Högtalare #1 – Mandrake 604 High Efficiency Speaker

Our speaker design starts with a very nice driver. A modern version of the Altec 604 made by Great Plains Audio. It is complemented by the Fostex T900A Super-Tweeter.

There are many 604 fans out there for good reason. One of the strong card of the 604,s is the point source imaging midrange clarity.

Then we put it in well proportioned box – each site H-W-D is proportioned with the golden ratio of 1.618 – to get ideal distribution of standing waves.

The enclosure is rather large – about 9 cu ft. – but you can’t get something for nothing. It is well known that you can make an efficient speaker, a small speaker or a speaker without bass. Fortunatley we make the speakers with very nice veneer on high quality plywood so they look nice.

The “golden ratio” is an invention of the ancient Greeks to reduce echos in those stone temples.

Why does that mater you ask? Well just think of the woofer cone as thin paper veil. Now think of the sound inside the box and how easy it can get out through that paper cone. Now you can see why reducing standing waves and unwanted reflections in the enclosure itself is imporant.

Horns have more of a solidly defined directional pattern so all the sound is focused to a specific area.

The corners or “baffle edges” of the speakers are large radius solid walnut sides to minimize difraction. You can read more about that from Mr Linkwitz #1, Linkwitz #2 or the original work from Mr Olson.

Then we hook it up with a crossover network with a nod to time alignment as pioneered by Ed Long for the famous Urei studio monitors. But we make use of modern test instruments which Ed only could dream of in the 1970s.