There’s a lighted billboard on highway I75 just outside of Tampa. A big one. “ONEIROS—WORLD-CLASS AUDIO,” it exclaims, pointing viewers toward the Florida International Audio Expo at the Sheraton Tampa Brandon. Oneiros Audio clearly took this to heart. Here they were, jumping into this big-speaker thing without restraint.
I first met co-founders Graeme Bridge and Jerry Bloomfield, in Warsaw, Poland, at Audio Video Show 2019. At that time, Bridge and Bloomfield were (and still are) the owners of and designers for Falcon Acoustics, a company best known for its faithful recreation and constant improvement of the venerable BBC LS3/5a monitor.
Graeme Bridge
The LS3/5a is one of the smallest dedicated speakers in all of audio. And today, here at the Florida Audio Expo, I met these British chaps, as they premiered their new venture, Oneiros, which was debuting a cost-no-object speaker built as a luxury product.
Weighing in at 310 pounds, this speaker is not so much an assault on the state of the art as it is an attempt to vault over the state of the art. According to Bridge, what inspired him was a LinkedIn post by our own Doug Schneider, who remarked that too many companies were adhering to the tried-and-true formula of box-type speakers with little lasting appeal, rather than trying something special.
At Audio Video Show 2024, the Falcon Acoustics guys floated around VR renderings of the Oneiros, but at that time it seemed like such an ambitious project that it would be almost impossible to accomplish. And here, just four months later, stood the finished product.
Walking around this speaker, nothing looked rushed, unfinished, or compromised. The chassis is made from multiple layers of carbon fiber around a proprietary core material. The complex curves of the chassis are laid up as a true monocoque, with core layers in the middle of varying thicknesses and densities.
The front baffle is a single, large, heavy chunk of CNC-machined aluminum with extremely strong embedded magnets that attach to the main enclosure. Peeking through that front panel are very high-quality drivers: two 10″ Twaron graphene nano-composite woofers mated with two 3″ Dyneema graphene-composite dome midranges and a 1″ tweeter with a diamond dome.
A huge amount of engineering and research went into the Oneiros. Bridge shared with me images of the FEA tests they ran on the various chassis designs, comprehensive measurements, and photos of the manufacturing process.
So I guess it’s no surprise that this is one seriously good-sounding speaker. I sat for a fair stretch of time, listening to a whole bunch of LPs as I wrote up this report. The selections included Santana’s “Oye Como Va” and a Lorde album that I didn’t know, but liked more than I would have thought. The sound was smooth, yet detailed, open, rich, and enveloping. The Oneiros floorstanders didn’t beat me over the head with typical statement speaker hi-fi, look-at-me, aren’t-I-wonderful bombastics.
This was an analog-only system, bless their hearts, fronted by a VPI Avenger turntable running a DS Audio cartridge, feeding south to an Audio Research preamplifier and monoblock amplifiers.
I had a root through their record box and found Who’s Next amongst some more mundane records. Bloomfield threw that on the ’table and turned it up nearly as loud as I wanted, which was somewhat louder than you usually hear at audio shows. Lord thundering Jesus, this sounded great. We sat through the entire first side. While the Oneiros towers sounded extremely clean and engaging with simple, audiophile music, this, for me was the test. An older rock record needs to impress me—many high-end speakers fall apart when asked to play rock, so many exhibitors won’t play it. Crisp highs with a fantastic sense of attack on Roger Daltrey’s voice, a feeling of impact to Keith Moon’s drums—this pair of speakers just nailed it.
Oneiros Audio is heavily promoting their creation as a luxury product in a manner that’s unique in audio. One example: the Oneiros will be shown at Salon Privé, Blenheim Palace, one of the most exclusive car shows in the world. This makes sense, because the Oneiros is a luxury, bespoke product that’s aimed directly at people with massive amounts of disposable income.
Let me clarify here: The base price of The Oneiros is $650,000 per pair (USD). This is for one of four base colors with a silver front panel. A metallic paint upgrade is $5000. Custom anodizing the front panels of a pair adds $20,000. The Carbon Mikume finish costs $125,000. Natural wood veneers run between $75,000 and $150,000 (the veneering process is extremely complicated because of the multiple axes and curves of the chassis). If you wish, you can fly to Germany and select your individual log and watch as the veneer is peeled from it. A car analogy is appropriate as Oneiros Audio will work with the customer to match up the speaker’s finish with any luxury car made today. If you can’t make up your mind on finishes, they have an in-house consultant who will help you design your own custom palette. That service will cost extra, but at this point, who’s counting?
And if that’s not luxury, what is?
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
