TESTED: Loiminchay Chagall Loudspeaker

An Act of Passion

Even in the best of times emotion plays a major part in five-figure buying decisions; in today’s economy passion ultimately has to rule. If you are a genuine audiophile, you buy because what you buy strikes an emotional chord that resonates far more deeply than any combination of status, technology, reviews, and dealer recommendations.

A Passion for Speakers

Passion, however, goes beyond the buyer. No rational businessperson remains a high-end-audio dealer because of a narrow focus on cost effectiveness, and the same is true of manufacturers. Even in boom times, the high end is a high-risk business, with uncertain volumes, margins, and fashions. I occasionally review business models for friends, and my advice always has to be the same. As a reviewer and audiophile, invest. As an investor, walk away. If you don’t have a real passion for the high end, it does not make sense as a business—dealer, manufacturer, or, for that matter, magazine owner. And yet, to plagiarize a phrase in praise of poets, it is a “fine madness.” Civilizations are often measured by their aesthetic extremes, and the best of the high end is definitely one of ours.

The Loiminchay line of speakers is a case in point. Why should a pen manufacturer like Patrick Chu get into the speaker business? It is obvious that only an obsessed audiophile would take a successful company into another high-risk luxury field. Even then, why build your own if you can afford any other product on the market? Why, for a parallel example, did a perfectly good tractor company like Lamborghini get into the sports car business?

Patrick Chu states his motives this way: “I’m a passionate guy, totally into whatever I do. I love bringing fine old techniques and lost arts to bear on modern products. Loiminchay pens put me in touch with master lacquering techniques from Japan, built up one painstaking layer at a time, just like you’ll find on our speakers. I work with rare woods, precious metals, jade. (Loiminchay was the Official Pen of the Beijing Olympics!) I make pens I’d like to own, and it’s exactly the same with my speakers! Plus I didn’t like anyone else’s speakers! Artists express their own rationale in their work. They are challenged, of course, as I expect to be, but that’s okay. I blend art and science with my work. We begin with careful measurement, but end with listening tests to extract the fragrance of sound in motion. Measurements are very important, but here’s a great irony: Many reviewers use classical music in their reviews, and that may include original instruments, in the best case, let’s say a Stradivarius. No one was around to ‘test’ that violin when it was made, but everyone knows it sounds just right! It’s all about sight and touch, sight and sound, senses and passion!” 

That same philosophy extends to all of the company’s activities. If you log on to Loiminchay.com, you are going to find a series of miniature art works. The two-pen Kama Sutra set, for example, is a production run of exactly 18 sets of gold pens. I suppose they write as well as serve as art, but the advertising doesn’t mention that fact. They are advertised to help teach “the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the five senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting, and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul. The ingredient in this is a peculiar contact between the organ of the senses and the consciousness of pleasure that arises from that contact.”

For inexplicable reasons, Robert Harley left this statement out of his otherwise excellent book on high-end audio, but it could apply to why you should buy any serious piece of high-end gear—and especially speakers. With the possible exception of a phono cartridge, no other piece of audio equipment offers so many trade-offs in sound quality or requires more personal involvement in making a selection.

The Price of Passion

Passion, as noted, is also an issue for the audiophile as well as the manufacturer, particularly at the prices of today’s top speakers. A pair of Loiminchay Chagall speakers is a case in point: The price varies from $35,000 to $65,000 a pair, depending on your choice of finish and whether you want the regular or the diamond tweeter. If you are wealthy enough in today’s economy that these prices don’t make you blink, please send me your e-mail address. I may have to hit you for a grant to keep updating my reference system.