"The floating cone driver"

[oivavoi]

Speakers are probably the last great technological frontier in audio, which are still far from perfection. Here's a fascinating piece of technology I just encountered: A transducer without spider and surround, called the "floating cone driver". https://www.ilumnia.be/maindesign

Seems intriguing. An all new Belgian speaker (what's the deal with all these technological advances in audio coming from the Dutchophone civilization?), designed from the ground up. Claims lots of benefits. Price unknown.

What do you guys think?

 

[Thomas savage]

Speakers are probably the last great technological frontier in audio, which are still far from perfection. Here's a fascinating piece of technology I just encountered: A transducer without spider and surround, called the "floating cone driver". https://www.ilumnia.be/maindesign

Seems intriguing. An all new Belgian speaker (what's the deal with all these technological advances in audio coming from the Dutchophone civilization?), designed from the ground up. Claims lots of benefits. Price unknown.

What do you guys think?

Next time I’m in Ikea I will keep a eye out for this...

 

[svart-hvitt]

Speakers are probably the last great technological frontier in audio, which are still far from perfection. Here's a fascinating piece of technology I just encountered: A transducer without spider and surround, called the "floating cone driver". https://www.ilumnia.be/maindesign

Seems intriguing. An all new Belgian speaker (what's the deal with all these technological advances in audio coming from the Dutchophone civilization?), designed from the ground up. Claims lots of benefits. Price unknown.

What do you guys think?

Passive?

I believe in active and there are some good theory and empirical data to support the argument for active.

 

[Deleted member 65]

Passive?

I believe in active and there are some good theory and empirical data to support the argument for active.

 

[oivavoi]

Passive?

I believe in active and there are some good theory and empirical data to support the argument for active.

Yeah, that goes without saying (in this forum at least!). Seems to be priced really really high, and I assume they want to tap into the highend market, which is mostly passive. So they have included a "damping switch" to be able to adapt it to different kinds of amplifiers. Would make much more sense engineering-wise to build it from the ground up with matching amps and control it with DSP. But active vs passive crossovers is not the only thing that matters in a loudspeaker. There are also limitations in other areas. Otherwise, every single active loudspeaker would sound better than most passive loudspeakers, which is clearly not the case. So I think their transducer technology may hold some merits, if my limited layman understanding of the issues is correct.

 

[Sal1950]

What do you guys think?

EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE

 

[sergeauckland]

Interesting, but I don't see any explanation as to what keeps the cone centred in the middle of the travel in the absence of signal. Does the power supply polarise the cone so it floats half way up? That's what I would guess, but it doesn't say if the magnet is a permanent magnet and the PSU operates on the cone only, or the cone and the magnet are both powered from the PSU.

Their web site is long on audiophile-speak and somewhat short on technical details.

S.

 

[RayDunzl]

Looks shaky to me.

What's the cone material?

---

Oh, I see now, 8 inch paper cone.

 

[RayDunzl]

"It has 99,7% linear behaviour and has no compression at all which gives it a perfect dynamic response."

Hmmm...

Not sure if I'm comparing apples and oranges, but...

Since when did 99.7% become "perfect"?

That's an error of 30 in 10,000.

My Telco buddies required 99.98% "perfection" before they'd sign the bill, no more than two calls lost in 10,000 attempts.

 

[fas42]

The fact that the suspension is no longer the crude mechanical mechanism that drivers have had since they were invented is an extremely encouraging sign - a clear marker that they have done their homework is that these speakers will have excellent rendition of low level detail, from a cold start ...

 

[Brad]

I don’t understand why you would use a bass/mid driver for an Omni dispersion, then use a directional tweeter.

 

[DonH56]

I am wondering why, if it is so great and allows "perfect" linearity, high speed, and so forth, they used a conventional tweeter?

 

[Wombat]

Remember the Ohm Walsh loudspeakers? Ohm is still selling them.

There are current takes on the concept by some European companies.

The Emper0r 1 by German Physiks:

 

[DonH56]

IIRC the Walsh driver still had a conventional surround and spyder assembly...

 

[Wayne]

On the horizon, solid state speakers? A Graphene Speaker With No Moving Parts Uses Heat to Produce Sound

Researchers have combined speaker, amplifier and graphic equaliser into a chip the size of a thumbnail.

https://gizmodo.com/a-graphene-speaker-with-no-moving-parts-uses-heat-to-pr-1794950694
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_581068_en.html

 

[Wayne]

I believe in active and there are some good theory and empirical data to support the argument for active.

I have active speakers and would be interested in your thoughts on this topic. Thank you.

 

[Wombat]

IIRC the Walsh driver still had a conventional surround and spyder assembly...

Yes.

 

[Don Hills]

The "surroundless" part is not new. Some years ago I recall a review of a design which had an otherwise conventional cone but the "surround" used the same design - a cylindrical edge in a slot. The slot and surrounding spaces were designed to counter the tendency for air pressure to leak past.

 

[Cosmik]

I'm not convinced there's much wrong with conventional cone speakers - and you could use things like closed loop control at the lower frequencies and/or pre-distortion at the higher. But I like the idea of thinking radically. But these people give away their audiophile fetish-based thinking by promoting their 'most linear speaker in the world' partnered with the least linear amplifiers in the world - and they use the most non-radical option of the passive crossover, inevitably leading to various distortions of the waveform despite the potential performance of their (vapourware?) driver.

 

[Deleted member 65]

My (well off!) kid brother had these a few years back. Haven't heard much better since then. Traded them for at the time biggest Wilson. Now he's only using iPhone & IEM's ...