Ver 1.0 Feb 2014 13
The Technology
The Genesis 4 loudspeaker integrates a ribbon tweeter and a
ribbon midrange with a pair of dynamic mid-bass couplers and a
pair of servo-controlled woofers. Add the rear tweeter with its own
crossover, and you have a five-way loudspeaker that is a marvel in
technology. The cabinet structure is designed to manage vibrations
and resonance instead of using brute-force methods of tremendous
mass.
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 G4 is a point-source dipole loudspeaker, and hence, the
challenge during the design was to approximate an infinitesimally
small pulsating point from a 4-foot tall loudspeaker. We have
achieved this using carefully calculated crossover slopes and our
own crossover topology.
John William Strutt Lord Rayleigh (1842 – 1919)
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