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SPECIFICATIONS: 100X250X250W Hypex NCore Dual 9.5” subwoofers Total bass system displacement per side = 0.882 liters Ultra low mass 4” midrange Seas non-ferrofluid tweeter Elastically decoupled mid/tweeter enclosure Heavily braced, triangular midrange wavetrap enclosure with 3M industrial vibration absorbing constrained layer damping, heavy felt and natural fibrous fill Digital inputs to 24bit 192KHz SPDIF and AES/EBU and Optical inputs Analog inupts by RCA and XLR Auto signal detect Three Presets Adjustable bandwidth Digital signal cables included Cubby at rear hides your streamer Net weight 85lbs. Shown in White Oak, Figured Black Walnut and Sapele
RAVEN BREAKS THE MOLD: A TWIN SUBWOOFER, TRIAMPLIFIED THREE-WAY Since the beginning of audio, a three-way’s bass system had to be a woofer, maybe two. A woofer is a driver that, by design, must divide its duties between making bass and doing a nice enough job into the midrange to mate up with a midrange driver. But those goals are opposed, so a woofer is always a compromise when it comes to making bass. Limited by what could be done with passive filters, you were stuck with the consequence that, when the music gets rough and the bass system reaches its limits, you get congestion, strain and glare. But now, with twelve years of DSP experience under our belts, bringing three powerful NCore amps to bear, and unbound by the ‘old rules’, we’ve taken a leap. We’re not stuck with woofers; we can use drivers that are designed for the singular job of making bass: subwoofers. Sure, they can’t make midrange. But we don’t need it, we can dial the ideal filter to marry the midrange to the bass system. The result: Raven boasts twice the displacement, or bass making capacity, of its predecessors, which liberates the entire speaker to exhibit expressive dynamic range, vocal range beauty, and genuine full range, tight and energetic bass at amplitudes that will rock you. But there’s more. There’s a factor quite rarely discussed, but the one thing that makes all great speakers great: top-to-bottom cohesion. Meaning that: from top to bottom, both resolution and dynamic ability remain constant. No part of the presentation is better, or worse, than the rest. The whole speaker holds together as one single thing. That’s what makes a speaker truly ‘musical’. Raven is my response to former Meadowlark Audio lovers who have come to the conclusion that they’re ready to upgrade to a Next Gen Meadowlark, but also have to mind a budget. We think Raven’s price will surprise you. And you won’t need to spend another nickel adding subwoofers. I think we really knocked it out of the park with this one.
Here is a look at how we’re putting Raven’s large displacement to work. Check out the outrageous transfer function we’re applying! This should give you an idea just how divergent our approach is from conventional thinking. A 5th order Butterworth low pass filter brick-walls the subwoofers’ output from effecting the midrange. The 5th order Butterworth high pass at 18Hz (!!!) lets us get away with 6dB of boost, making for a brutally robust bass presentation with genuine full-range extension. That we can run Raven’s bass system up to full rated output with this aggressive filter in place is amazing, even to us.
The new low moving mass SB Acoustics 4” midrange just sounds beautiful. Here are its filtered FA output and Cumulative Spectral Decay. Smooth and natural with no discernible overhang, because there are no passive components to screw things up; the midrange is directly coupled to its dedicated amp. Also, no discernible box echo, none evident on the CSD; Raven’s highly damped triangular wave-trap effectively buries the backwave. Squeaky clean and dripping wet midrange output.
A FEW TECHNICAL POINTS OF INTEREST: Here are a set of graphs, simplified for visual clarity, showing how we can use the choices DSP puts at our fingertips when deciding how to employ a bass system’s displacement. A bass system’s displacement defines the limits of its ability, a frontier upon which we are free to choose any combination of output and extension. Twin woofers, having twice the displacement of a single one, allow us to choose some combination of both more output and more extension. When we graduate to twin subwoofers - having twice the displacement of ordinary woofers - the options at hand start to show a real advantage.
These days nearly all dome tweeters feature ferrofluid immersed voice coils, and for good reason: ferrofluid’s function is to conduct heat away from the coil to prevent you from frying it. That is an essential property in speakers with all but the steepest, hence nasty sounding, passive filters. But, obviously, the coil might move freely if not immersed in oil. Happily, Seas offers a nonferrofluid variant of one of my favorite tweeters. And, happily, we can impose a brick-wall filter in the processor, while the tweeter is directly coupled to its own dedicated, treble optimized 100W NCore amplifier. The sum is that Raven is just so darn much fun to listen to, so sweet, so brutal, so refined, so emotional, so energetic.
RAVEN BREAKS THE MOLD: A TWIN SUBWOOFER, TRIAMPLIFIED THREE-WAY Since the beginning of audio, a three- way’s bass system had to be a woofer, maybe two. A woofer is a driver that, by design, must divide its duties between making bass and doing a nice enough job into the midrange to mate up with a midrange driver. But those goals are opposed, so a woofer is always a compromise when it comes to making bass. Limited by what could be done with passive filters, you were stuck with the consequence that, when the music gets rough and the bass system reaches its limits, you get congestion, strain and glare. But now, with twelve years of DSP experience under our belts, bringing three powerful NCore amps to bear, and unbound by the ‘old rules’, we’ve taken a leap. We’re not stuck with woofers; we can use drivers that are designed for the singular job of making bass: subwoofers. Sure, they can’t make midrange. But we don’t need it, we can dial the ideal filter to marry the midrange to the bass system. The result: Raven boasts twice the displacement, or bass making capacity, of its predecessors, which liberates the entire speaker to exhibit expressive dynamic range, vocal range beauty, and genuine full range, tight and energetic bass at amplitudes that will rock you.
But there’s more. There’s a factor quite rarely discussed, but the one thing that makes all great speakers great: top-to- bottom cohesion. Meaning that: from top to bottom, both resolution and dynamic ability remain constant. No part of the presentation is better, or worse, than the rest. The whole speaker holds together as one single thing. That’s what makes a speaker truly ‘musical’. Raven is my response to former Meadowlark Audio lovers who have come to the conclusion that they’re ready to upgrade to a Next Gen Meadowlark, but also have to mind a budget. We think Raven’s price will surprise you. And you won’t need to spend another nickel adding subwoofers. I think we really knocked it out of the park with this one.
A FEW TECHNICAL POINTS OF INTEREST: Here are a set of graphs, simplified for visual clarity, showing how we can use the choices DSP puts at our fingertips when deciding how to employ a bass system’s displacement. A bass system’s displacement defines the limits of its ability, a frontier upon which we are free to choose any combination of output and extension. Twin woofers, having twice the displacement of a single one, allow us to choose some combination of both more output and more extension. When we graduate to twin subwoofers - having twice the displacement of ordinary woofers - the options at hand start to show a real advantage.
Here is a look at how we’re putting Raven’s large displacement to work. Check out the outrageous transfer function we’re applying! This should give you an idea just how divergent our approach is from conventional thinking. A 5th order Butterworth low pass filter brick-walls the subwoofers’ output from effecting the midrange. The 5th order Butterworth high pass at 18Hz (!!!) lets us get away with 6dB of boost, making for a brutally robust bass presentation with genuine full-range extension. That we can run Raven’s bass system up to full rated output with this aggressive filter in place is amazing, even to us.
The new low moving mass SB Acoustics 4” midrange just sounds beautiful. Here are its filtered FA output and Cumulative Spectral Decay. Smooth and natural with no discernible overhang, because there are no passive components to screw things up; the midrange is directly coupled to its dedicated amp. Also, no discernible box echo, none evident on the CSD; Raven’s highly damped triangular wave-trap effectively buries the backwave. Squeaky clean and dripping wet midrange output.
These days nearly all dome tweeters feature ferrofluid immersed voice coils, and for good reason: ferrofluid’s function is to conduct heat away from the coil to prevent you from frying it. That is an essential property in speakers with all but the steepest, hence nasty sounding, passive filters. But, obviously, the coil might move freely if not immersed in oil. Happily, Seas offers a nonferrofluid variant of one of my favorite tweeters. And, happily, we can impose a brick-wall filter in the processor, while the tweeter is directly coupled to its own dedicated, treble optimized 100W NCore amplifier. The sum is that Raven is just so darn much fun to listen to, so sweet, so brutal, so refined, so emotional, so energetic.
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