Loudspeakers

Key to both the look and sound of GoldenEar's speakers [HFN Mar '19, Jun '19 and Nov '19] is its use of ABRs to reinforce bass performance and an HVFR (High-Velocity Folded Ribbon) tweeter in place of a more traditional treble dome. An ABR (Auxiliary Bass Radiator) is a potentially superior method of reflex-loading an active bass unit, replacing the mass of air within a port tube with the more substantial moving mass of a diaphragm to form a Helmholtz resonator with the compliance of the air trapped in the cabinet. Furthermore, because the BRX uses two opposed ABRs there's the additional benefit of their reactive forces attenuating rather than aggravating cabinet resonances. The HVFR, meanwhile, is not a conventional planar ribbon but a pleated diaphragm, a very thin polymer with a deposited aluminium 'voice coil', that's squeezed within a magnetic field as the audio signal is applied. It's based on the AMT (Air Motion Transformer) invented by Dr Oskar Heil in the early 1970s, the accordion-like principle offering a substantially larger radiating area, and opportunity for improved power handling, lower distortion, etc, than a dome-style tweeter. PM