The technology, Design philosophy, Esign – Genesis Advanced Technologies 2.2 User Manual

Page 26: Hilosophy

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a bs o l u t e f i d e l i t y

The Technology

The Genesis 2.2 loudspeaker comprises four “towers”: two
midrange/tweeter wings and two bass columns. Each tower is over
6 feet tall (183cm), and the cabinet is made of a vibration damping
and resonance-control acrylic/composite sandwich material. The
tweeters and midrange ribbon are mounted on a solid 1.5-inch slab
of high-molecular weight cast acrylic.

The rationale for the four-tower system separating the woofers from
the midrange/tweeters is to allow the placement of the high-
frequency wings to optimize imaging and soundstage, and the
placement of the woofer towers to optimize in-room bass response.

Design Philosophy

Nothing has changed in theoretical acoustics since Lord Rayleigh’s
original book on acoustics published in 1877. There are still only
two proper ways for a transducer to propagate sound in a room: a
point source and a line source. Anything else, or everything in
between, is a compromise.

In order for all frequencies of
sound from the loudspeaker to
reach the listener at exactly the
same time, a coherent wave front
is important - not just “time-
alignment” of drivers. The ideal is
either an infinitely small pulsating
point or a pulsating line with a size
on the order of the room
dimension.

Obviously, a line-source is much
easier to mechanize than the ideal
point source. The line-source (if
large enough), can approximate

the ideal, and in doing so, provide sufficient radiating area for
dynamically and spatially realistic sound reproduction.

The Genesis 2.2 is a line-source that is 4 feet long (nearly the half
the room’s entire height). A line source has no vertical dispersion at
any frequency. Hence, there is no sound bouncing from either the

John William Strutt Lord Rayleigh (1842 – 1919)

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