I am RobertG. G for Gaboury. I am designer of Gemme Audio loudspeakers. I started playing with loudspeakers at 8 when I dismantled a pocket radio my uncle gave me for my birthday. It was battery powered with a blue plastic case. I tought the speaker would sound better if it was liberated from the case. It was not really better, so I decided to persue my work by doing the same thing to my father's Grundig stereo.
I was rewarded with a slap behind the head... The week after the Grundig eperiment, I got my first allowance, which was entirely spent at the RadioShack store at the end of the street. This would continue for quite some time.
Fast forward 1976. Most of my friends we're playing in Rock bands. I had no real talent playing instruments, but I had a good ear, and was able to build large horn loaded PA speakers. So I paid my way through college building speakers for rock bands. Around that time, I discovered Philips DeForest and Rola-Celestion drivers, which would keep me busy for a lot of time. Air suspension was the "in" thing, so I shifted my interest from horns to air suspension designs. Then to reflex, back to horns.
I guess I was not exactly decided on what design was the overall best, except that nothing could surpass JBL 4530 scoops when realistic bass was required.
I you ever want to find out what "realistic" is, I suggest you attend a drummer practice session. Horns are perfect when it comes to reproduce the full impact of a bass drum. But when it comes to vocals, horns are not really good, because singers do not project voice the same way a horn does. This led me to work on various designs: horns for bass, direct radiator for mids and horn for tweeters. Tweeters had almost no power handling at that time - this was the birth of polyphonic synths, and in genral, music had much more high frequency energy than before, so different driver designs were required.
...
In 2004, my wife positively (to put it politely) wanted the bass horns out of the house, so I thinned my experiment collection, and by a strange twist of faith, people actually wanted to buy more of my experiments. In 2005, Gemme Audio became a business. In 2006, Vflex loading was introduced. As you might guess, Vflex is a short horn that actually borrows from transmission line and resonators.
This year, I am introducing the 3rd generation of the system.
I feel that sound reproduction is finally entering a new age of development. I prefer the word "development" over "invention". It took 25 years of development to get digital (as invention) to sound correctly. Advances are made in software, and I see this development in a very positive way. With sound being digital, it is only a matter of time before we push software to actually control the sound we get from speakers. This has been the norm for years in the PA world, but I think it will have a major impact on how we listen to digital recorded material. This is possible because we do not - or need to - listen to recorded music in real time, so flash based playback and DSP correction will become the norm.
In many ways, I think we will no longer have to make a choice between horn and sealed and reflex enclosures for the best possible sound, sound that is true to life. I guess we're approaching a point where Hi Fi as we experience it will be seen as a "victorian" exercise...
I was rewarded with a slap behind the head... The week after the Grundig eperiment, I got my first allowance, which was entirely spent at the RadioShack store at the end of the street. This would continue for quite some time.
Fast forward 1976. Most of my friends we're playing in Rock bands. I had no real talent playing instruments, but I had a good ear, and was able to build large horn loaded PA speakers. So I paid my way through college building speakers for rock bands. Around that time, I discovered Philips DeForest and Rola-Celestion drivers, which would keep me busy for a lot of time. Air suspension was the "in" thing, so I shifted my interest from horns to air suspension designs. Then to reflex, back to horns.
I guess I was not exactly decided on what design was the overall best, except that nothing could surpass JBL 4530 scoops when realistic bass was required.
I you ever want to find out what "realistic" is, I suggest you attend a drummer practice session. Horns are perfect when it comes to reproduce the full impact of a bass drum. But when it comes to vocals, horns are not really good, because singers do not project voice the same way a horn does. This led me to work on various designs: horns for bass, direct radiator for mids and horn for tweeters. Tweeters had almost no power handling at that time - this was the birth of polyphonic synths, and in genral, music had much more high frequency energy than before, so different driver designs were required.
...
In 2004, my wife positively (to put it politely) wanted the bass horns out of the house, so I thinned my experiment collection, and by a strange twist of faith, people actually wanted to buy more of my experiments. In 2005, Gemme Audio became a business. In 2006, Vflex loading was introduced. As you might guess, Vflex is a short horn that actually borrows from transmission line and resonators.
This year, I am introducing the 3rd generation of the system.
I feel that sound reproduction is finally entering a new age of development. I prefer the word "development" over "invention". It took 25 years of development to get digital (as invention) to sound correctly. Advances are made in software, and I see this development in a very positive way. With sound being digital, it is only a matter of time before we push software to actually control the sound we get from speakers. This has been the norm for years in the PA world, but I think it will have a major impact on how we listen to digital recorded material. This is possible because we do not - or need to - listen to recorded music in real time, so flash based playback and DSP correction will become the norm.
In many ways, I think we will no longer have to make a choice between horn and sealed and reflex enclosures for the best possible sound, sound that is true to life. I guess we're approaching a point where Hi Fi as we experience it will be seen as a "victorian" exercise...
When I start the design of a project, I am looking for a sound color. I'm asking myself, what sound do I want? What's the purpose of the speaker? What's the flavor? Then, I search for the ingredients, the drivers. I do not believe much in custom drivers. There are a lot of highly qualified engineers in Germany, Danemark, Israel, USA, China, Vietnam, Singapore... Each of them in competition with the other, and each manufacturer presents a whole new product line each year, with better technology, better magnets, back chambers, etc. In my opinion, it is better to look at all what has been carefully developed, and pick the best. I do not beleive I am a better engineer than hundreds of them.
