GERMAN MAESTRO – The Technology
Why narrow build tolerances?
Why polypropylene membranes for the midbass?
MegaSphere™ & UltraSphere™
Why titanium domes for the tweeters?
Why plastic baskets for the midbass?
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MegaSphere™ & UltraSphere™ - The key for a maximum of sound experience
A physical law says that the higher a frequency is, the smaller the membrane surface needs to be in order to keep a wide spread sound radiation. However, this law stands in conflict with the desire to have a high sound pressure level, which requires a larger membrane surface. Thanks to the special shape of our MegaSphere™ and UltraSphere™ inverted tweeter domes, the air in the center of the dome is heavily compressed while the membrane is moving. At conventional tweeter domes, the air can move to the sides of the dome and the pressure fluctuations can allocate to a larger surface. This is why MegaSphere™ and UltraSphere™ domes behave like a smaller dome compared to conventional domes, however without typical disadvantages smaller domes have, like less efficiency and lower load capacity.
Due to the physical connection between membrane surface and frequency, mentioned at the beginning, a MegaSphere™ and UltraSphere™ tweeter dome can radiate even highest frequencies wide-spreaded which is supporting a homogenous, clean sound reproduction even in a bad listening position. This technical feature, as well as some others within the dome geometry, make our tweeters so special.
Why titanium domes for the tweeters?
Let´s start with the tweeter, which is the most critical component of an audio system.
The advantages of using titanium as dome material:
- very good acoustical attributes
- can be formed into complicated shapes
- very light weight
Titanium is a quite expensive material, which is mostly used for building high-tech machines like modern aircrafts. Titanium has a very high strength at a very light weight. In addition, it is very suitable to deform it. For this reason, it can be formed into complicated structures, which is very important for our special MegaSphere™ and UltraSphere™ Technology.
Beside the advantages during the manufacturing, titanium has also very good acoustical attributes. The high strength and the high inner damping of the material make it a perfect material for speaker membranes, because it has less membrane resonances than other materials at the same strength. You won´t find many brands using titanium dome tweeters on the market, because it takes a long time to gain enough experience with the material until you are able to build a perfect sounding tweeter from it in series production. Titanium is about 10 times more expensive than Aluminum; however GermanMAESTRO values the advantages for your sound experience more than the material cost.
Why plastic baskets for the midbass?
Once you have a good tweeter available, you need the midbass driver to keep up with it.
The advantages of using plastic for the baskets:
- lighter weight than metal at same stability
- resonances are much better absorbed than using a metal basket
- plastic doesn´t disturb the magnetic field of the speaker magnet system
- less critical to distort than metal (more flexible)
It´s a general opinion that metal is a better material than plastic. Nowadays, that is not always true anymore. High-end plastic can be much more suitable for some applications than metal. Just think about modern cars of aircrafts which are partly made from fiberglass to reduce weight at same stability. GermanMAESTRO is using the same fiberglass technology for the speaker baskets, although it is more expensive than metal baskets. The fiberglass tubes are improving the weight/stability ratio. In addition, the basket itself is acoustically much more neutral than a metal basket. Like a well engineered bridge, the basket is resistant against critical vibrations, which helps to have a more clean and pure sound reproduction.
Why narrow build tolerances?
No matter what part of a speaker system - accuracy is very important.
The advantages of narrow build tolerances:
- increase of magnet system efficiency
- small size, easy to install
- less weight
- higher long-term power handling possible
In general, a speaker is quite easy to manufacture. But it really starts getting complicated, once you want to build it with narrow build tolerances:
In general, high quality speakers will always have narrow build tolerances. A small air-gap - through which the voice coil is moving - will increase the efficiency of the speaker, since a narrow air gap is important to make use of the magnetic power in the most efficient way. For this reason, a GermanMAESTRO speaker will need less magnetic material and is still providing higher driving power. Further, a narrow air gap is increasing the maximum power handling of the speaker because the heat removal from voice coil to magnet system can happen more easily.
Further, narrow build part tolerances ensure that each produced loudspeaker is exactly identical to the prototype sample regarding the tonality. Even in a series production over years.
Why polypropylene membranes for the midbass?
The advantages of polypropylene:
- high inner damping factor
- smooth "roll-off" to higher frequencies
- absolute resistance against humidity or water
- a very long lifespan
Polypropylene may not be the fanciest material to build a speaker, but its attributes have some serious advantages if it is used in the right way. Its high inner damping factor makes it a good material to use for membranes, because inner resonances are reduced which makes the sound more pure. In addition, polypropylene is causing a so called "roll-off" effect. This means that the membrane is limiting its ability to reproduce high frequencies by itself which also is minimizing resonances (as hard membranes have). This helps to smooth the overall frequency response of the speaker. The result is a more audiophile sounding product. Right now, GermanMAESTRO is using polypropylene membranes only. However, if you consider the attributes named above during the engineering of a loudspeaker, you could also think about alternative materials for the speaker membranes.