In some cases, moving out of their comfort zone and into the great unknown is prompted by a healthy dose of confidence in their own ability. In other cases it is just a sense of adventure to see what lies in unexplored territory.
In a few cases it happens mainly because they do not know any better. However, every once in a while I come upon a manufacturer with a penchant to push the envelope simply because they have a passion for music and so they make it their life quest to develop audio components that take audiophiles a step closer to the holy grail of reproducing the live performance with absolute fidelity. Both Pierre and Eric are musicians who have a dream of exploring the endless adventures that lie in the infinite universe of music and sound.
As musicians, they developed a deep respect for this aural art form, which plays such a huge part in making life worth living for humankind. Being around live music so much, also gives them a very special insight into the differences between the incredible glory of live music and the facsimile of reproduced music. This was the genesis of their motivation to try and narrow that gap. Their intrepid quest started fifteen years ago with the goal of designing and building a loudspeaker that would go beyond what would please most audiophiles to what would please most musicians as well.
Knowing that this is indeed a formidable challenge, Pierre and Eric commenced this mission determined to put in whatever it would take to meet it in terms of time and money. Based on their experience as musicians, they were convinced that generating the desired quality of bass could only be achieved by employing a woofer that moved a considerable amount of air. They tried all the best 6-inch, 8-inch and inch woofers and concluded that the latter is the minimum size required to deliver bass that the listener would not just hear but also feel in their gut, the way one experiences at a live performance.
They also put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that the bass would integrate seamlessly into the rest of the audible frequencies to achieve perfect sonic balance. Once the size of the woofer was decided, the next step was to determine the woofer cone material. Here they found that the rigidity, stiffness and damping qualities that they were looking for could be found in the good old paper cone woofers so that is what they picked over the more exotic materials like carbon fiber and Kevlar.
