Wisdom Audio Sage Series P20 - Manual (Page 5)

5
Description
Your Sage loudspeakers take advantage of several critical
technologies to deliver a level of performance that has
never been available in a loudspeaker that intruded so
modestly on your living space. In fact, this level of perfor-
mance has rarely been attained, regardless of the space
and budget at one’s disposal.
Since most of these technologies cannot readily be found
elsewhere, we will take the time to describe them in more
detail than would be necessary for more conventional
designs.
Planar magnetic panels Our planar magnetic drivers use an advanced, thin film
membrane to move the air. This film can respond instantly
to the smallest detail in the signal. It has vastly less inertia
than traditional “cone & dome” drivers, so the signal is
never blurred in any way.
The motive force is provided by a “voice
coil” that is printed on the film, which is
suspended in a strong magnetic field pro-
vided by neodymium magnets behind and
in front of the film. The ratio of available
force to the moving mass is huge, which
means that the diaphragm does exactly
what it is told; nothing more, nothing less.
Free from compression One of the most remarkable things about the sound of well-designed planar
magnetic speakers is their lack of thermal or dynamic compression. There are
several reasons for this:
• The lightweight diaphragm responds quickly to even the smallest
signals, yet is robust enough to handle enormous ones.
• The fact that heat does not build up in the voice coil (as it does
in conventional dynamic drivers) means that the load seen by the
amplifier does not change at high power levels.
• The pleating of the diaphragm allows greater excursions than are
otherwise available to small planar magnetic devices, further en-
hancing the driver’s ability to respond to dynamic program mate-
rial.
When you become accustomed to the sound of your new Sage P20 speakers,
conventional speakers sound a bit bland and lifeless.
More reliable The “voice coil” in the planar magnetic driver is spread out over a large, flat area
that is exposed to the open air. As such, when a huge transient comes along,
any heat that is generated is immediately dissipated. This compares quite favor-
ably to other designs in which the voice coil is buried inside a massive piece of
metal, where the heat has effectively no place to go.