Concrete Audio is a Loudspeaker factory in Germany whose founders love music. They design and produce unique loudspeaker systems of timeless elegance and impressive dynamics - housed in, you guessed it, concrete. These speaker systems are produced in a limited edition in Germany.
The following information is from their website:
The Materials
Cement, water, sand are the essential ingredients of a material whose recipe was already known during the Roman Empire - concrete.
Refined by a variety of additional ingredients, concrete in modern times has evolved into a high-tech product with highly varied properties and applications. Resilient, durable, and pourable into almost any form and especially, largely resistant to vibration.
Concrete forms, by its very nature, the perfect base for the housing of our loudspeakers.
The curing process makes each a unique loudspeaker - identical in shape and surface quality, but individually in terms of the grain.
The surface provides for several options of sealing to emphasize the natural feel of the material.
The Idea
The idea of a housing made out of concrete came to us during a conversation about the ultimate sound for loud-speakers. We concluded: concrete is perfect yet hard to restrain. Thus an equally elaborate and passionate experiment began, executed and carried out by superb hand-craftsmanship and attention to detail.
After several years of development and numerous test runs, we finally found the ideal solutions for the design of the mold, the construction and the special mix of the materials and founded the Loudspeaker factory Concrete Audio.
The design of the model N1 consistently meets functional requirements without neglecting the demands of a timeless, aesthetic use of forms.
Each individual piece is worked on individually until it meets requirements for the highest quality.
The Sound
The sound of a loudspeaker driver (sound generator) decisively depends on the quality of the loudspeaker housing.
Unlike, for example, the body of a musical instrument, a good loudspeaker enclosure should not vibrate because modern high-performance drivers operate linearly, reproducing exactly the sound information, which electrically has been transmitted to them.
Commercial housing made of wood or plastic, have their own resonant frequency. Yet at certain points of frequency bands, the housing starts to oscillate, i.e. vibrate, and thus reinforcing exactly that particular frequency. Additionally, this phenomena forms integer multiples of this particular frequency creating additional vibrations (overtones). This facilitates unnatural changes of the overall frequency spectrum. The result is a distorted sound by means of basically, a flawed housing.
We manufacture the housing of our loudspeakers made from special concrete with a compressive strength of at least 30 N/mm². This is harder than conventional concrete curbs. The amorphous structure and the high specific gravity of this material reliably prevents oscillation of the housing. By means of a special casting process, the housing is cast out of one single body with all sides closed and sealed.
This monolithic structure is lined internally with different sound-dampening material made of tightening yet elastic layers to prevent any reflections.
For reasons of sound, we build our housing completely sealed and without a bass reflection-tuning. This way, we achieve an extremely low factor of distortion and superior accuracy even at very high levels.
The drivers, or undercarriage used, in addition to the characteristics of the housing, determine the quality of the loudspeaker-system decisively.
We use the Scan-Speak drivers.
The Danish company Scan-Speak is known worldwide for its high level of innovation and uncompromising quality. Their high-end drivers, built into our systems, are characterized by absolute accuracy and fidelity. This allows us to equip the signal path with a very small number of selected components. We use a 6dB filter of very high quality, fitted with copper foil coils and silver-gold capacitors.
The result is a largely loss-free signal path and a very direct control of the linearly coordinated and selected pairs of precision-drivers. Combined with our high-strength concrete housings, we produce a high quality loudspeaker system –
TECHNICAL DATA for Concrete Audio® MODEL N1.
Housing: Concrete, monolithically poured
System: 2-way closed-box, passive
Frequency range: 34 Hz – 40.000 Hz
Power handling: 100 W
Sensitivity: 83 dB (1 W/1 m)
Total Harmonic Distortion:
< 1% bei 90 dB SPL (1 m) für f > 100 Hz
Nominal impedance: 4 Ohm
Crossover frequency: 6 dB/2,000 Hz
Ports Single-wiring/bi-wiring
Components: Scan-Speak, Kimber Kable, Mundorf, WBT
Dimensions: Height: 110 cm (43,3 in)
Width: 23 cm (9,1 in)
Depth: 33 cm (13 in)
Net weight: 80 kg (176 lbs)
The technical data of the Concrete Audio ® N1 is the result of an extensive acoustic survey by the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, Ilmenau. The data was charted using a low reflection chamber of the Class 1 (according to DIN EN ISO 3745) to Requirements of DIN 60268-5.
Experience CONCRETE AUDIO
Convince yourself of the quality of CONCRETE AUDIO Loudspeaker-Systems and make an appointment for an exclusive listening-test of the N1 in our showroom in the city of the Classics, in Weimar. They offer you the opportunity to experience our loudspeakers in your own rooms.
Concrete Audio®
Eduard-Rosenthal-Str. 30
99423 Weimar
Germany
Telefon: +49 36422 20 48 51
Telefax: +49 36422 20 48 54
info@concrete-audio.com