With the super tweeter, César's lines lengthen and converge into a narrower top to enhance the architectural elements of perhaps an elegant bell tower. Given our room's short-wall layout, I'd opt for the narrow look to turn the longer sides facing the side walls.
To learn what the super tweeter versions in magnesium-alloy and diamond will do for competing loudspeakers, read my review of them. For a notion on what goes on inside svelte César's corpus, "it's complex. I had to think about everything relative to assembly in autocad, to not show any screws and to enable convenient future servicing. Attached is a photo of certain but not all parts of the matrix to convey the general idea." As to showing off at Munich HighEnd 2019, "it's very booked and I couldn't secure an upstairs room for an active exhibit. So I'll have a small static display on the ground floor with Thomas Fast Audio, my German distributor."
Naturally, I also asked Franck for photos of his drivers before they're installed to conceal their guts. "My 5-inch widebander took me six long years of R&D. Conventional magnets were no good. Plastic or metal phase plugs were no good either. I eventually had to go after expensive AlNiCo magnets and solid maple phase plugs."
Clearly César didn't just cut an imperial profile. His vocal cords were bespoke highly trained specimens, not prêt-à-porter bits one shares with countless competitors who buy from the same vendor but ask for cosmetic alterations to disguise the fact. With César, one really does listen to proprietary drivers. For such a boutique operation, that was far from the norm.
César's visual inspiration from the Eiffel Tower is obvious.
"This type motor is called an inner magnet design. Most drivers use outer magnets. The copper ring on ours is for distortion reduction and to give a more constant impedance which makes it easier to drive. The advantage of an inner magnet is the reduced pressure on the back side of the moving transducer. Only expensive drivers use this geometry.
"A common issue with widebanders is their narrowing HF dispersion. As they ascend in frequency, they get more and more directional. The layman's term is beaming. Hence my wooden reflector lenses. Now the measurement curves are close to perfect. But the wooden reflectors need careful hand sanding to get their curvature to that final ultra-smooth finish. A CNC machine can't do it."
From his resonators and spliced cables, former jeweler Franck Tchang was no stranger to laborious handiwork. In fact, he enjoys the artisanal approach.
"My woofer with copper ring, even the filter caps and inductors are all in-house productions." Talk about controlling all variables with your own ears and hands. Even the hookup wiring is specially ordered UPOCC copper.
Whilst César starts out life as a twin enclosure in production, by the time he knocks on your door, it's a monolithic affair. Despite the thin waist gap, it won't separate out into head and base units since the hookup wiring is hard-soldered.
"If one buys a basic César without super tweeter but wants to add one later, simply put it on the top and use a pair of speaker cables to connect to your amp (biwire) or our WBT speaker terminals on the underside (separate shorter wire). One can freely choose the magnesium or expensive diamond version, even interchange them afterwards. If one wants to eliminate any external cable running down the back, one orders César with the super tweeter already integrated like your loaner pair. Now we install everything at the factory. Obviously with this option you can't remove the super tweeter or change to another version afterwards. Whether we permanently fit the magnesium-alloy or pure diamond super tweeter must be decided at order time."
