About Fibhorn

Why Fibonacci?

Well, you might ask: "What on Earth does an old 12th century Italian mathematician have to do with stereo speakers?"

 

Let's leave Earth for a moment and begin to answer by going into deep interstellar space via the Hubble Space Telescope. This instrument has probed out into the universe with amazingly high resolution, and what do the photos reveal? A limitless array of spiral galaxies, some huge some merely big . . . but ALL structured in perfect conformity to the FIBONACCI NUMBER SEQUENCE.

Now let's come back to Earth and take a walk along the Cape Cod shore, pick up a shell washed in by the tide and observe the spiral pattern of the inner structure. IT IS SHAPED EXACTLY IN PROPORTION TO THE SPIRAL GALAXIES! Both expand via Fibonacci numbers.

KNOW ANY BEEKEEPERS? Ask them to count the number of females in one hive, then the number of males. Divide the males into the females and you will get . . . 1.618!

 

That is the "Golden Ratio," the proportion of beauty in architectural design. It is also the exponent which generates the exponential Fibonacci curve. Putting it another way, it is the number you will approach by dividing any Fibonacci number into the next one on the series.

 

And by the way, did you notice the elegant spiral pattern of the sunflower's inner structure where our sweet industrious friends are harvesting nectar?  IT IS, you guessed it  .   .   . tutto Fibonacci!

 

So let's get back to music and stereo speakers. FACT: EVERY MUSICAL SOUND ON PLANET EARTH EXISTS ON THE FIBONACCI SERIES!

 

0     1     1     2     3     5     8     13     21     34     55     89     144  .  .  .

 

Change musical pitch into vibrations per second, and every note of the scales, and every overtone in the range of human hearing (and beyond) will land on this number sequence.

 

By carefully developing the musical sounds from our FIBHORN speakers with cabinets containing back-wave horns constructed to expand according to this same Fibonacci sequence, we obtain  sound as real and beautiful as the ORIGINAL PERFORMANCE. 

 

To our knowledge, we are the only speaker builders who have chosen this path to high performance music reproduction. Our speakers yield a level of performance equal to, or superior than, more complex designs costing thousands more than our most expensive Model 3 ($3699/pair). Our entry level Model 2 is $199/pair. 

 

A Bird's-Eye View Over Speaker Land

The vast majority of speaker designs available to you, the speaker shopper, are uninspired clones of a very tired formula: the 2 or 3 driver array, consisting of a woofer, a mid-range and a tweeter within a sealed or ported box, theoretically "tuned" for best bass output. The innovative sonic standouts (original Quad, top-of-the line Magnepans, original Ohm Walsh, Wilson etc) are very costly, difficult to set up and amplify, cumbersome and more than likely no longer manufactured.

 

 

And WORST OF ALL are the powered speakers. Competent electrical engineering has taught us for decades that electronic components, particularly capacitors, generate distortion when subjected to vibration. Those folks who are responsible for creating speakers that torture their internal amplifiers with music destroying violence should . . . Oh, never mind.

The Problem

Separate woofers, mid-ranges and tweeters are almost impossible to tie together and make produce a distortion-free playback of musical recordings. The problem is with the disparity of materials in the separate drivers AND the numerous glitches and discontinuities that arise when you try to stitch the sections of music back together with an array of capacitors, resistors and chokes. A few designs succeed in this maddeningly complex challenge, but at very substantial cost. The majority of such old-fashioned speakers suffer from serious sonic flaws: phase shift and consequent image blurring, frequency drop-outs, an amorphous "haze" over all the music and often an exaggerated overly pronounced bass response.

 

AND a major weakness of such designs is the almost total waste of the  sonic information from the drivers' back wave.

The Solution

We have found a better way to design a no-compromise speaker system that is easy to install, easy to amplify and easy to pay for. . . combine 3 fresh concepts like no other speaker builder:

 

1. SINGLE FULL RANGE DRIVERS

2. FIBONACCI SEQUENCED HORN CABINETS

3. THE PATENTED EnABL PROCESS FOR VANISHINGLY LOW                DISTORTION

 

We like to describe our design approach as a RADICAL MINIMALIST PHILOSPHY.

 

Perfection is not of this world, but we hear results from  listening to our FIBHORN designs that come  very close. We have developed 11 speakers that produce music as close to the real thing as we can reasonably expect to hear in this life.

 

An earlier version of the classic Model 2.


The Design of the Fibhorn

The original Model 1 Fibhorn design.

Recent advances in full-range single driver manufacturing by such progressive companies as FOSTEX, TANG BAND, AUDIO NIRVANA and MARKAUDIO have finally made the elusive ideal driver possible: a true POINT-SOURCE for the ENTIRE musical spectrum.


AND a single full-range driver made another tantalizing technical feature possible: a full-frequency horn for the back wave, equalizing and amplifying it in perfect conformity to the Fibonacci number sequence. This is exactly what Maxfield & Harrison postulated as the ONLY way to design an accurate horn amplifier in their landmark Industrial Research paper for WESTERN ELECTRIC of 1926 (summarizing 10 years of experimentation.)

 

The huge sonic advantage of Fibonacci sequenced horn design became a commercial reality in 1925 with the debut of the VICTOR ORTHOPHONIC acoustic record player. We own one of these machines and occasionally crank it up and play Louis Armstrong in "Struttin' With Some Barbecue." All who hear it ask: "Has there been any progress in 90 years?" The musical impact from this ancient instrument is that vivid.

 

ALL FIBHORN SPEAKERS treat the back wave from a full-range driver precisely as the 1925 Victor Orthophonic treated the single wave from the steel needle in the 78 rpm shellac groove. AND THEN we conjoin it with the driver front wave in perfect synchronicity for musical reproduction of astounding power.

 

Inside each FIBHORN cabinet is an initial optimized COMPRESSION CHAMBER for the driver back wave. This back wave is then bled through a very small  FIBONACCI aperture to the expanding sequence of FIBONACCI horn chambers. Every proportion is carefully calculated to fall on the FIBONACCI number series (including some amazing inter-chamber proportions that we discovered are of CRITICAL importance). This horn has anywhere from one to five chambers, depending on the FIBHORN model. Obviously, the more chambers the more complicated the building process for the finished horn.

We liken the musical sound we obtain from our FIBHORN designs to a "Clear Window on the Music."

The Patented EnABL Process

THE EnABL DISTORTION LOWERING SYSTEM is featured in every one of our speakers, offering a startling improvement in clarity of the music that is impossible to achieve by any other means for cone drivers. The cabinets disappear and you hear great recordings with breathtaking realism.

 

Only FIBHORNS give you the sonic advantage of this 3 part technology at the same price (or less!) than our out-moded and tired-sounding competition.

 


Money Back Guarantee

 

Try any of our FIBHORN SPEAKERS for 2 weeks. If you do not agree that they are totally fantastic sounding, just let us know within the 14-day trial period and we will REFUND YOUR MONEY, including the original shipping cost! (Your only expense is the return postage.) HOW CAN YOU LOSE?

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