The cube

Bob Carver is a legend in our industry and, along with Ted Smith, as close to genius as I have met. The man's amazing for his innovations and iconic for his brash marketing—a cross between Nikola Tesla and Harvey Rosenburg. Carver was the first to open my eyes to the possibility of big power amplifiers that sounded good: the Phase Linear 400 followed by the 700. Compared to the industrial beasts of the day, like Crown and BGW, Phase Linear products actually sounded good. And it was Bob Carver that showed the world big speaker cabinets were not necessary when he introduced the Sunfire True Subwoofer. I was astounded to hear an 11-inch cube crank out bass with such authority and power as if it might have been coming from the 7.5-foot tall Infinity IRS woofer tower. Here was thunderous subterranean notes shaking the floor and pounding my chest and all from this silly looking black cube. In fact, the only problem with this miracle woofer was its propensity to scoot across the floor if not secured to it. How was that possible? In Bob's words: "It's simple. All you need is a lot of power and a woofer that can handle it." That power came from a 2700 watt class D amplifier and that woofer was a heavy 8" beast with a 2.5" throw (more commonly, woofers move not much more than a half an inch). Suddenly my eyes were opened to the possibility that size really doesn't matter much anymore. That speaker cabinets could be freed from their size shackles without sacrificing performance. We could design speaker enclosures that looked great in a home but didn't have to be the 1.2 tons of 7.5-foot tall Infinity rosewood forests in Music Room Two to perform magic. It's been freeing to know we can design a speaker like our upcoming AN3 to look the way we want and perform the way a full range speaker should. If you're planning on going to the Axpona show in early April, come by our room on the ground floor (near registration). We'll have a prototype of the AN3 for you to listen to.