At this juncture one should pause and reflect on speakerdom's status quo. Conventional dynamic drivers dominate. Even very expensive very established brands do nothing of note to really advance the state of this art. They continue business as usual. It's disguised behind fancy cabinet shapes and hi-tech enclosure materials. Meanwhile the actual sound producers remain tied to a pistonic vintage driver concept. Its samples are routinely sourced from the same makers which supply their competitors. Nothing new under the hifi sun is a common associated complaint. It's precisely here where companies like German Physiks make an actual tech contribution. Regardless of what one thinks of their presentation; or positioning in the market as it relates to price; that fact should be acknowledged separately. When it comes to innovation, German Physiks are a cut above from some of the biggest most famous names in the field. Their website does a good job of
explaining the four different operational modes which their DDD driver undergoes across its bandwidth to be a de facto mechanical (crossover-less) 4-way.
What still is of note? The first production speaker based on the Dick's Dipole Driver licensed by Holger Mueller and perfected over a few years before deemed ready for prime time was the 1992 Borderland MkI shown at left.
It's the model which launched German Physiks the brand. In a most direct way, the Borderland MkIV is thus today's expression of the company's maiden product and core concept. All other models are either attempts to lower cost by scaling down the associated woofer and enclosure; or to scale up output and bandwidth by paralleling DDD drivers in various ways whilst mating them to more and more ambitious bass systems. But if one had to distill their entire catalogue down to just one model for
the quintessential German Physiks, it unquestionably would be the Borderland MkIV under review.
Inherent in the by necessity freely spaced driver is lack of enclosure coloration (there is no box associated with it); and ideal employ in a simple 2-way configuration which merely must fill in the lower 3+ octaves
where the DDD's bandwidth stops. Here hi-tech is in the service of simplicity, not complexity. And most would agree that when it comes to crossovers, simpler is better. Fewer filter points or 'ways' are preferable to more.