Loudspeakers

Rockport Technologies, then called Payor Acoustics after founder Andrew Payor, began life in 1984 with a compact sub/sat speaker system – it wasn’t until 1990 that a new high-end product brought about the change in name, and it was a turntable [pictured below], rather than a loudspeaker. The Sirius Phonograph, with air-bearing suspension, was upgraded two years later to an iteration featuring a constrained-layer damped granite plinth with pneumatic suspension. Next, in 1996, came the direct-drive Sirius Phonograph III, which weighed 242kg (including a 28kg platter) and was described as an ‘all-out-assault’ on turntable design.

Rockport never topped this flagship model and has since focused on loudspeakers instead. Its first model, launched in 1993, was the Procyon, a three-way floorstander with active bass section. This speaker employed drive units from third party suppliers, but the cabinet was an innovative in-house design, formed of inner and outer glass fibre/epoxy composite shells around a viscoelastic core. Subsequent Rockport models, up to the present-day Lyra, Orion, et al, have continued this constrained layer approach to cabinet construction, albeit with different materials, in pursuit of ‘simultaneous optimisation of stiffness, damping and mass’.