Ver 2.1 November 2009
22
The Technology
The Genesis 2.2 loudspeaker comprises four “towers”: two
midrange/tweeter wings and two bass columns. Each tower is over
6 feet tall (183cm), and the cabinet is made of a vibration damping
and resonance-control acrylic/composite sandwich material. The
tweeters and midrange ribbon are mounted on a solid 1.5-inch slab
of high-molecular weight cast acrylic.
The rationale for the four-tower system separating the woofers from
the midrange/tweeters is to allow the placement of the high-
frequency wings to optimize imaging and soundstage, and the
placement of the woofer towers to optimize in-room bass response.
Design Philosophy
Nothing has changed in theoretical acoustics since Lord Rayleigh’s
original book on acoustics published in 1877. There are still only
two proper ways for a transducer to propagate sound in a room: a
point source and a line source. Anything else, or everything in
between, is a compromise.
In order for all frequencies of
sound from the loudspeaker to
reach the listener at exactly the
same time, a coherent wave front
is important - not just “time-
alignment” of drivers. The ideal is
either an infinitely small pulsating
point or a pulsating line with a size
on the order of the room
dimension.
Obviously, a line-source is much
easier to mechanize than the ideal
point source. The line-source (if
large enough), can approximate
the ideal, and in doing so, provide sufficient radiating area for
dynamically and spatially realistic sound reproduction.
The Genesis 2.2 is a line-source that is 4 feet long (nearly the half
the room’s entire height). Very importantly, the line source has no
vertical dispersion at any frequency. Hence, there is no sound
bouncing from either the floor or the ceiling. No deleterious
John William Strutt Lord Rayleigh (1842
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