These heavyweight luxury speakers look like Doctor Who villains, but they promise a heavenly audio experience

Only recently, we discovered a pair of luxury speakers that look like something from Elton “Rocket Man” John’s house. And today we’ve got two pairs of luxury speakers that look like actual space rockets, or maybe robots that’d chase Doctor Who around a quarry, or maybe something Jony Ive would’ve designed in 2003.

These are the new Rhea and Theia Passive speakers from Swiss luxury audio brand Goldmund, and they’re yours for around $108,000 (£82,000 / AU$171,000) and $215,000 (£162,000 / AU$338,000).

If you’re a fan of mythology you’ll recognize the names: Theia and Rhea are Titan goddesses, and Goldmund also has an even more premium set of speakers named after their mythical mother, Gaia.

The Gaia speakers currently retail in the UK for £650,000 (about $860,000 / AU$1,354,338), so by comparison these are super-cheap budget buys.

Goldmund Theia and Rhea: key features

Goldmund already makes speakers called Theia and Rhea, but these are new, passive models that support mono, bi- and tri-wired setups. The firm warns that you’ll need very high-quality amplification to drive them, as lesser amps won’t be able to deliver the speed the speaker drivers need to perform at their best.

The speakers are three-way in the case of the Rhea and four-way with the Theia. The Rhea has a soft dome tweeter, a seven-inch mid-range driver and a 12-inch woofer, and the Theia has a soft dome tweeter, a four-inch high-mid driver, a six-inch low-medium driver and again, a 12-inch woofer.

Frequency response is 27Hz to 25kHz for the Rhea, and 20Hz to 25kHz for the Theia.

As you might expect, when you order a pair of these speakers Goldmund doesn’t just chuck some bubble wrap around them: each set comes packaged in a custom flight case. That adds to the already considerable weight: the Rhea is 123kg and the Thea is 197kg. Oh, and that’s per speaker.

Both sets of speakers are available today. If you’d like something a little more affordable, we have a list of the best stereo speakers.

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Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.