The heart of the new AERO speakers is the radically new AERO driver (pat. pending) designed by Paul Paddock.
The secret of this remarkable new driver is that, although physically substantial, it functions acoustically as if it has no dimension at all in the horizontal plane. This frees it from what was long held to be a basic law of loudspeaker design: that a driver’s size affects its high frequency directionality.
Conventional drivers get progressively “beamy” at higher frequencies and listeners must sit within just a tiny “sweet spot” to enjoy whatever imaging and soundstaging they may offer. The AERO driver has no such limitation. (see “Polar Pattern” diagram) It reproduces all frequencies within its acoustical spectrum smoothly across at least a full 150° of dispersion and allows listeners to sit wherever they want and still enjoy “image perfect” reproduction (see “Imaging and Soundstaging”).
The way the AERO driver accomplishes this is really quite remarkable: unlike other drivers, the AERO driver is asymmetrical, and is driven from just one side. Its motive power, like other drivers, is electromagnetic, but instead of a cone, a dome, or a ribbon, the “diaphragm” of the AERO driver is a half-loop of a special flexible material precisely curved and tuned to give it the same internal speed of sound and almost exactly the same acoustic propagation characteristics as air. When the driven end of the diaphragm moves, the movement is communicated to the surrounding air directly at the point of first movement and spreads out from there as sound. And because the speeds of sound in air and in the diaphragm of the driver are the same, as the sound spreads through the air it’s reinforced perfectly by energy spreading through the diaphragm at the same rate. The result? Phase-perfect reproduction exactly as it would be from a truly dimensionless driver, and sound so natural that we defy you to compare it with the real thing.
Another reason for the clear and obvious superiority of the AERO driver is its near total freedom from reflected energy. With all cone or dome drivers, energy applied at the voice coil spreads to the extremes of the diaphragm, and bounces back to its point of origin. This is “reflected energy”, and it causes distortion, frequency aberrations, cancellations and other problems that call attention to the driver instead of to the natural sound that it’s trying to reproduce. The AERO driver solves this problem very simply: By forming the driver’s diaphragm of a material of just exactly the right hysteresis,1 the diaphragm, itself, becomes the acoustical equivalent of a “transmission line” speaker enclosure. Energy coming in at one end of the diaphragm is dissipated before it reaches the other end. All of the driver’s usable energy goes to produce sound and none is left to be reflected!
__________________
1 Internal mechanical resistance. The hysteresis of a material is its natural tendency to convert energy to heat, thereby damping resonance or motion. Butyl rubber is a high-hysteresis material used to make non-bouncing balls and other “motionally inert” products. Sorbothane™, which is widely used for vibration damping, is a branded high-hysteresis product.