A200

With the A200 you have a rear active woofer, so this is not a passive radiator like with our passive speakers. Internally the A200 are divided into two separated sealed cabinets which allow us to implement some really smart DSP tricks for using each woofer independently from each other. This opens the door for creating a speaker that have unprecedented amount of flexibility. One of the very cool features we can do, is cardioid dispersion which is something you often need to pay a lot of money to get in loudspeakers. Having cardioid dispersion would simply said allow you to get better performance from your speaker when they are asked to work under suboptimal saturations such as in untreated rooms, close to walls, in bookshelves, on cabinets or on desktops or just in small rooms.   

What is cardioid? 

Cardioid dispersion speakers are a type of directional loudspeaker designed to project sound primarily forward in a heart-shaped pattern, while significantly reducing the sound radiating to the sides and to the rear.

The S200 uses the backwoofer to create a targeted cancellation: The timing and phase alignment cause the sound waves to combine in phase at the front (reinforcing the sound) and out of phase at the side and rear (canceling each other out), creating a "null" of sound at the frequencies that are omnidirectional. We target the frequencies between 100-300hz. 

Benefits

The primary advantage of cardioid dispersion is controlling where the sound goes, which offers several benefits:

Reduced Reflections: By directing sound away from rear walls, cardioid speakers minimize unwanted reflections that can cause muddy sound and messy, chaotic recombination of waves in the listening area.

Clearer, More Focused Sound: This reduction in reflections results in a cleaner, more focused, and tonally coherent listening experience, even in acoustically challenging rooms.

Improved Speech Intelligibility: In large venues, directing sound to the audience and away from reflective surfaces or unwanted areas improves clarity and makes vocals and speech easier to understand.

When to use the cardioid Mastertunings?

We would recommend using it when you place the speakers in a challenging spot, either close to wall boundaries, inside a cabinet, or on a desktop. 
 

Tweeter material is often a hot topic in the audiophile community. Soft domes means tweeter diaphragm made from soft material like textile, where hard domes mean hard materials like aluminum. Since the birth of Buchardt Audio we have always used soft dome tweeters for the smooth reproduction, which makes them easy to listen to for hours without any fatigue, something we have become very well-known for. Soft domes are typically easy and “soft” to listen to, but are not the best at retrieving clarity and detail. Hard domes are usually associated with clarity and detail, but often come across as “harsh” and unforgiving. One of the big reasons why a tweeter can be harsh and give listening fatigue, is that hard dome tweeters tend to struggle with very pronounced resonance problems where you would have a big spike in the high frequency response. What is the solution to solve this? Beryllium is one hard material where its resonance frequency is much higher than other hard dome materials. But Beryllium comes with two huge drawbacks. It's very expensive to produce, which results in a high budget allocated to the tweeter alone. It is also an extremely toxic material to work with, and if the dome cracks, then the fumes are lethal to inhale. This also means that it's a requirement that a protected mesh is used in front of the dome, which is not optimal for the sound.

The Buchardt RFA19 (Resonance Free Alu 19 mm) is developed using an aluminum dome that solves the issues associated with hard dome tweeters. It has the benefits of Beryllium, without its drawbacks. It's built on an upgraded motor structure in comparison to our 19 mm soft dome tweeter and uses a very soft radius dome. The combination of its small 19 mm size and dome radius, means that we are able to push the resonance peak all the way up to 30.000hz, which is even higher than most Beryllium dome tweeters. Since we have a tiny 19 mm dome, it's super light and fast as well, which is a huge benefit for reproducing high frequencies with speed and accuracy, without losing power off axis as larger domes tend to do. The result is a tweeter that sounds very effortless, detailed and clear no matter where you are in the room. It does so without ever being harsh or sharp to listen to, which is a part that is very important to us!

Combining this with our perfectly matched waveguide, and you have a match made in heaven! The waveguide contributes to more than what most might think.

1. Ensures that the response and power from the tweeter is the same off axis as on axis.

2. Ensures that the tweeter will not struggle with cabinet diffraction, which helps greatly to make the speakers “disappear” and also benefit to the ease of listening and reduce listening fatigue over time.

3. One unique aspect of our waveguide design is that it's designed to match the contour plot of the woofer down to 1000hz, making the tweeter and woofer work as one driver at the crossover point.   

4. The output of the demanding lower frequencies of the tweeter's response, is significantly boosted acoustically by the waveguide, which allows us to utilize the benefits of such small tweeter domes. Our waveguide benefits more from this than most, as it's very deep.

5. It helps us to phase-align the tweeter and woofer. 

Our goal was to combine the strengths of both the soft dome and hard domes, without any of the negatives. We are super proud to say that this has been achieved to the fullest!

The A200 features the best wireless audio technology available. They can support wireless transfer from any WiSA transmitter with a lossless resolution of 24bits/96kHz and with a synchronization error between the speakers of less than 1 sample with the shortest available latency.

This means that we can ensure that the package of bits stored in the mastering studio where the music is recorded can be transported without any loss directly into the heart of the speakers, where our perfectly matched signal path takes over the processing of the data. The benefit of the WiSA technology is, that not only is the signal transfer lossless, it is also controlled in the receiver side, such that the actually received data corresponds 100% with the data sent out. If not, it is sent again. Therefore, we are 100% sure, our speakers are provided with the exact same signal as input to the system. No coloration or degradation. This pure digital signal (PDS) is fed directly into our quad-core DSP, where we do state-of-the-art processing, to optimize the signals for each individual driver to perfection.

So the good news is that most present-day loudspeakers tend to sound pretty good on-axis. What's also true is that there are still many loudspeakers that perform rather poorly as soon as you move off-axis. Since most research suggests that what we hear in-room is estimated to be around 12% direct sound (from your speakers), 44% Early Reflections (from your room), and 44% Sound Power (how the sound loads your room), we strive to create solutions that'll deliver predictable, consistent, and excellent results both on and off axis – regardless of the living space!

The A200 keeps and controls the directivity from 1000 hz and all the way up.

What this translates to is a non-distorted, evenly distributed in-room frequency response that allows the A10's to sound balanced even at extreme angles, which in turn allows the enthusiast to enjoy sundry benefits like improved imaging, a bigger soundstage, and better transparency. This excellent off-axis response will also result in a drastically widened 'sweet spot' and most importantly, a character that will remain steadfast even as you move around your home as the music plays.

We've found that this trait best suits most people’s rooms and lifestyles. Especially those with untreated rooms. The bottom line? The A10 is capable of delivering exceptional in-room performance in any room.

A DSP itself does not do anything. Used carelessly, a DSP will not help you a lot. But used with proper care and deep analysis, a DSP can bring you very far. But – our DSP is much more than just an advanced crossover network between the audio signal and each of the drivers.

DSP equalization perfected

We have 2700 measurements available for each driver, When run through our own advanced analysis tool, it enables us to distinguish the different acoustic phenomena to the degree that we can also judge which nonlinearities to compensate and precisely how, and which not to touch. We will analyze the effect of our EQ on each of the 2700 measurement points around the speaker, and evaluate the impacts in each point, to judge the acoustic effect of a given correction. With properly set targets, the effect of this EQ approach is an improvement so far unheard. With this technology we can very accurately eliminate system resonances, because they will appear equally bad to all directions, whereas, for example some diffractions will only be seen in specific directions and need different compensation. All of this is done with the aspect in mind to make a speaker as linear as possible, with as little compromise as possible to the off-axis response. Therefore, the fundamentally good acoustic configuration helps us a lot to make as little compromise to either as possible. The bottom line is, the A-series audio reproduction is a huge step forward in quality.

Bass extension

Another benefit from the use of active systems is the ability to extend the bass reproduction. We tune our systems to play as deep as we can justify given the amount of power available and which the cone/displacement allows us to do, without any distortion to the system. Our DSP will monitor the excursion and health state of each driver, and will adapt the processing dynamically, to ensure the output from each driver is always non-distorted and trimmed to perfection, regardless of the conditions.

Our use of closed cabinets also effectively eliminates the problems occurring in ported systems, where the port at high SPL’s in many cases will become non-linear and unpredictable in terms of output and behavior. Because of our driver monitoring technology, we can extend the performance way beyond what can normally be achieved with a speaker of this size and structure, compared to more traditional designs. Therefore, do not be fooled by the compact sizes of these babies – they will hit way beyond their size.

In traditional HiFi systems, a lot of effort is often spent finding the right combination of components to meet the optimum performance. In most cases this is done by ear in private homes - and takes up a lot of time and is quite costly with all the component exchange needed. At Buchardt, we decided to do this component matching for the system by scientific measures and systematic evaluation in our lab and listening room, to ensure we made the right choices.

The Amp/DAC used in the A200

Most amplifiers only accept an analog input signal, which means you require a dedicated DAC (Digital Analog Converter) before this stage. The A200s amplifiers work differently, as they accept a digital input, eliminating the need for a dedicated DAC stage. In short, this means you have both DAC (Burr-Brown®) and amplification within the same chip/stage in the A200, effectively shorting the signal path and overall simplifying the system. 

One of the things we were also looking at improving with the A200 was efficiency, heat and noise. You can expect a speaker that does not draw much power at arrange SPL levels or in idle. It also stays cool and generate very little noise. 
 

Automatic ISO 226:2003 Compensation = Low Level Enhancement - LLE

It is well known and documented in research, that the perceived sound balance is dependent on the level at which sound is reproduced. Best example is that with traditional loudspeakers, when listening at quieter levels, there is very little experienced bass and treble reproduction, although at louder level the bass and treble is clearly present.

Since we are in control of the entire sound-reproduction chain of the speakers, we can predict the exposed level of sound at the listeners ears, which means we are able to compensate for this effect completely and very accurately. However, we will only do this compensation at low levels (<70dB), where we know most listeners will not perform their critical listening.

The outcome from this compensation is a smooth and constantly adapting timbre to the sound, so that it will also sound dynamic and impressive at lower levels, where you can have conversations at the same time during listening. This is a very well engineered feature, primarily aimed at professorial use in studios. It allows the mastering engineers to work at lower volumes and still get a precise representation of the music. This allows for much longer work sessions without getting fatigued. For HiFi use, if you often listen at lower volumes this would be a game changer for you!

Now this is cool and unheard of in the industry! With the flexibility of such powerful DSP, we are in complete control of what we want the speaker to do. This means, that we will provide downloadable Mastertunings to completely change the fundamentals of the speakers sound design. This is also one of the reasons all our active speakers work in sealed enclosure. This allow us flexibility of the speakers tuning without being locked to a bass reflex (port) or passive radiator tuning. 

So what does this mean?

The stock Mastertuning the speakers come with is a very neutral sounding tuning with a flat and deep response. We think this gives you a very versatile speaker that sounds great under most circumstances and a good balance of deep bas as a standalone speaker and high enough SPL for most. 

But what if your needs are different? What if you rarely play loud and just value crazy deep bass response? Or maybe you are forced to place the speakers near wall boundaries or in a bookshelf? Maybe you just want a more warm and forgiving sound, or more bright and detailed? If you are using them as a Studio monitor or as an desktop speaker? Maybe as a center channel or even rear channels in home theater setup? What if you want something where deep bass is not important, but SPL is? Maybe you want to use subs with them? There can be many reasons, and we aim to be able to cover all needs with our Mastertunings selections, which also evolves over time.  

You can check out the different Matertunings which can be found under our download section HERE

Here you can see a quick guide on how you change Mastertunings:

With the A200 we have put a lot of effort into optimizing it for nearfield and studio use for both professional and amateur. The A200 has a dedicated Mastertuning for studio use, which makes the transition between the drivers work better in a nearfield configuration. It also allows the speakers to play truly full range, so you can have an all-in-one monitor without a sub. It's extremely flat in its frequency response, has tight and precise bass response, which all results in a transparent speaker, perfect as a high-end studio monitor. With the A200 the Cardioid dispersion tuning could also be very useful in studio/nearfield use as you often have stuff around the speakers or have them close to the rear wall.

*We recommend a minimum distance of 0.5-0.75 meter to get good driver integration.