AXPONA 2016 Show Report -- Audio Expo North America
Scaena Iso-Linear Array Large Floorstanding Speakers

   Always love going to AXPONA 2016 and hearing, and seeing, the incredible Scaena Iso-Linear Array large floorstanding speakers ($128,000). This no-compromise design employs top-quality high-end audio drivers with high-tech design and engineering.

Instead of using your typical cabinet, Scaena CNC machines enclosures for each drive to optimize the rearward operating 'cabinet' and reduce the problems of backwave. When a loudspeaker is operating within a typical cabinet, you get the rear of the drive's 'sound' being reflected internally and this can cause the driver to have distortions due to such unwanted vibrational and air passage interference called a backwave. With the Scaena design, they have engineered to highly reduce this problem.

Furthermore, since each driver has a perfectly-fitted cabinet, you virtually eliminate the unwanted front cabinet reflections as well. Scaena's Iso-Linear Array enclosure is small, seamless, leak-proof, inert, and manufactured out of a special ceramic compound. There are no parallel walls, no standing waves, and the design is folded, creating a quasi Helmholtz Resonator that traps the harmful backwaves transforming them into harmless heat. The individual modules (up to 18 per speaker) are isolated by elastomer compound balls and combine mass to dampen the last possible vibrations. Cabinet resonances are all but gone.

Notice with the woofer cabinets you can clearly see the CNC milled aluminum backbone of the Scaena Loudspeaker system. Furthermore, the cabinets can be chrome, polished aluminum, or in whatever bespoke color you desire.

Bass and sub-sonics are reproduced by Scaena's 18" woofers. The cylindrical enclosure is a machined inert enclosure internally braced and shaped for standing wave reduction. Once again, the enclosure has no sound of its own, and clear, thundering, yet natural bass is the result. Our digital electronic cross-over and power amplifier combines the line array towers and our bass/subsonic speakers.

As for how they sound, they earn my award for effortless and room-filling ability. There was not the slightest hint of dynamic compression or constraints even during the loudest of musical passages. Imagine is, as expected, excellent. Visually, i'm in love! Technically-speaking about this design, am once again in love. Bravo Scaena, well done!

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