Welcome to Decware

Omnidirectional aka Radial designs are typically parallel to the floor and create a 360 degree ring of sound emanating from the speaker out to the walls.  So the question becomes how much of an angle can we tilt a driver before it is no longer radial and what effect would it have on room reflections? 

​

Crossoverless full-range driver - popular with those who like to hear into the music due to the transparency.  Most drivers of this category are relatively small.  The ZROB uses a 15 inch driver with a peak in the upper midrange response so that by the time you are 38 degrees off axis you have a flat frequency response.

​

Open Baffle - Many who hear a well executed open baffle design can never un-hear it and consequently are unable to enjoy conventional box speakers.  This is largely due to the superior bass clarity that comes from the absence of an enclosure.  With only a baffle all of the low frequency bass is cancelled  at the sides of the baffle creating a dipole bass... basically a straight line of bass both in front of and behind the speaker.  This eliminates the boundary effect of the side walls so the bass nodes in your room are reduced by almost half.  Less bass nodes mean more bass at the listening chair.

​

100dB sensitivity -  Takes ten times LESS power than a 90dB speaker.  The lower moving mass dramatically increases the speed of the driver.  Speed is how fast a driver can stop.  The faster it is, the better the linearity.

​

Acoustic Shadow - A drawback of many open baffle speakers is that because there is sound coming off the rear of the speaker in the same amount as the front, the distance between the back of the speaker and the wall must be exact to maintain image focus.  So in that case, the speaker will decide where it must be placed, no you.  With the ZROB the structure of the speaker is such that it creates an intensional shadow behind the speaker where there is no sound.  This has a profound effect on the soundstage depth and overall focus.  Both are maintained across a wide range of placement possibilities so the open baffle drawback has been eliminated.

​

​38 degree cant - This angle is connected to the height of the driver that is in close proximity to the floor for loading.  This loading creates very tight bass response.  The front wave of the speaker launches past the listener with most of the energy in a central point on the ceiling behind the listener.  This then reflects off the rear wall and down to the floor where it is absorbed by carpet and furnishings.  This is in bold contrast to every other speaker that gets the sidewalls involved as a major player in smearing your sound.

​

AMT Ribbon Tweeter - The ZROB works flawlessly without a tweeter.  It is not a conventional 2-way design with a crossover splitting the signal between the drivers.  Instead the tweeter plays from around 6K on up and at a much lower volume just to add some air and uses a hi-end capacitor to block the low frequencies.  The panel it is mounted in has been designed with an adjustable angle and is a dipole design that comes with felt plugs for the rear so that you can experiment with having ambience cues on the front wall by removing the felt.

​

100% Solid Hardwood - Done for high mass and to properly manage energy in the speaker by draining it from the baffle into a massive solid hardwood plinth and then firmly coupling it to the floor.  1.5 inches thick, this solid hardwood speaker is unaffected by moisture, dings, and can never have pealing or chipped veneers.  Even a deep scrape on a ZROB is just more of the same hardwood.  This will be a speaker that is still around in 100 years.  Hardwood and labor to joint and machine it is where the bulk of the cost is in this speaker.   

​

​​​

Frequency Response - 40Hz ~ 15kHz (-4dB 30Hz ~ 18kHz) These speakers sound good both with and without a subwoofer.  

​​

​

RECOMMENDED - thick pile rug placed under the speaker or use in a room with carpet and pad.

​