It's an exciting day for us at Songer Audio. After many months of design, development, and testing, we are pleased to announce our next generation field coil driver this afternoon, and the new S1x. While we have yet to decide on a final name for it, this is the fourth major iteration of the field coil at the heart of our loudspeakers.
The seeds of what has grown into this latest evolution were planted over the course several conversations with a potential client of significant means. "If you would have had no cost constraints of any kind during early development," he asked, "would you have made some different choices in designing your speakers?". "Well, of course I would have", I replied, and listed through a few that immediately came to mind. "Good," he said, "that's the speaker I'd want you to build for me." And then starting the next day, I began drawing up a detailed proposal of everything that I might have done on free of cost concerns, with the driver, and with the S1 and S2.
Today's summit is some measure of the realization of many, however certainly not all of the improvements that came to mind during that expansive thought exercise.
Much of the driver design was revisited in this development cycle. The voice coils have been cryogenically processed, a three day exercise in which the wire is submerged in liquid nitrogen for a full 48 hours at -300°F. This compresses the metal, purifies it, and makes its crystalline structure uniform. The wire becomes more conductive, and signals passing through it are less affected by distortion. While some companies representing every facet of the audio industry use deep cryogenic processing, many of you will know that Børresen employs it in their magnificent loudspeakers - to what I felt was certainly great editorial if not actual effect. I needed convincing, and when the treated wire showed back up at our shop I was skeptical of whether it would make any noticeable difference.
I am certainly no longer skeptical. It is among the more significant improvements I've ever made to the driver.
The internal geometry of the motor has been redesigned, and the steel it's milled from contains less than half the carbon content of its predecessor, which allows for a higher saturation point. The pole piece is made from Permendur in the magnetic gap, where the voice coil is suspended. For those of us unfamiliar with it, Permendur is a cobalt iron magnetic alloy. It offers the highest saturation flux density of any commercially available metal, and as a result significantly improves the strength and quality of our driver's magnetic field. It is costly, and difficult both to source, and to machine. However by using it the peak performance of our field coil magnet has now reached 1.9 Tesla, or 19,000 Gauss. That strength and permeability confer immense control and accuracy of motion to the driver cones.
A new phase plug is milled from solid copper. The primary purpose of any phase plug is to guide sound and prevent cancellation, however in our application it is likewise used as a faraday ring, or shorting ring. While typically found inside the magnetic gap of drivers as a sleeve, we have found it to be effective either just above or below the gap as well, which in turn allows us to preserve gap width and flux density. Faraday rings lower the measured inductance of a driver, which offers better treble performance, and lower distortion. The final function of our phase plug is heat dissipation, away from the field coil. While our prior design performed all of these functions admirably with a small copper ring at the base of an aluminum version, the 110 copper is markedly better, in both respects.
Lastly, we have found a more performant leather to use in our surrounds, which also contributes a measurable, beneficial difference in the behavior of the driver.
The first application of this new creation is of course in it's purest expression, the S1. With the new driver, the S1 comes in at 8 Ohms, down from 16 Ohms prior, in part due to the cryogenic treatment of the voice coils. The internal cabinet lining and damping have been improved, and all internal wiring has been upgraded. The bases of the loudspeaker are improved as well, now comprised of a high mass phenolic resin-based composite material.
Lastly, the efficiency of the new S1x has improved over the S1, producing 95dB @ 1w/1m.
The first S1x was delivered just two weeks ago. It will make it's official debut with us at the Southwest Audio Fest in Dallas next week, at the Anatole Hilton in room 1418, March 15-17. This is unquestionably our most refined and expressive work to date. Look for system details, coming shortly.
The seeds of what has grown into this latest evolution were planted over the course several conversations with a potential client of significant means. "If you would have had no cost constraints of any kind during early development," he asked, "would you have made some different choices in designing your speakers?". "Well, of course I would have", I replied, and listed through a few that immediately came to mind. "Good," he said, "that's the speaker I'd want you to build for me." And then starting the next day, I began drawing up a detailed proposal of everything that I might have done on free of cost concerns, with the driver, and with the S1 and S2.
Today's summit is some measure of the realization of many, however certainly not all of the improvements that came to mind during that expansive thought exercise.
Much of the driver design was revisited in this development cycle. The voice coils have been cryogenically processed, a three day exercise in which the wire is submerged in liquid nitrogen for a full 48 hours at -300°F. This compresses the metal, purifies it, and makes its crystalline structure uniform. The wire becomes more conductive, and signals passing through it are less affected by distortion. While some companies representing every facet of the audio industry use deep cryogenic processing, many of you will know that Børresen employs it in their magnificent loudspeakers - to what I felt was certainly great editorial if not actual effect. I needed convincing, and when the treated wire showed back up at our shop I was skeptical of whether it would make any noticeable difference.
I am certainly no longer skeptical. It is among the more significant improvements I've ever made to the driver.
The internal geometry of the motor has been redesigned, and the steel it's milled from contains less than half the carbon content of its predecessor, which allows for a higher saturation point. The pole piece is made from Permendur in the magnetic gap, where the voice coil is suspended. For those of us unfamiliar with it, Permendur is a cobalt iron magnetic alloy. It offers the highest saturation flux density of any commercially available metal, and as a result significantly improves the strength and quality of our driver's magnetic field. It is costly, and difficult both to source, and to machine. However by using it the peak performance of our field coil magnet has now reached 1.9 Tesla, or 19,000 Gauss. That strength and permeability confer immense control and accuracy of motion to the driver cones.
A new phase plug is milled from solid copper. The primary purpose of any phase plug is to guide sound and prevent cancellation, however in our application it is likewise used as a faraday ring, or shorting ring. While typically found inside the magnetic gap of drivers as a sleeve, we have found it to be effective either just above or below the gap as well, which in turn allows us to preserve gap width and flux density. Faraday rings lower the measured inductance of a driver, which offers better treble performance, and lower distortion. The final function of our phase plug is heat dissipation, away from the field coil. While our prior design performed all of these functions admirably with a small copper ring at the base of an aluminum version, the 110 copper is markedly better, in both respects.
Lastly, we have found a more performant leather to use in our surrounds, which also contributes a measurable, beneficial difference in the behavior of the driver.
The first application of this new creation is of course in it's purest expression, the S1. With the new driver, the S1 comes in at 8 Ohms, down from 16 Ohms prior, in part due to the cryogenic treatment of the voice coils. The internal cabinet lining and damping have been improved, and all internal wiring has been upgraded. The bases of the loudspeaker are improved as well, now comprised of a high mass phenolic resin-based composite material.
Lastly, the efficiency of the new S1x has improved over the S1, producing 95dB @ 1w/1m.
The first S1x was delivered just two weeks ago. It will make it's official debut with us at the Southwest Audio Fest in Dallas next week, at the Anatole Hilton in room 1418, March 15-17. This is unquestionably our most refined and expressive work to date. Look for system details, coming shortly.
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