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fa: Real meat in the treble is still on, is it?


UM: Absolutely.


fa: (Giggles). What’s that mean to you?


UM: Well, I’m sure you’ve been there when a drummer truly worked over his crash cymbal. That moves real air and releases tremendous energy. Now compare that to your ubiquitous 20mm dome. Sure, one can get used to anything but let’s not talk realism, shall we?

fa: I’m getting a sense for what you’re after. It’s an interesting ingredient of your philosophy. Which gets us to certain quotes on your website you have to explain.


UM: Oh boy.


fa: You’ve built a number of hornspeakers. Your current catalogue shows three models and strangely the smallest one uses a bass horn while the bigger ones use good old-fashioned—some might say evil—bass reflex loading. What makes a rear-loaded bass horn sensible for the db8 but not the others?


UM: First off, aren’t most so-called hornspeakers vented in the bass? Since the Soundmaster and Monitor 10.15 do use mid/treble horns, I could have called ‘em hornspeakers based on those conventions. But never mind that. I’m after results, not married to specific ways of getting there.

fa: Which still begs the question why different solutions for different models.


UM: Relative to size and price, I could realize the intended goal via bass reflex with the bigger models but not the db8. Why? The db8 retails for €5.900/pr. That's a price where the customer should rightfully expect everything – to play quietly as well as with big dynamics and sufficiently deep bass. With an 8-inch woofer (mated to an 8" coax which wasn’t supposed to identify itself from Doppler distortion) and my given cabinet volume, these choices mandated a bass horn. Should someone disagree, they can visit here for a quick crash course on ‘loud’. Obviously loudness potential is just one of many criteria but it does belong. The way I see it, a speaker at this price requires that the designer deliver something without fundamental flaws. The rationale that a small 13cm woofer is limited in bandwidth and dynamics doesn’t wash for €6.000. But many designers obviously disagree. That's just one of the many peculiarities in hifi that would never fly in any other product category. If you compare our bigger Soundmaster and Monitor 10.15 models to the older full horns of the Dynavox 3 Series, you’ll recognize certain developments. On one hand this was realized with coaxial transducers. But there’s also improved bass definition combined with more authority and swing and significantly better compatibility with amplifiers. Those results are what matter, not what type of loading achieves them. It’s important to think out of the box and not get pigeon holed.

fa: Let’s stick to the horns for a bit longer – what’s special about the so-called Translinehorn of the db8?


UM: Small backloaded horns like the db8 are characterized by very steep rolloff. This means that the lowest audible frequency isn’t particularly low. It's usually around 60-70Hz. Below that the response drops off like a rock. Such designs thus tend to sound unnaturally dry. The db8 hits 60Hz as a horn with complete speed and precision. Below 60Hz the behavior turns to transmission-line mode to avoid premature attenuation and deliver real bass. Even low organ notes remain audible. Just how effective my loading is will be clear to those who know that the BMS woofer's resonant frequency is 115Hz. In operation below that resonant frequency you’ll notice a near complete absence of cone movement for optimal coupling.


fa: You've already hinted at the dual-concentric drivers. Why use those?


UM: Coaxial drivers have become quite fashionable to where I assume most will be familiar with their basic virtues of point-source dispersion, reduced phase shift, greater freedom from fixed listener distances, superior coherence, very good spatial traits and such. I thus want to get to the psychoacoustics aspects. Real-world sounds tend to originate from a point. The best example is the human voice. To recognize it as natural through a two-(or more)-way speaker is an acquired habit. You might say that our brains as the final arbiters on sound apply automatic error correction. How to translate acoustically false data into a semblance of realism is something familiar to everyone from the telephone. Particularly during the analog days telephony bandwidth was so restricted that you could barely tell man from woman, never mind individual persons or emotions. Nevertheless we all managed just fine. Our brains are highly capable


fa: Which leaves room for a lot, doesn’t it?


UM: Close. The issue is that any complex processing requires resources for massively paralleled calculations. Listening to coaxial music can turn off this processing since the signal doesn’t get vertically stretched but originates instead from one point. Our bio computer runs less hot and we can remain more relaxed. This explains why a longer tryst with coaxial speakers means that conventional speakers no longer sound coherent. We’ve gotten used to not apply brain correction and become more sensitized to true sounds. The opposite is also true. Listeners trained on multi-way speakers won’t really recognize coaxial coherence during a short demo. It takes time until the brain gets reprogrammed and recognizes that the signal no longer requires error correction. I think everyone is familiar with that phenomenon. The better the system and the less distorted the signal, the more relaxed our listening experience becomes.


fa: Aside from this preference for dual-concentric drivers, what other parameters are important to you during transducer selection?


UM: A good motor-strength:weight ratio is the key for good sensitivity and realistic dynamic range without compression. This includes low mechanical resistance and good coupling between voice coil and diaphragm. That has to remain in balance.  Lately I’ve noticed that Highend drivers pay more attention to lower mechanical resistance with convoluted spider vents. That’s essentially a good  idea but since ventilation consumes space it often leads to centimeter-long vents which increase mass and force micro vibrations through too much material. The devil is exorcised with a demon. There’s also the matter of membrane material. With woofers and midrange drivers I tend to prefer paper. Paper is a wood product and thus a natural material which sounds better. We’ll never have a Kevlar violin sound like a Stradivarius. For tweeters I prefer hornloaded compression drivers. Direct radiators sound dynamically too compromised and weak and always effortful. With Ribbons & Co. I dislike their vertical beaming and the lack of meatiness on cymbals.


fa: Do you have specific ground rules for crossovers?

UM: Certainly. Point-to-point wiring and resonance-optimized layouts with the proper boards are important. Filter networks are to serve superior drivers. They’re never to enforce behavior, just support mechanical roll-offs. I thus tend to focus on Bessel characteristics. Specific parts choices rely on many years of experience and crystallized preferences. That might explain why you won’t find the usual suspects in my filters. This attitude is also the secret to the balanced performance of the Altec 604 in the Imperial. A minimal filter was sufficient. Otherwise the Altec is rather problematic with a fairly colored forward midband and recessed treble. This is a result of conforming to Altec’s crossover frequency and the associated slopes necessary to enforce a specific behavior. It’s surprising that Altec never offered an even remotely sensible crossover for the 604 even though the solution was so obvious...


fa: Your db8, Soundmaster and Monitor 10.15 look very different. What do the enclosures share?


UM: They overlap in building materials and panel thickness.


fa: On material, how does the Soundmaster’s sandwich construction work? Is it also used in your new model?

UM: To answer the second question first, yes the 10.15 adopts the same basic construction method as the Soundmaster and db8 – not exactly but in general. The walls have seven layers. The core makes up 50 – 70% of the panel and consists of a wood material that’s oriented deliberately uneven. Moving outward the layers get thinner and harder. The final skin sheds input energies rapidly and distributes the remainder to the overall softer damping core for higher effectiveness. Despite these absorptive traits our enclosure walls are very stiff and stable.


fa: The new Monitor 10.15 looks pretty involved. What’s behind the form factor?


UM: Actually the outsides of a speaker mustn’t always conform to acoustic reasons as long as they don’t compromise performance. Here both overlap. The optical trick is obviously the tipped bass bin which creates time alignment between woofer and coax. It also optimizes the acoustic axis and thus the dispersion characteristics of the woofer. The modular approach decouples the drivers mechanically. Architecturally I’ve always been a Bauhaus fan and some of it seeped into my speaker architecture.


fa: What additional models might be planned for the nearer future?


UM: Planned and in the works are one or two models based on the Monitor 10.15 – something like a Monitor 8.12 and/or 6/10. Widebanders too could factor. Those who’ll only accept horns will eventually have something above the 10.15.


fa: How about electronics? During your Musicconnection days, you’ve had a few things like valve amps, pimped-out Playstations… anything new on that front?


UM: "A few things" is quite the understatement. We had three complete electronic ranges plus vinyl. Our DynaStation in various trim options was one of our most successful products and copied widely. For Dynamikks I’m working on amplifiers and the first prototypes are running but need more work.


fa: Herr Moning, thanks for the interview.

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