Loudspeakers

For our review of these long-awaited flagships we spoke with Monitor Audio's Technical Director, Michael Hedges, about the evolution from last year's Concept 50 to this year's Hyphn. 'In practice few, if any, of the Concept 50's parts have remained unchanged in the Hyphn', reveals Michael. 'We've made significant investment in cast aluminium components including the M-Array's mid-pod, mid-wings, mid-rear chamber, mid and bass driver chassis – these parts were all machined in the Concept 50.'

'Vibration control' has been a key area of focus with the pillars now strengthened with additional ribs and bracing, and the 12mm wall thickness increased to 24mm around the force-cancelling bass drivers. Even the crossover inductors are potted in resin, and the PCBs fixed on compliant mounts, to minimise the impact of any residual vibrations.

The Hyphn is clearly packed with both driver and materials innovation which will surely trickle down into more cost effective solutions. 'We believe our M-Array is a significant step forward in dual concentric/point-source driver design', says Michael, 'and we are actively working to reduce production costs to leverage this technology into our other loudspeaker ranges.

'We cannot announce anything right at this moment, but it's a similar story for the mineral-loaded polymer cabinets. Currently, they are handmade by craftsmen who are intimately familiar with the material, but we are also looking into how we may use it in a more mass production environment.' PM