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.

Ultrasphere™

 

Today's home interior areas are littered with more than less poor speaker placement options in a highly reflective environment that is not conductive to high performance listening.. In the past, an elaborate and costly custom home-installation would be required to place the speakers in the proper location for optimum staging and imaging. With the provision of GermanMAESTRO's groundbreaking UltraSphere™-Technology, those days are gone!

In Hifi-Stereo applications with the new GermanMAESTRO UltraSphere™ LINEA-D and LINEA-S speakers the usual very narrow sweet-spot position will be significantly extended in its width and depth. 
Especially with a 5.1. home theatre application, these LINEA-D and LINEA-S UltraSphere™ loudspeakers provide very powerful sound reproduction and extraordinary precision in any sound effect's projection.

The heart of the GermanMAESTRO's UltraSphere™-Technology consists of its unique tweeter-system developed and produced in Germany. Those tweeters, with their inverted titanium dome and high performance neodymium ring magnets, were already used for absolute High-End Car-Audio Systems. And renowned magazines tested them with outstanding results. 

Subsequently advanced for very high performance home audio application this UltraSphere™ tweeter provides an extraordinarily wide radiation angle, an extremely low resonance frequency and tremendous power handling combined with outstanding linearity. As the result of intensive research, computer simulations and decade-long experience with ultra light titanium as source material for tweeter domes, the combination with new materials coupled with exhaustive engineering- and tuning time has lead to a especially defined connection of cap- and surround area calculated to the closest tolerances far ahead of the competition. The very low resonance frequency at 1080 Hertz, the spaciousness, precision and power handling, all contribute to the new tweeter's superb tonal balance in both on-sweet-spot and off-sweet spot listener positions. Simply put, this we think, this is the currently most versatile high performance tweeter ever built for audio applications in a serial production!

SyncVoice™

 

Speaker systems in different sizes usually provide different sound scales comparable to e.g. different sized music instruments of the same category.

Achieving with all 5 surround speakers (front- center- and rear-speakers) a homogeneous family sound, their roots (here between 200Hz. and 4.000 Hz.) must be voiced towards an absolutely similarly sounding scale.

The very best precondition to make this happen is to have an optimal control of speaker drivers' engineering as well as - production. So besides the whole systems' engineering, we also mainly manufacture speaker drivers as we do the speakers' final assembly and quality control. completely at our own in the German factory.

Resulting from such consistently well controlled workflows starting with speaker systems' lab voicing and ending in the serial products' or parts' production, the GermanMAESTRO engineers have driven manifold intensive research and computer simulations to get this homogeneous family sound capabilities realized according to our very high requirements.

The procedure applied to achieve this very high quality family sound, we call GermanMAESTRO SyncVoice™-Technology.

Operating SyncVoice™-Technology combined with the UltraSphere™-Technology, listeners experience such an outstanding homogenous, precise and powerful sound performance that it seems to him as impossible hearing this sound just from 5 different sonic-sources. This is true even in less than optimal loudspeaker placements. It doesn't matter if you are listening to a great live concert, or if you watch a hot Action-Thriller, the GermanMAESTRO LINEA-D- or LINEA-S systems grant always most exciting shivers down your spine.