Audio Physic showed their new driver with super-thin flat membrane which they already registered for a patent. It premiered in the limited edition Medeos flagship speaker. Lead designer Manfred Diestertich calls this transducer a marriage of dynamic and magnetostatic elements without their respective compromises. He also predicts that this currently 3D-printed platform would not only be with their company for the next 10-15 years but make its presence felt across the industry. We've seen rethinks of the dynamic driver from Børresen, Ilumnia, Cabasse's triaxials, KEF's Uni-Core, Arya's AirBlade, the Linæum derivatives by Audio Consulting and AudioNec and of course Manger's bending-wave unit. But I'd not heard of any described as a dynamic/magnetostatic hybrid yet. The curious will thus keep their eyes peeled on Audio Physic.
If you're one of the ten lucky customers ending up with a Medeos to have your say over its finish, you'll only get drivers which operate without traditional spiders. None of them are conventional. Each 5-way speaker sports 8 x 11-inch woofers in a push/push arrangement on the side walls whilst the sloping front adds 4 x 180mm mid-bass couplers to 300Hz, the novel 150mm midrange to 2'000Hz, a high midrange to 5'000Hz then the HHCT 3+ tweeter. Manfred packed all of this into a multi-plex enclosure with honey-comb composite interior which measures 175x32x55cm HxWxD and weighs ~200kg. That I'd really have loved to hear. It gives new meaning to listening to a snowflake fall. Its frame doesn't just look like a snowflake. Also like a snowflake, the moving mass hence inertia of this spiderless film diaphragm is exceptionally low. Similar to a ribbon tweeter, that will make it ultra responsive to minute voltage variations of the music signal. From that one anticipates extreme resolution and dynamic nuance. As time progresses, we should see that driver in other Audio Physic models. Until then, ten lucky Medeos owners will be first to know the difference; and perhaps help offset some of the embedded R&D investment. For more on the 'snowflake' driver and Medeos, read my Codex Upgraded review.
Medeos product page
