About four years ago at an audio show, I was approached by a couple of young engineers who showed me a prototype of a new AMT tweeter. The concept was a tweeter that was on-axis over 160 degrees. So we waited and waited to see if they could actually get them into production. This past year, they finally started manufacturing and we received #'s 24 and 25 off the assembly line.
By that time, Purifi came out with a new series of mid-woofers that were extremely low in terms of distortion. The drivers were an immediate hit in the DIY market.
We thought they would be a great combination with this new AMT tweeter. Unfortunately, the frequency response of the tweeter made it impossible to cross at around 1000Hz which was another of its intended benefits. The result was that if we crossed at 2kHz, we could use a normal passive crossover. But considering the cost of the drivers (about $3000 per pair), we already had a great candidate (Satori Be tweeter) that would work equally well.
So we produced a one-off pair using a plate amp with an active crossover. The fact that our customers have never warmed to active speakers, we did not feel it would be worth marketing. So those speakers are now sitting in a friends house and he is enjoying them, so much so, that we decided to do a version of it with the Be tweeter and passive crossover. Here is the result...
Now we just need a name for them. If you have any ideas, we'd love to hear them. If your proposed name is adopted, you will not win anything other than the pride of saying it was your idea.
So fire away!
- Jim
