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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/758586
of the work in the mid and the treble is this hybrid of two drivers. TB > Could you explain the Uni-Q array? JOB > If you look at a high quality speaker, it's got different sized drivers in it. It's not possible to make a single driver do the job of producing the whole frequency range. The treble from the tweeter and the mid and bass from the woofer would be typical. But the problem you have is that [sound is] a wave, so how it adds up depends on when the signal arrives at you. So it can add up [cleanly], but it can also add up destructively. The problem we have is that if you have the treble coming from one driver and the mid and the bass coming from a different point, then the sound actually changes a lot. That's the problem we're trying to fix here. And it's quite a simple idea—How do I get over that problem?—well, I put both of the drivers in the same point in space. How do you go about designing the driver to fit these two completely different transducers—a tweeter and a woofer—into one space. That's where a lot of our research effort has gone. Most center channels have a tweeter and maybe two woofers on either side, and the sound changes really quite dramatically when you move to the left or the right, because of the relative time that the sound arrives from the tweeter and the woofer. And with Uni-Q and something like the Q200, you just totally get rid of that problem. You get a much more natural sound, with everything coming from one point. DS > We’re about 11 generations into our Uni-Q driver now, and when you’re looking across the board. For example, our reference series takes a long time to do our research and see what we want to do next and come up with new version of our drivers. It's very complicated to do, that's why we hold our own manufacturing, making sure we are good with our details, [make sure] we can make and mass produce these Uni-Q drivers and put them into various products. It's not easy to do, and it takes a lot of attention to detail, which is why we control every aspect of it. TB > Another thing you tout on the speaker is this "tangerine wave guide" - can you talk about what that does and how it might impact the wider soundstage. JOB > That's the part that covers the dome with these fins. We've developed some quite cool technology [for another product line], and it was one of those moments where you go, "actually this is the same physics that we can apply to the Uni-Q to really control how the sound leaves the dome." In layman's terms, we wanted to have the sound directed over as wide an area as possible and to maintain that same wide coverage at all different frequencies - bass, mid, and treble. The tangerine was the key to do that right at the top end of the tweeter. TB > You’ve talked about the more rigid aluminum materials you use in the cone of the Uni-Q and the Q200C. Why do people still use paper and plastic in their speakers? JOB > Historically, paper was the original material, or some kind of pulp. Other technologies came along later, plastics industry in the 60's, etc. and people have tried to make cones from pretty much anything. So you basically got the choice of using something that is as rigid as you can get hold of, like a metal, and in the range where you want to use that woofer, it’s going to work really nicely, but when you get out of the range, it's going to do something horrendous, because we all know a cymbal—a horrible sounding thing. You want the rigidity aspect, but you don't want the break up, the ringing aspect. If you use something like paper or plastic, its soft compared to a metal, so it's also inherently got dampening.