All drivers employed in the Divin are extremely special. We totally developed the 8” and 18” drivers from the ground up. There are no existing drivers on the market met Oliver's requirements.
The tasks for the 8” and 18 “drivers are:
- to find a basket, which is very strong and rigid without resonances. At the same time, they have to be well ventilated in order to minimize air resistance and provide best possible cooling of the voice coil
- to reach the lowest possible mechanical and electrical loss factors, all micro details of the music signal will then be unveiled. The result is extremely fast transient response.
We also had to design a special dampening material, a special spider and moving parts, an extremely vented design, glass fiber voice coil bobbin with special adaption to the membrane etc. The end result is reflected from the loss factor Rms of 2.2 compared to a typical value of around 6 for an 18” bass drivers. To compare, the 18” driver made by TAD (TL1801) has a loss factor Rms of 3.3, and a moving mass of 158g.
- Extremely light weight moving mass in order to reach an optimum impulse and transient response. The moving mass incl. air load for the 18” and 8” is respectively 111g and 17g only, even though the linear Xmax peak to peak is 16 mm for the 18” and 7 mm for the 8”. These are truly outstanding light weight Mms value. The results are extremely fast attack, best possible time response and control.
Effective heat management. Parameters of the drivers always shift significantly when temperature of voice coil increases. We have to use massive voice coil. It is 65 mm diameter for the 8” mid-range and 90 mm for the 18” bass. Moreover, we double the heat dissipating surface by internal/external winding. The complete motor parts are massively ventilated. As a result, the small parameter are staying extremely stable. Music stays perfectly uncoloured and time aligned, no matter at what volume the music is playing.
Further reduction of distortion. Amongst others, we apply 3 shortening rings in the motors of the chassis. Impedance stays flat also at higher frequencies.
A very linear frequency response in the usable frequency area of the drivers is achieved. Even the resonance behaviour above the usable frequency area of the drivers have been taken extra effort to control. We achieved this by using a very light weight and stable membrane material mixture out of non-pressed paper with carbon fibres and glass fibres.
We also applied a multi-stage treatment on the membranes and their surrounding areas (including the aluminium basket of the 18” woofers). The goal is to perfectly control membrane resonances, phase and dispersion behaviour. Such propriety treatment is based on the technology out of our Carbon Excellence bending wave drivers. Hereby you get a perfect phase/time and dispersion behaviour and a max. linear frequency response.
Also the tweeter gets a multi-stage treatment, especially at the rear closed chamber so as to bring the resonance-, frequency- and phase behavior to perfection.
1.) The cabinet is a combination of two different materials with specific damping and resonance behaviors bounded together with a specific PU glue. The wall thickness is nowhere less than 38 mm. There are a total of 3 separate cabinets per channel: 1 cabinet housing the 18” driver at the top, followed by another cabinet containing two 8” midrange and a tweeter (each of the 8” midrange driver and the tweeter also has its own sealed closed chamber), plus another cabinet housing 18” bass drivers.
2.) Kinetic mass dampening chambers are applied inside the midrange cabinets due to the criticalness of this area.
3.) For the midrange drivers, Oliver uses a closed chamber design in order to reach the maximum speed and best time behavior.
4.) All walls of the internal enclosures have no parallel walls so as to annihilate standing waves in the enclosures.
5.) For the internal damping of the midrange enclosure, a very special combination of different damping materials is applied in order to achieve a broad and constant damping behavior over the whole frequency range. Such methodology also avoids energy saving effects to the detriment of phasing and timing.
6.) The bass enclosure is designed in a special bass reflex alignment integrated with an internal Helmholz resonator, which is coupled to the internal volume by special materials. Internal standing waves are often tremendous in big enclosures. With this approach, conventional damping material can be avoided thereby retaining a lot more bass details. Only very little damping material are used on specific positions. All these efforts aim to bring time, phase and frequency behavior to perfection.
7.) The midrange and tweeter drivers are mounted inside a front baffle made of thick aluminum (up to 70 mm). This front baffle with the drivers is then mounted onto the enclosure. These units are mechanically decoupled from the rest of the enclosure. To compare, the 18” bass drivers are directly mounted into the enclosures.
8.) There are 4 bass reflex openings symmetrically arranged on the front of each bass enclosure. They correspond exactly to the symmetrical positions of the 18” bass driver inside the enclosure. Through this arrangement, the bass driver always sees symmetrical loading from the back. As a result, the membrane does not wobble when excursions increases. (Unsymmetrical wobbling of the membrane is one of the major causes contributing to rising distortions because the voice coil is forced to wobble in the magnet field.
9.) The tweeter and midrange units are mounted in the aluminum front baffle in a specific symmetrical array with specific angles, offsets and baffle dimensions, in order to bring the time and phase behavior to perfection. Only through such approach can music be reproduced in its real size and scale. Additionally the overall dispersion is linearized through this symmetrical arrangement. Also the dimension of chambers of the front baffles plays a big part to achieve perfect phasing and overall dispersion to perfection. Last but not least, reflections on the edges of the baffles are also eliminated.
10.) The dispersion of the tweeter is guided through a waveguide, which is milled out of solid aluminum with a specific curve progression, in order to perfect dispersion characteristics alongside seamlessly integration with the 8” midrange drivers.
11.) The stainless steel feet of the enclosure are especially designed in order to minimize the contact area through coupling the enclosure to the ground. The whole construction is resting on big ceramic balls of the highest quality. So the contact area is as minimal as it can be.
12.) All the internal wiring is Lacorde Statement speaker cable.
13.) The crossover only uses best parts such as silver/gold/oil capacitors, foil inductors, and air-core inductors etc. A special gigantic inductor is employed in the signal path of the 18” woofers for lowest possible resistance and distortions. This gigantic inductor in front of the 18” woofers received additional multi-stage treatment with different epoxy resins in vacuum to safeguard stability when playing at high volume level.
14.) The crossovers are located in a separate location of the middle cabinet. They are completely sealed inside the enclosures in order to minimise air pressure induced distortion. Every crossover way (tweeter, midrange, bass) is housed in a separate box. Then they are mounted atop silent blocks behind the Kinetic Mass dampening chambers. The goal is to further reduce the magnetic-coupling interferences inside the enclosure. Additionally, the crossover parts are embedded in an epoxy resin to further stabilise resonance.
Given the immense quality of the Gobel statement ethernet/USB/Power cables, not to mention the coherence of the bending wave driver, my expectation on DIVIN is very high. Yamada's endorsement is golden.
Thales Statement Arm to be unveiled exclusively at 5th AE Super Hi End Show. We have been financing the development of this super Statement Arm for a long while. For this project, Micha hired a top notch watch maker - Flaviano Carrapa - who previously worked for ultra end watch brand - URWERK. Exquisite mechanical skills are required for this extreme delicate mechanical piece of engineering.
Comments
The driver:
All drivers employed in the Divin are extremely special. We totally developed the 8” and 18” drivers from the ground up. There are no existing drivers on the market met Oliver's requirements.
The tasks for the 8” and 18 “drivers are: - to find a basket, which is very strong and rigid without resonances. At the same time, they have to be well ventilated in order to minimize air resistance and provide best possible cooling of the voice coil - to reach the lowest possible mechanical and electrical loss factors, all micro details of the music signal will then be unveiled. The result is extremely fast transient response.
We also had to design a special dampening material, a special spider and moving parts, an extremely vented design, glass fiber voice coil bobbin with special adaption to the membrane etc. The end result is reflected from the loss factor Rms of 2.2 compared to a typical value of around 6 for an 18” bass drivers. To compare, the 18” driver made by TAD (TL1801) has a loss factor Rms of 3.3, and a moving mass of 158g. - Extremely light weight moving mass in order to reach an optimum impulse and transient response. The moving mass incl. air load for the 18” and 8” is respectively 111g and 17g only, even though the linear Xmax peak to peak is 16 mm for the 18” and 7 mm for the 8”. These are truly outstanding light weight Mms value. The results are extremely fast attack, best possible time response and control.
Effective heat management. Parameters of the drivers always shift significantly when temperature of voice coil increases. We have to use massive voice coil. It is 65 mm diameter for the 8” mid-range and 90 mm for the 18” bass. Moreover, we double the heat dissipating surface by internal/external winding. The complete motor parts are massively ventilated. As a result, the small parameter are staying extremely stable. Music stays perfectly uncoloured and time aligned, no matter at what volume the music is playing.
Further reduction of distortion. Amongst others, we apply 3 shortening rings in the motors of the chassis. Impedance stays flat also at higher frequencies.
A very linear frequency response in the usable frequency area of the drivers is achieved. Even the resonance behaviour above the usable frequency area of the drivers have been taken extra effort to control. We achieved this by using a very light weight and stable membrane material mixture out of non-pressed paper with carbon fibres and glass fibres. We also applied a multi-stage treatment on the membranes and their surrounding areas (including the aluminium basket of the 18” woofers). The goal is to perfectly control membrane resonances, phase and dispersion behaviour. Such propriety treatment is based on the technology out of our Carbon Excellence bending wave drivers. Hereby you get a perfect phase/time and dispersion behaviour and a max. linear frequency response.
Also the tweeter gets a multi-stage treatment, especially at the rear closed chamber so as to bring the resonance-, frequency- and phase behavior to perfection.
The cabinet and crossover:
1.) The cabinet is a combination of two different materials with specific damping and resonance behaviors bounded together with a specific PU glue. The wall thickness is nowhere less than 38 mm. There are a total of 3 separate cabinets per channel: 1 cabinet housing the 18” driver at the top, followed by another cabinet containing two 8” midrange and a tweeter (each of the 8” midrange driver and the tweeter also has its own sealed closed chamber), plus another cabinet housing 18” bass drivers.
2.) Kinetic mass dampening chambers are applied inside the midrange cabinets due to the criticalness of this area.
3.) For the midrange drivers, Oliver uses a closed chamber design in order to reach the maximum speed and best time behavior.
4.) All walls of the internal enclosures have no parallel walls so as to annihilate standing waves in the enclosures.
5.) For the internal damping of the midrange enclosure, a very special combination of different damping materials is applied in order to achieve a broad and constant damping behavior over the whole frequency range. Such methodology also avoids energy saving effects to the detriment of phasing and timing.
6.) The bass enclosure is designed in a special bass reflex alignment integrated with an internal Helmholz resonator, which is coupled to the internal volume by special materials. Internal standing waves are often tremendous in big enclosures. With this approach, conventional damping material can be avoided thereby retaining a lot more bass details. Only very little damping material are used on specific positions. All these efforts aim to bring time, phase and frequency behavior to perfection.
7.) The midrange and tweeter drivers are mounted inside a front baffle made of thick aluminum (up to 70 mm). This front baffle with the drivers is then mounted onto the enclosure. These units are mechanically decoupled from the rest of the enclosure. To compare, the 18” bass drivers are directly mounted into the enclosures.
8.) There are 4 bass reflex openings symmetrically arranged on the front of each bass enclosure. They correspond exactly to the symmetrical positions of the 18” bass driver inside the enclosure. Through this arrangement, the bass driver always sees symmetrical loading from the back. As a result, the membrane does not wobble when excursions increases. (Unsymmetrical wobbling of the membrane is one of the major causes contributing to rising distortions because the voice coil is forced to wobble in the magnet field.
9.) The tweeter and midrange units are mounted in the aluminum front baffle in a specific symmetrical array with specific angles, offsets and baffle dimensions, in order to bring the time and phase behavior to perfection. Only through such approach can music be reproduced in its real size and scale. Additionally the overall dispersion is linearized through this symmetrical arrangement. Also the dimension of chambers of the front baffles plays a big part to achieve perfect phasing and overall dispersion to perfection. Last but not least, reflections on the edges of the baffles are also eliminated.
10.) The dispersion of the tweeter is guided through a waveguide, which is milled out of solid aluminum with a specific curve progression, in order to perfect dispersion characteristics alongside seamlessly integration with the 8” midrange drivers.
11.) The stainless steel feet of the enclosure are especially designed in order to minimize the contact area through coupling the enclosure to the ground. The whole construction is resting on big ceramic balls of the highest quality. So the contact area is as minimal as it can be.
12.) All the internal wiring is Lacorde Statement speaker cable.
13.) The crossover only uses best parts such as silver/gold/oil capacitors, foil inductors, and air-core inductors etc. A special gigantic inductor is employed in the signal path of the 18” woofers for lowest possible resistance and distortions. This gigantic inductor in front of the 18” woofers received additional multi-stage treatment with different epoxy resins in vacuum to safeguard stability when playing at high volume level.
14.) The crossovers are located in a separate location of the middle cabinet. They are completely sealed inside the enclosures in order to minimise air pressure induced distortion. Every crossover way (tweeter, midrange, bass) is housed in a separate box. Then they are mounted atop silent blocks behind the Kinetic Mass dampening chambers. The goal is to further reduce the magnetic-coupling interferences inside the enclosure. Additionally, the crossover parts are embedded in an epoxy resin to further stabilise resonance.
Besides the well-known advantages of the Thales Simplicity II, the new Thales Statement stands out with the following features:
Optimized mechanical energy-flow and new materials for more dynamic sound
- Arm-tubes and head-shell made of special aluminium alloy with the strength of steel but 10 times higher internal damping
- Arm-tubes curved for maximum rigidness
- Bearing unit completely capsuled to increase the mechanical rigidity up to 100x
- Elliptic shaping of base parts to increase critical contact surfaces
- Diamond coating on bearing- and base-parts to increase the damping properties
Optimized electrical shielding properties
- All arm-parts golden (for gold version) or nickel (for silver version) coated
- New bearing technology to ensure low-impedance connection points from base to head
New fine-adjustment-mechanism for more preciseness
- Fine adjustment device for VTA with 1/10mm scale
- Fine adjustment device for Azimuth with 1/3° scale
- Advanced clamping mechanism inside installation-ring to allow on-fly adjustment