"Despite the fact that these two gentlemen are IMO true geniuses in the world of speaker design, they truly GET that audio reproduction is about the emotional connection between the music and the listener. And their new statement product, the Duke, is perhaps the greatest loudspeaker I have ever heard."
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The search for perfect musical reproduction resembles a long journey through a permanently uphill terrain. As soon as one reaches a visible goal, one is able to see the next one, further up, on the horizon, then the next, and the next…and at some point comes Duke.
Duke does not merely reproduce musik. Duke gives it life.
Welcome to the world of the superlative.
Duke unites the most sophisticated technology with the finest hand-craftsmanship and thereby has but one goal: perfect sound.
The best spatial representation, absolute tonal accuracy, the greatest possible dynamics – Duke represents the pinnacle of contemporary loudspeaker manufacture.
All of Duke’s components are of exclusive and proprietary design and construction:
The two 12” woofer cones per channel are constructed from a fiberglass/paper-cell sandwich, resulting in enormous stability/stiffness, with very low mass.
The cone of the 8” midrange is made from papyrus-fibers—here too, low mass combines with high stability and rigidity.
The tweeter is also an in-house development. The titanium-nitride coated titanium diaphragm, combined with a large voice-coil and our Trenner & Friedl aluminum horn plays with agility and precision up into the airiest heights. And this is not where it ends! Crowned with our Diamond Tweeter, Duke plays up to 80kHz, thereby lending image, space and soundstage even more precision and realism.
In order to keep internal and external vibrations of the drivers from influencing one another, the mid-, and high-frequency cabinets are de-coupled from the bass sections.. This separation also then allows for individual and specific adjustment of the upper section in order to optimize angle and position for the given listening position. Also, the smaller cabinet modules are also stiffer and less resonant than possible with a single larger cabinet—which also effectively reduces unwanted resonances.
Hybrid-active Crossover System
Duke relies on a hybrid-active crossover system, requiring two amplifiers per channel. The mid-/high-frequency module employs a passive crossover of the highest quality. This module is then crossed-over actively to the bass modules via highly-sophisticated, proprietary dual-mono electronic crossovers, which are fully balanced.
Technical details may be found in our Datasheet at the end of the photo array.