Many driver designs defy all sound design principles, be-
cause they are the result of penny-pinching exercises under
heavy market pressure to deliver “acceptable” performance at
the lowest price. There is little motivation to allocate resources
to making drivers truly the best that they can be.
In order to succeed in their mission, now assigned the working
title Project 30, Rasmussen and Duelund returned to first con-
cepts, literally building by hand individual drivers with ba-
skets that did not introduce compression, handmade
multi-laminate cones, exotic home-brew coatings, adjustable
wire suspension to replace the conventional spider, heavy-
duty magnetic systems, ventilated pole pieces, machined
phase plugs and special surrounds to optimize the transition
between cone and baffle. All edges were beveled for a delibe-
rate aerodynamic profile. Double wiring was employed on the
cones to ensure perfect symmetry. The list of breakthroughs
goes on.
Every aspect of driver design, assembly and function was tho-
roughly investigated without prejudice and with scant respect
for received wisdom, which often proved to be ill-founded
dogma formulated by individuals promoting their own specific
agendas.
The end result was drive units with extremely low Q, high
power handling, no dynamic compression and a linear pistonic
range that pushed back the limits of driver design.
In order to live up to the uncompromising design goal of per-
fect phase at all times at all frequencies, the enclosure incor-
porated a concave curved front to form a direct angled,
time-aligned system with identical distance from the listener
to the acoustic centre of each driver.
The finished loudspeaker can only be described as an open
window, utterly transparent to the original recorded event with
equally remarkable dynamic headroom that re-creates the
true power and full weight of live music, both in details such as
a drum rimshot and in the effortless expansion of an orchestral
crescendo in a large-scale symphonic piece.
Gone were the sluggishness and “whitewashed” uniformity ty-
pical of loudspeakers with complex crossovers where 60% of
the components are dedicated to the thankless task of com-
pensating for the basic imperfections of inferior drivers. In
such speakers, the crossover becomes a virtual “black hole,”
sucking up energy instead of conveying it to the drivers.
At this stage, a respected German audio reviewer visited
Gryphon. In the Gryphon listening room, he auditioned Gryp-
hon amplifiers using the company’s usual reference loudspea-
kers, a well-known American full-range system. Suitably
impressed with what he heard, he happened to notice some
large enclosures concealed beneath a sheet off to one side.
