Loudspeakers

Monitor Audio's gold-coloured 25mm C-CAM tweeter is just visible through the honeycomb perforations in its protective cover. This precise pattern is part-and-parcel of MA's 'Uniform Dispersion' (UD) waveguide, and acts like a sophisticated phase plug. But the real technology is in the 'Ceramic-Coated Aluminium Magnesium' dome itself. It employs an alloy core, the material chosen for its lightness, to which is applied a ceramic layer – aluminium oxide – to enhance rigidity without significantly increasing the dome's mass. This combination of low density and stiffness is essential for a rigid tweeter that lacks the 'lossiness' of a soft dome type, here pushing the primary breakup resonance to as high an ultrasonic frequency as possible.

Alloy domes of this size will typically extend to 25-30kHz before breakup and MA's C-CAM design reaches 29kHz before delivering a high-Q +12dB resonance. We saw a similar result with the Bronze 2 model [HFN Feb '16] and partnering Bronze 100 standmount [HFN Aug '20]. Pushing the primary resonance to even higher frequencies means employing less dense, and typically costlier, materials that offer a higher Young's modulus. A 'carbon' dome may work up to 48kHz [HFN Sep '20], beryllium to 51kHz [HFN Oct '20] while a deposited 'Diamond' dome, as employed in B&W's 800 series, pushes its resonance out to 75kHz. PM