New Eminence tech

[Spivonious]

http://www.eminence-speaker.com/fdm.asp

A 9dB drop is pretty substantial. That's almost half the volume. I wonder how they did this.

[GodWentPUNK]

wow, pretty cool. I've never used an attenuator before so I can't comment on how they sound when you lower the Db's but the only thing I'm wondering about is that in the article it says " More attenuation affords a warmer tone while less attenuation restores volume and brightness" . If I had a cab w/ 4 speakers, this solution might get pretty expensive (depending on the street value of these).

[Twitch]

I dont see how they could do that passively without improperly loading the power amp. I mean I know theyre speaker engineers and are (hopefully) aware of the fact that you shouldnt mismatch your impedence, but how the hell is this supposed to work and why has it taken this long for someone to figure it out?? Seems like another case of too good to be true.

[Hellbat]

There is another company out there (I forget who off the top of my head) that is replacing the driver magnet with a variable electromagnet for attentuation. (For example, lower voltage will lower the magnetic field meaning the amp will have to work harder to drive the cone as far, lowering the overall volume.) This looks like they are just adding/removing distance between the voice coil and the magnet, which is sort of the same idea.