Listeners
comment on the amazing realism, breathtaking excitement and incredibly low
coloration of the design. As for the Symphony, yhis means that you should hear
the instruments and musicians exactly as they were recorded; tonally (timbre),
spatially (imaging) and communicating the music (musicality).
To
achieve this, several very important criteria had to be met. High on the list of
these criteria is tonality, especially midrange tonality. This is the single
aspect of reproduction which is almost never met in loudspeaker design.
Especially since the advent of the compact disc and a new generation of
recording engineers in the studios midrange accuracy has suffered.
Some
two-way loudspeakers using very simple crossovers and some electrostatic
speakers achieve a high level of midrange accuracy, and it was this accuracy
that we wanted to achieve in a truly full range system, without the need for
sub-woofers, stands, mini monitor brightness or the dispersion and space
problems of electrostatics. For this reason, the midrange/upper bass drivers and
the tweeters are housed in a separate, sealed enclosure inside the main
loudspeaker box.
The
crossover for these drivers is a 6db/octave, phase coherent, hard wired design
using premium quality parts, with nothing but an inductor (ie. only wire) in the
critical midrange - no capacitors, no resistors. Because this internal enclosure
is very small, the midrange/upper bass driver rolls off the bass acoustically,
so there are no capacitors or resistors to distort the midrange. An added
benefit of our internal box system is that it adds a lot of rigidity to the main
cabinet structure. The mid/bass unit and tweeter match each other perfectly in
'sonic signature' - no metal dome tweeter here being mated to some other
material in the midrange.
The
careful blend and integration of the drive units in the 'MAESTRO' achieves
perfect coherence: the sound is simply ONE sound, not bass, midrange and treble.
The metal dome tweeter on the rear of the speaker is user adjustable in output
and has the effect of throwing a soft natural light onto the sound stage. Bass
is provided by a 200 watt carbon fibre customized 12" woofer, driven directly by
a 300 watt amplifier. Crossover is electronic, with adjustable gain and
frequency. This system allows use of a moderately powered amplifier for the main
speaker and relieves the same of having to reproduce bass, resulting in greater
midrange clarity and treble smoothness, compared to driving the speaker
full-range.
In
other words, it takes the strain away from your main amplifier. Because the
voice coil of the bass driver is driven directly by a 300 watt amplifier, the
bass is super tight and fast, with tremendous weight; no large inductors here
slowing the bass down! Furthermore, the cross-over/amplifier module can be
directly hooked up to the sub-woofer output of a Home Theatre
processor/preamp. Being
fully adjustable, the system also allows for TOTAL integration of the bass into
the room.
What
the 'Maestro' achieves is completely natural midrange & treble reproduction:
instruments sound exactly as they should; there is lots of tonal colour, through
proper tonal differentiation precise imaging and sound staging - you hear the
performers exactly where they were recorded, with audible space between them.
A
totally silent background inter-transient silence is unparalleled, so that you
hear nothing but the notes, without any smearing whatsoever; all the strands of
music are unravelled, thus easily heard. Exceptional dynamic reproduction, both
micro and macro, without any hardening when the music gets loud. Superlative
musicality: all the emotion of the music and musicians is faithfully
communicated, as is the structure of the music.
All
these factors allow the listener to become totally involved in the music, in a
way never achieved before.
In short, this loudspeaker truly lives up to
its name, for it is indeed NotePerfect