Can you name this speaker? Thoughts?
What are your thoughts of these words below, describing a speaker? This is an actual speaker, but curious of your thoughts, WITHOUT knowing the manufacturer or speaker.
The 50"-tall, 100-lb COMPANY - NAME is far from the largest, heaviest loudspeaker we've (StereoPhile), but neither is it a minimonitor. Its size and unique appearance demand attention. The hammer-tone, gloss black is perhaps the most distinctive I've ever seen on a loudspeaker; you can almost look into the textured, deep, glossy surface. It looks like a show-car's paint job, though it's more subdued than the Day-Glo orange favored by the auto teaser-trade.
The cabinet is unusually shaped. The front face is slightly beveled on the side and top edges—a rectangular truncated pyramid. Harry Olson, an early pioneer in loudspeaker design, noted in a 1951 paper that enclosure shape had a significant effect on a loudspeaker's frequency response. The best shape turned out to be a sphere, with the more practical rectangular truncated pyramid—produced by a deep bevel around the perimeter of the front baffle—a close second. The bevel in Olson's experiments was as wide as the front baffle itself.
COMPANY White Paper on the MODEL seems to imply that the speaker uses a full truncated pyramid shape. It doesn't. However, COMPANY argues that they used computer modeling extensively in the design of the MODEL. Perhaps their research—computer simulations and actual prototyping—indicated that minor departures from Olson's configuration did not seriously compromise the result. In any event, it's likely that the MODEL derives some sonic benefit from its shape. Visually, at least, it's a pleasing departure from the ubiquitous box.
The walls of the enclosure are made of 1"-thick, high-density fiberboard. Four internal braces, and bituminous pads glued to the insides of the cabinet walls, act to damp vibrations. To further minimize vibrations at the source, isolation mountings on the mounting flange and under the magnet of each woofer reduce transmission of mechanical vibrations from the woofers to the enclosure itself.
The design of the 8" custom woofers is based on proprietary cones injection-molded from homopolymer polypropylene and embedded aluminum strands. This combination is said to possess a desirable blend of a high Young's Modulus (the ratio of stiffness to mass) and damping. The woofers operate in tandem in their ported, 90-liter (just over 3ft3) enclosure up to their 380Hz crossover frequencies.
Above 380Hz, COMPANY's Convergent Source Mid/High Frequency Module takes over the load. The name alludes to the fact that the 3" midrange dome and 1" tweeter that comprise this module are mounted in close proximity. The faceplate, made of Spherex® (a low-resonance resin material), is covered by a single protective mesh screen which gives the tweeters a unified look. These two different drivers, crossed over at 2.5kHz, have much in common: light, thin, aluminum-alloy, hyperbolic domes; edge-wound voice-coils on Kapton bobbins; and cotton suspensions. The midrange driver is mounted in its own 0.52-liter, sealed sub-enclosure, within which its response is said to extend down to the 380Hz crossover frequency (at -3dB). The latter is a very low figure for a dome midrange, even one as large as this.
