,yet it feel short of what a speaker in its price range could and should do. While listening to track #2 on U2's POP cd the Bono's vocals sounded veiled and subdued, in addition the bass was vapid and lackluster, the speaker paid scant attention to the bass oommph present on this track. However I must comment that the high's were not at all bad,although certainly good enough to compensate for the speaker's other weaknesses. All in all the PSB is certainly a nice looking piece of wood.

Similar Products Used:

infinity kappa 8 and various other speakers

The best value under $2500, period. These speakers are great performer in all three ranges of hi, mid and low. Much has been said by many reviewers before me, so let me simply say that audition them by all means before you buy any speaker in this price range. They are a gem (the Gold i)!

Midrange and bass response are the highlights of this speaker

The highs are the weakness of these speakers.

I highly recommend these speakers. Though the highs are lightly distorted, the bass and midrange cover up for this flaw

Highly recommended!

Similar Products Used:

My system
Preamp: Acurus ACT 3(For 5.1) Classe CP 35 (Music listening)
Power amps: Classe Ca 150 , Denon POA 8300
Sources: Theta Data Basic II + Theta DS Pro Prime IIa , Sony DVP 7000
Speakers
PSB Goldi
PSB C6
B&W CDM1
PSB Subsonic 2i
Tuner
Luxman T117
Wires+Interconnects
Audioquest Quartz XLR's and RCA's
Apogee AES/EBU
Monster Z2 reference speaker wires for front,center,rear

Excellent Overall Performance: Resolution, bass extension, imaging, transparency and dynamics.
Very few speakers in its price range that offer such good all-round performance

I've owned this pair of Gold-i's for a almost two years now. While I have sequentially upgraded several of my audio components since my purchase of the PSBs, its not until my most recent upgrade to a Proceed HPA2 that I realized how much the Gold-i's (GI) had to offer. Combined with an excellent amp, the GI is a truly impressive speaker.
I listen to mostly Jazz and Classical recordings. With the Proceed+GI combination, I felt a sense of total immersion in the music. Seemed like I was right at a live performance. The resolution , tightness in bass, detail, focus, dynamics nd clarity in the sound was beathtaking.

Now, I'm wondering which other aspect of my sound system is holding back the music (if at all). The adventure continues......

Excellent sound for the money and they play any type of music very well. HUGE soundstage.

Very big, very heavy. Hard to move around and get set up.

I am really into value. Getting a lot for my money, like most people are. I have this web site to thank for helping me to find these values. I purchased my CD player, an Ah! Tjoeb 99, purely on the recommendations on this site and never even heard one until I got mine installed. I was not let down, it was better than I expected. I hope people understand the value of a web site like this. The information it gives is priceless.

This is how I came across the PSB Stratus Goldi speakers. I saw the incredible amount of reviews and the overall high scores they continually received and knew that I had to add them to my list. I listened to a lot of speakers and there are some nice ones for ~$2000 but none like these. Not comparable in size or sound quality. I did not even get to hear a pair of Golds but instead a pair of Silvers at my dealer. They sounded great and every speaker I heard in my price range after that were always being compared to the PSBs in my mind. I finally decided to get a set of Silveri speakers from my dealer.

But then, surfing, I found a site on the Internet that sold PSB speakers and they had Gold speakers listed as $1765 a pair. That was less than I was paying for my silvers and no tax!! I figured if the Golds sounded as good as the Silvers I would be in business and almost surely they sounded better. The on-line store was http://www.audioexcellence.com and I spoke with Phil. He was great. The price on the site was for Stratus Gold though and not Stratus Goldi which is the newer version. The cost of the Goldi was $2065 delivered to me in Seattle (from New York) so I took those because the price was still great and no tax. They came within a few days and Phil was great. They were packaged very well and came without a blemish.

I love them. The sound is much better than I hoped for. You already know my CD player, my amp is a Mark Levinson no 383 Integrated. I like jazz and big band which all sounds really excellent as most speakers do but my buddy's rock stuff like Tom Petty, Candlebox, Zeppelin, etc. sounds very, very good. It was like we were hearing it for the first time and had been missing so much. The soundstage is just huge and extends far beyond the edges of the speakers. It is just as deep too. You can pin-point where the musicians are sitting with recordings that are made that way. The tonal quality is nothing sort of fantastic and the mids are very airy and transparent. Both female and male voices sound like they are right in the room with you. I just can't go on enough. Make sure you listen to these if you are into buying new speakers in this price range, or even beyond.

I listened to a lot of speakers before my purchase and each store I went in I had them play their high end gear for me to get a reference. I only heard one set of speakers I thought sounded better, and only a little. That was a set of $10,000+ B&W 802 and those were run through who knows how many thousands of dollars worth of gear. The speaker cables hooked to those cost over $6000 the guy told me. And I only think that system sound just slightly better than mine.

Please be sure to add PSB to your list of speakers to listen to, no matter what price range, they have some for all cost brackets, except the ultra mega-buck category. They are a really great value today.

Similar Products Used:

Polk, Quart.

Someone from one of the audio newsgroups recently emailed me asking if I was happy with my new PSB Stratus Goldi's.
Yes, with a big but...

They need lots of power to drive them and space to breathe. Need to be at least 24 inches from any wall or corner, at least 8 feet apart, and since they are 4ohm speakers they need a powerful amp that will not overheat when driving them. If you don't have a lot of power, go for the Stratus Silveri's. A little smaller, almost the same sound as the Golds but require less power to drive them.

The Goldi's also really show you the weak links in your source and amplification. They need quality equipment if you want to get their full impact.

Big speaker. Big sound. Incredible bass when placed right (awful boomy bass and zero imaging when placed too near a wall or corner or too close together).

When I demo them for friends, I engage the "Loudness" button on the pre-amp and put on "Hotel California" from the "Hell Freezes Over" CD. The chair actually feels like it is coming off the floor with the bass kicks at the start of the song, but it is CLEAN bass. Then I disengage the "Loudness" button and put on something like Flim and the BB's (jazz) and the PSB's just shine. The bass goes real low too, the kind of lows that you feel in your chest before you actually hear them.

Set these puppies up in a good environment with lots of amplification and quality source components and you will not be disappointed.

My system is:

1 Yamaha CDX500U (midfi)CD player..... 10 years old - Soon to be replaced
1 Crown IC150A Pre-amp................ 20 years old
2 Crown D150A amplifiers ............. 20 years old - bridged/bi-amped
1 Pair PSB Stratus Gold i speakers.... Main speakers - bi-wired

Music tastes are shown here:

http://www.interlynx.net/webfx/homepage/cds.pdf

(the CD list is a PDF file, you'll need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it)

Value

They need to be biwired!

For all of the people below who gave the Golds only one or two stars... These speakers must be biwired. Otherwise, PSB speakers sound like there is a blanket over them. If you use a good wired like the Nordost Flatline or Nordost Solar Wind biwire speaker wire, you will understand why the Gold's have had such rave reviews. I know many Hi Fi stores that don't biwire their <$1500 speakers which are on display. Don't buy from these stores!