Extreme Story
It all began at a Jan Garbarek concert: an electrifying show,
recorded for their live album.
The audio quality was superlative, I listened to it as if in a
trance. Then a challenging question struck me halfway
through the concert: “why not try developing an unprece-
dented high-end speaker system?”
I was ready to do battle to get this challenge onto the
drawing board and so the next day I immediately men-
tioned it to Emilio, chief of Macrom’s Research &
Development department. Embarrassed like a kid
caught red-handed, Emilio confided that he and his
team had secretly been working on the idea for
some time.
I felt very excited. But how can one concentrate on
such a highly creative project while sitting in the
office dealing with the thousands of everyday
tasks?
Thirty minutes later, Emilio and I – with notebook, pen, heaps of ideas
and no mobiles – drove up into the Swiss hills. Destination: a restaurant famous for
its cuisine, hard to get into during the weekend but quiet on the other days.
By 3 p.m. when the waiters had begun hinting that although hospitality is sacred, it also has its time
limits, the first sketch of what were to be the Extremes was down on paper.
After that day, we spent whole weeks talking during the day and thinking at night. But
our project was having trouble getting past the embryonic state – we were at a standstill.
And then a stroke of genius suddenly hit us during one of our by-then-habitual brainstorming sessions
at the restaurant. “Fred, what’s the best tweeter?” Emilio asked me point-blank. “Our 57.16S” - I replied
- “because it has unbelievable frequency response and acoustic performance.”
Emilio was of the same mind and stressed that its
resonance volume and other innovative solutions
made it virtually unique.
However, I reminded him that the 57.16S was difficult
to install due to its large size.
After a brief silence, Emilio whispered as if to himself:
“OK then, that means we’ll have to make a 57.16S
with a neodymium magnet to keep it small, and with a
removable resonance chamber!”
I could have hugged him: that’s how the idea of the
Extreme tweeter was born.
The woofer was also conceived during
a lunch break. Emilio drew it on a
paper napkin and I can testify that it
was very similar to the final model
you find today.
Insert the face plate into the hole from the front and fix it
in an audio system. NEVER connect it without the correct capacitor/condenser/filter when instal-
ling these units as part of the system.
A
Extreme
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