ImperialDuplex powered by
The legend lives on!
Imperial
Dynavox
In 1943 the probably most famous speaker driver – the Altec Duplex 604 –
was introduced by James B. Lansing. From 1943 until today this speaker
remained the “standard” – state of the art – of professional monitoring speakers. 800+ recording and broadcast studios all over the world used and do
still use the Altec 604 as their favorite monitoring speaker system.
„When my eyes were closed, the original performance
was experienced as though it was not
an electromechanical reproduction“
A well known recording engineer about the Altec 604 Duplex
much like the original design from the 1940s. Certain detail modifications
and alterations make the “L”-version even sound better than some of the
legendary predecessors.
Nothing is created any more.
What will be new, will be new through development
Friedrich von Schiller, famous German writer
The original Lansing crossover network design is a point of criticism. It does
not match the speakers qualities. Designed to make the speaker work in
many different enclosures the crossover design is a solution for all cases, a
compromise.
Dynavox opted for an optimized crossover network to suit the Imperial horn
enclosure perfectly. The Imperial´s crossover design outperforms the original
by far. The Imperial´s crossover features 4 different settings to suit amplifiers of different character (tube or solid state)
Imperial´s enclosure is made from very rare “Ajous” wood, applied in a special 11-ply-sandwich-matrix. Typical “High End rules” like thick and heavy
materials were abandoned. New ideas completely different to ordinary enclosure design were realized.
Dynavox scrutinized the influences of
• materials
• Wall thickness
• stiffing methods
• damping methods
and detected extreme sonical differences. The differences appeared to be far
greater than anybody would ever have expected. Different prototype enclosures (same size, same speaker, but different material or different wall thikkness, different damping) sounded like completely different speakers.
Dynavox Imperial
More than 60 years of production might give you a hint of the outstanding
qualitites of this speaker system. There are a handful other speakers produ-
ced for such a long period (e.g. Tannoy, Lowther), but none is reputed a
legend as the Altec 604.
Lansing´s design uses a 16 inch woofer with 3” voice coil in coaxial conjunction with a 1,75” compression tweeter driver, which in former times was desi-
gned as the socalled “Multicellular horn”. Todays improved version uses a
rectangular “Constant
Directivity” Mantaray-Horn,
named by its inventor
Mantaray.
The Duplex design realizes a
point source, which is
undoubtedly the ideal of any
speaker designer. Almost
unintelligible that there are
that few point source speakers available. After all
todays Altec 604-L still is
Our research achieved astonishing results: Almost any of the “speaker-builder-rules” appeared to be not true. It might be surprising that e.g. an enclosure made from 1,2” (30mm) MDF (medium density fibreboard, a material
commonly used) additionally stiffened and damped, sounded unprecise, dull
and made the music sound almost entirely dead. You might ask why so
many speaker designers do make their enclosures that way. To tell you the
truth, MDF is an easy-to-machine material and it is quite cheap. On the
other hand people seem to believe in certain “basic rules” which they never
investigate again. We did!
If you take a closer look how speaker enclosures were made some decades
ago you will mostly find materials like plywood or fibreboard.
What we – on first glance surprisingly - first found is that enclosures soun-
ded the better the lighter their material was. High mass stores more energy
than low mass. The widespread theory that more mass is less able to resonate, is simply wrong. High mass has high inertia as it calms down slowly.
And that is how it sounds: sluggish, slow, lazy, dead.
Our research results made us search for a kind of wood especially light and
stiff at the same time. Ajous is available as complete tree only. So we had to
cut the panels ourselves. During the development of the Imperial we realized a double-wall-sandwich-matrix design with maximum stiffness at minimum weight.
Our Ajous-enclosure outperforms a traditional MDF-enclosure by far. One
would not believe that the same speaker is playing.
Even if the production of the Ajous-enclosure is extremely costly, any effort is
worth the result.
The enclosure works –
basshorn. All efforts result in the Dynavox Imperial, our ultimate speaker
which is a true homage to James B. Lansing.
A final speaker.
like all Dynavox speakers – as a folded backloaded
ImperialDuplex powered by
To describe the sound quality of the Imperial is quite difficult.
Whoever heard the Imperial is speechless, unable to comment what he
heard. The word “liveliness” is brought to the true sense of the word.
Imperial
Dynavox
Distinctness is the only thing in music
We promise: The Imperial is lightyears away from anything you have ever
listened to.
Even far away from anything you know about Dynavox.
Needless to say more. Come and you will see...
But caution: There is no way back.
Gustav Mahler, composer
Technical specification of the Dynavox Imperial:
• Principle: 2-way Duplex (coaxial) fullrange horn speaker
• Altec-Lansing 604-L Duplex driver
Woofer: 16”
Tweeter: 1,75” driver using Constant directivity Mantaray rectangular
horn 60°x40°, weighing 15kg
• Low frequency: 34Hz
• Impedance: 8 Ohms
• Power handling: 65W rms (20Hz – 20khz)
• Efficiency: 100dB@1W/1m
• Max SPL @ P=65W: 116dB
• Recommended amplifier power: 3-100W @ 8 Ohms
• Recommended placement: close to the wall (1-3ft.)
• Size: H 44,9” x W 28” x D 16,1” ( H 114 x W 71 x D 41cm )
• Weight net: 50kg each
• Available surfaces: real wood veneer custom
• Guarantee: 60 months
musicconnection - NORD:
musicconnection - SÜD: Balzenbacher Str. 66a - 69488 Birkenau - Tel. 062 01 / 322 97 Fax 062 01 / 34200
Am Hahnenkreuz 54
- 52223 Stolberg - Tel. 02402 / 7501 35 Fax: 02402 / 97 8753
www.musicconnection. de
eMail: imperial@musicconnection.de
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