Instruction Manual
5
Description
Your Sage L100i loudspeakers take advantage of
several critical technologies to deliver a level of per-
formance that has never been available in a loud-
speaker that intruded so modestly on your living
space. In fact, this level of performance has rarely
been attained, regardless of the space and budget at
one’s disposal.
Since most of these technologies cannot readily be
found elsewhere, we will take the time to describe
them in more detail than would be necessary for
more conventional designs.
Planar magnetic panels Our planar magnetic drivers use an advanced, thin
lm membrane to move the air. This lm can re-
spond instantly to the smallest detail in the signal.
It has vastly less inertia than traditional “cone &
dome” drivers, so the signal is never blurred in any
way.
The motive force is provided by a “voice
coil” that is printed on the lm, which is
suspended in a strong magnetic eld pro-
vided by neodymium magnets behind and
in front of the lm. The ratio of available
force to the moving mass is huge, which
means that the diaphragm does exactly what it is told; nothing more, nothing
less.
Free from compression One of the most remarkable things about the sound of well-designed planar
magnetic speakers is their lack of thermal or dynamic compression. There are
several reasons for this:
• The lightweight diaphragm responds quickly to even the smallest
signals, yet is robust enough to handle enormous ones.
• The fact that heat does not build up in the voice coil (as it does
in conventional dynamic drivers) means that the load seen by the
amplier does not change at high power levels.
When you become accustomed to the sound of your new Sage L100i speakers,
conventional speakers sound a bit bland and lifeless.
More reliable The “voice coil” in the planar magnetic driver is spread out over a large, at area
that is exposed to the open air. As such, when a huge transient comes along,
any heat that is generated is immediately dissipated. This compares quite favor-
ably to other designs in which the voice coil is buried inside a massive piece of
metal, where the heat has effectively no place to go.