www.psneurope.com
For the latest news
www.psneurope.com
August 2013 l 05
news
So the imbalance between compression and expansion phases for your sealed box results in a non-linear response. And you’ve overcome this? Space Technology cleaned up the higher frequencies. For lower, we needed to allow the driver to breathe – to take the pressure away from behind it, to let that driver become completely linear – but we didn’t want the ports to interfere with the sound. The way we’ve achieved that is by using our patent-pending Vortex technology. On the compression stroke, air behind the speaker is driven through a small aperture to a cylindrical/disc structure where it spins – the vortex – and then escapes through a side port. It lets the initial pressure change of the driver come out of this port, but none of the sound. If you want some examples of this, look at vortex exhausts in cars – which deaden the noise but do it without dampening. A vortex kills amplitude but maintains phase. (Roberts disappears behind a
curtain and re-emerges holding a cross-section of a vortex prototype. It’s like a cross between a wrought iron gate and a crop circle viewed from the air… made of birch ply.) A true infinite baffle is an
infinitely big wall with a speaker located in the middle of it; you hear just one side of the speaker, not the other and there is no interference to the drivers movement. That’s what everyone’s been striving to do. They said it’s impossible to do. But that’s what this design is.
You’ve achieved the impossible? Well... I’ve achieved what I aimed to do. By applying pressure to the structure to create one bonded unit, it stops non-uniform movement of the cabinet. And by immediately removing any pressure in the system, the driver is free to operate without any interference from the (air) pressure or the enclosure.
And this means a revised approach to levels? In traditional systems more energy is required to create an overall measured SPL. Flare systems can operate at lower levels yet the perceived loudness is equivalent, though the measured loudness is lower, because the waveform is balanced. By that I mean the positive pressure component of the waveform matches the expansion at every frequency. Hearing is optimised with an even ‘push/pull’ of the eardrum, if both expansion and compression components are matched in a waveform the sound will appear much louder to the listener than if it is unbalanced. This can only be achieved if a
driver’s movement has become linear throughout its entire operating range and this is the core value of my Waveform Integrity approach.
What reaction have you had to this? We’ve had countless comments from people, including those who are not necessarily from professional audio but understand the problem with speakers, who say this should
have been done years ago. This make sense to physicists and scientists, but not to acousticians, because it’s not their approach.
Flare is ignoring the acoustics, and looking at the problem from the physics point of view. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do.
REVEALING RESEARCH In the patent research, Flare found elements of “this physics approach dating back in the 1930s which was before the advent of electronic correction”, reveals Kristin Hanson later. Flare isn’t the only company pursuing linearity of course. Meyer Sound has flown the ‘linear sound’ flag since Day One. In the last 12 months, John Meyer has spoken about the issue of achieving linearity with his large- scale LEO system several times. “They are talking about
achieving the same sort of thing that we are – though we call it Waveform Integrity and we are looking at further aspects of the sound wave,” says Roberts. Flare has attracted the
interest of some seriously high- profile names. Hanson, herself of accountancy firm PwC, won the fiscal favour of Nick Gatfield, CEO of Sony Music, and Paul Mountford of Cisco Systems. They are now on the board of directors. Big names carry useful connections, of course. “As a former hire company we know that the biggest problem is riders. So the approach was, we needed an ‘A- Team’ of record executives onboard so they can introduce
And the demonstrations Flare has conducted continue to enlighten listeners. A primary reaction of “shock” is Roberts’ most frequent observation. “I’m the sceptic so I stand
Flown X5s: linear line source response
the speakers to the artists they work with.”
Further endorsement has
come from engineer/producer (and founder of Metropolis) Gary Langan, and ex-Olympic Studios veteran Chris Kimsey. It transpires that Kimsey is working with the revamped Olympic complex in Barnes and wants to use Flare speakers for a Dolby Atmos system there. “We can sink them into the wall and they become invisible. As ‘immersive cinema’ becomes the way to go, we think we have the best solution for that,” notes Hanson. In performance, Roberts describes the X5 as producing a linear line source response. The crossover points are designed to get the maximum SPL out of the box: so 20-100 on the bass, 100-1k on the 15, 1k to 6k on the 6, 6k up on the HF. “They are purely there to spread the power between the drivers evenly. Not to mask resonance. There is no ‘damage’ happening to be masked by specific crossover points.”
around and wait for the negative comments,” laughs Hanson, “but there haven’t been any.” “There’s no EQing, there’s no guessing. You plug it in and turn it on. We take away the risk. As a hire company, my biggest realisation was risk from a system behaving differently in different rooms. You can’t control the band or the engineers but you can remove one element. Engineers have said our system gives them a blank canvas.” Where will Flare be in
three years? “We believe that once this technology is understood, and we’ve got one major hire company on board, there is going to be an arms race. We hope to be making serious in-roads into the pro-audio market. I’ve learned how hard it is to be an inventor, especially if you are ignoring market forces, I think the first adopter will help us get a lot easier from that point. So once that occurs, it gets easier. Installations are already igniting.” “We are agile and can
react quickly to any market,” adds Hanson. Meanwhile, it’s time to get back to putting right what is wrong with sound systems, as Roberts put it earlier. “Pro audio is fun,” he reflects,
“and we at Flare believe we have the answer to a lot of problems, so why not go out there and make it better?”n
www.flareaudio.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60