Any Large Acoustic Suspension Speakers Being Made?


I auditioned some Dunlavy SC-IVAs in the 90s. The sound was unlike anything I've heard before or since.

Was more like a video projector creating living sonic-images in the room.

The Dunlavys are a sealed box system. The front of the speaker is heavily felt damped (mids & tweets).

I'm also wondering about anything unusual about its crossover. I have to find out why these sounded so good!

The system: Audio Research VT-120 amp, ARC LS-2 pre, Theta DAC (pre-pro?), CEC Disk spinner, and Dunlavy wire. The room was about 25 * 25 with curtains on a glass wall and LPs on the rear wall. Power conditioning is unknown.

So I'm thinking it's either the acoustic suspension or a special crossover that made the difference.

Does anyone make large sealed box speakers anymore? 

dweller

Showing 2 responses by rcprince

One thing about the Dunlavys (and the Duntechs that preceded them)  that is very important to some people is that they use first order crossover slopes, and also that the drivers were staggered to be time-coherent.  Not that many speaker manufacturers do that these days (Vandersteen, Green Mountain, Thiel).  There was nothing really that special in terms of parts in the crossover (although they did use air core inductors, I think), and some A-gon members have made upgrades to the parts in the crossover with some success.  All in all, it was an extremely well-engineered speaker.
If you have the room you might consider checking the ads here from time to time, used Duntech Sovereigns/Princesses and Dunlavys show up from time to time.  While I sold my Princesses after about 15 years with them, I still have a soft spot in my heart for them.