Ok, let me give you a clue. Speaker was designed and built in Singapore and Japan at the request of a well known Japanese maker. Like some of the other better known products of the Japanese company, this sounds like a rather fierce mythical beast with hot breath.

Craig, close but no cigar.

Actually it is a pair of Nakamichi Dragon loudspeakers.

Nakamichi commissioned a Singapore design group to design an electrostatic dynamic hybrid loudspeaker. The prototype run was built in Australia however there was a falling out over higher than expected costs and the project was abandoned after 100 pairs had been commissioned and some number had been built.

The remaining inventory was picked up by Whise and turned into finished product which was sold as the Whise speaker. Project then died out and for some reason the designs, drawings and bill of materials ended up in my possession! The difficulty in relaunching the project was the moulded cabinets which, though beautiful, were very expensive to produce.

How did I get a pair of these? Simple; I am an ardent eBay scanner. Because of my earlier affairs with electrostatic speakers, sometimes I would just do a search for "electrostatic" in sound and vision.

One day I did that and up popped these beauties in an auction by a London office clearing company with a starting price of £500. Worth a punt, I thought, even if they might be faulty so I did some research and established that I could get hold of spare panels, if required. Nobody else seemed to have the courage to take a chance on these so a week later I drove down to Fulham and collected them.

What a buy! I got them home; set them up and switched them on. I must say they were as good an electrostatic as I had heard. The cabinets included a built in dynamic woofer complete with a decent power amp. Sound was transparent, extended range and more than capable of playing loud when needed.

A friend in the Hifi industry had been an admirer of my modded Wilsons and he bought them leaving me with these better speakers plus cash in hand: result!

Yes, I could never understand why there were no other bidders.

One issue might have been that the seller said he couldn't warrant they were working or not but when I contacted him, he was happy to promise a refund if they weren't working.

When I contacted the designers they were very helpful and provided so much information. It's a great pity the project died because I think it could have been a very commercial product.

i see they have been resold several times. My listening room is quite small so maybe they run out of puff in a much larger room!

Then it all changed to this

Nakamichis replaced by Rockport Mira Grands: possibly the most musical speakers I'd owned. Resolving yet without any hardness and also capable of going very loud. A bit big perhaps, but one has to suffer for one's art.

pass lab electronics all replaced. Power amps now Halcro dm88 which have resolution in bucket loads; preamp is KXR which is a great preamp. DCS stack upgraded to Scarlatti

Power plus 2000+ just visible atop Finite Elemente rack in the corner

Sound? Very solid images coupled with ability to generate realistic dynamic range. The dynamics are always the factor that surprise at live orchestral concerts and which are very difficult to recreate in the home system. Getting close now.

The only complaint about that last swap around was my cat Delius who had a real attachment to the DCS Elgar DAC. Must be an English composer thing!

That's my yardstick, too. Very hard to achieve, but great when it gets close.

In my opinion, everything has to contribute and have the headroom, it's not just a matter of having dynamic speakers. Power makes a big contribution to lower noise floor, and therefore wider dynamics.

Craig, just show her who is the boss in your house! Ok, I know, it's not you. Same here, I'm afraid.

I'd certainly put that purchase down as my best eBay buy ever! I guess the other issue was the seller stressing he didn't know whether they were working or not so key issue for me was to ensure he would take them back if they were dead on arrival.