More like new models really. I have been working on a new pair that will have a matching center channel. But the three piece line up will be quite the music group.
The Skinny 6's are going to be great speakers for two channel or home theater applications. These image like crazy and will present a great sound stage. They will also be ideal for small rooms or untreated lively rooms. Full range driver guys will love them too.
The top LGK driver is covering an extremely wide band. It's in a sealed box. The four below it are in a ported box and are covering mid and low bass. On the back side is another LGK driver in the top of the box. This one is covering some of the upper ranges only and adds a layer of realism and spacial cues to the sound stage.
At first I tried what I tell everyone not to do. I let the drivers cross in the mid-range with a crossover point of 400Hz. They were identical drivers after all and the response curve looked good. It didn't sound good though. The 8mH laminated iron core inductor caused enough smearing to really muddy up the mid-range. So they went back to the drawing board. Going to a 12mH Erse Super Q inductor on the lower drivers and following it with a larger cap pulled the lower woofers back to a crossover point just over 300Hz and added a steeper slope that got them out of the upper ranges. And the result was that the great mid-range that the LGK drivers excel at so well shined through just like the little LGK 1.0 model. After putting them through their paces they get a thumbs up now.
The bass response is really tight and clean and they handled low frequency hits from the Chinese drum tracks pretty well. They seemed really un-bothered by the low notes while popping out solid mid-bass hits. -3db down points are in the low 70's. Even with just 1/2" thick material the side panels never moved, flexed, or resonated with bass notes. They are well braced and lined with No Rez. But I was still surprised by how solid they were.
Sensitivity is 87db and they are extremely smooth (+/-1db all the way to 5kHz).
Even with the rear firing driver these can be used in close placement to the front wall. The rear driver doesn't play low enough to cause coupling issues with the wall.
For those of you thinking you can just mount a full range driver on the front and on the back of a speaker like this and this it will work out great, you are mistaken. As wavelengths increase they wrap around the enclosure and become more omni directional. Then the output from the front and rear drivers arrive out of phase and cancel each other out making large dips in the response. And running the rear driver out of phase just shifts the cancellation to another spot. It is not the same as a single open baffle driver.
The only way this works is to limit the range covered by the rear facing driver. It has to cover only the frequency range that will have wavelengths short enough to not be able to become omni at all, or have any output to the front of the speaker. So all of its output is reflected energy from the front wall. And it does have quite the effect on things. It gives the effect of musically instruments being in the room with you rather than coming at you from a speaker. So they add the realism that you get from a lot of open baffle speakers.
As soon as I can I'll start on the matching center channel. The Flat 5 will be a five driver array that will be much like the forward facing drivers of the Skinny 6's. It will put the main wide band driver in the center and have the two low range covering drivers on each side of it. It will likely have a forward facing port on each end too. It will be a short (flat), wide, and deep box design.
I think you guys are really going to like these.
