Duke – High-End Audio Speaker from Trenner & Friedl
Weighing in at 284 pounds and standing at just under five feet tall, the Duke by Trenner and Friedl is easily one of the most expensive and impressive loudspeakers showcased at CES 2011. The speaker is topped by a 0.8-inch diamond-diaphragm supertweeter firing upward into a Swarovski-crystal disperser that creates a 360-degree radiation pattern. This supertweeter sits on a vibration-isolated mid/high module with an 8-inch papyrus-cone midrange and 1.75-inch nitride-titanium, inverted-dome, high-efficiency compression tweeter in a tractrix horn.
The speaker system also sports two 12-inch fiberglass-reinforced paper-cone woofers housed in respective enclosures, and loaded by a hybrid form of horn resonator and bass-reflex design. The cabinet and the crystal disperser have been designed in golden ratio. The cabinet is made from natural materials only, and the damping material used is the hand-felted sheep wool. All of the aforementioned components combine in order to deliver a Frequency Response of 22 Hz to 80,000 Hz (f-3dB), a sensitivity level of 92 dB (2,83 V/1 m) and an impedance of 8 Ohms.
Trenner & Friedl target not only an audiophile audience, but also a wealthy one, given the fact that Duke Speakers sell for whopping €130,000 (approx. $178,000). [Trenner & Friedl]
