The goal for Qln with this speaker was to enhance several performance areas including reduction of distortion and refining presence, timing, timbre, level of detail as well as micro/macro dynamics.
Qln separated the mid and lower frequency range into two parts by developing a new 7-in Kevlar midrange and a 9-in woofer to form a three-way loudspeaker system. The Reference 9 has 40mm thick walls, and a braced cabinet is constructed from Qln’s Qboard technology, reducing structural resonances in the acoustic chamber. The bass reflex port has a trumpet shape at both ends to eliminate air turbulence. To achieve a dynamic bass performance a 9-in, carbon sandwich design driver with low cone weight was chosen.
A 7-in midrange was chosen as the size to bridge the tweeter and woofer. The new 25mm wide surround tweeter offers vocal reproduction and imaging at all listening positions. Its large roll surround and textile dome diaphragm provides a flat frequency response above 30 KHz with off-axis dispersion. The unique air flow magnet system and its rear chamber aim to eliminate any compression, reflections, and resonances.
The crossover is hardwired with non-inductive capacitors bypassed with large copper film capacitors for tweeter parts. For the mid and tweeter a foil air core inductor is used. All components are fastened with soft damping glue and remaining coils are baked to avoid any internal component and filter resonances. Precision metal film resistors with high power handling capabilities offering lower noise and temperature stable performance are used for the tweeter, and 20W resistors are used for the woofer. Speaker terminals are combined with WBT Nextgen connectors made of silver-plated copper with minimal copper mass for low energy storage, lowering distortion, while wool was used for the internal acoustic damping.