How do you know that the cab is made of carbon fiber? The website says it's "advanced polymer", while their guitar website says their guitars are made from "carbon graphite". You're right about the price, though, it's currently on sale for $649 while the MSRP is $949.
From their FAQ page - this doesn't make me want to support this business because it's beyond crass, even if it's true, this doesn't make him look like a good guy:
II: Please do not confuse the Acoustic Image Upshot with a Sonusphere !!!
Yes, you do see a driver vertically mounted on both styles of enclosure. But be fully aware that this is where any and all comparisons stop dead in their tracks. There are absolutely no sonic outcome similarities between the two. The Upshot is based on what engineers have repetitively determined is one of the worst common cabinet geometries for flat response (the tube). Tube geometry also results in virtually the same side-of-cabinet upper frequency shadow as a box. This is long-standing published textbook fact, not hype. No one has to blindly believe us… just do some basic research and reach your own conclusion. Conversely a sphere is universally considered vastly superior, as has been analyzed redundantly by sound engineers. Elsewhere on our website we have provided a cabinet geometry final response curve graph, re-printed from renowned engineering literature showing this. It is in part why Meyer Sound developed their relatively curved-face 2-D arrays. Bose implements a complimentary approach for similar reasons. Indeed, globe-shaped bookshelf hi if speakers, which work amazingly well, are another iteration. We cannot emphasize enough that the reason that the Upshot tube-style is not present elsewhere in either hi fi or live performance is because it is simply not capable of producing sophisticated, high-quality sound. Curiously, if AI actually believes that their standard down-firing woofer / front 'point source' upper frequency approach is so ideal, why proceed to offer an enclosure style that is in such opposition? Whereas AI products are otherwise relatively well thought out relative to the sonic outcome they provide, it is Sonusphere's educated position that AI made a quality control design mistake with the Upshot. Indeed, to achieve the same dispersion of sound with the same limited projection of frequencies as the Upshot, players would be better off setting a similar-sized speaker 'box' on it's back. At least the player would then retain the option of putting it back on its standard bottom for other purposes.
