TRADITIONAL SPEAKER TECHNOLOGIES
The high-end PHANTOM install speakers are packed with traditional speaker virtues. Not only are the wood fiber cones and ultra-lightweight soft dome tweeters mounted in a classic MDF baffle, the placement of the drivers is just similar to our traditional speakers.
PRODUCT DETAILS
The famous and award-winning IKON sound in your walls. The IKON PHANTOM In-wall has all the features of the IKON series and enables you to build the IKON sound into your wall.
Enclosed in a rigid but vibration damping aluminium cabinet, the IKON PHANTOM fires clear, crisp sound. Be it in stereo for your favorite music or in surround for the movies you love.
Aluminium cabinet
A rigid, die cast aluminium cabinet has been used for the IKON Phantom. This will ensure identical working conditions for the 6.5” bass/midrange driver no matter which wall cavity the speaker is mounted in. Inside the cabinet is used a bituminous material to make it inert to resonances. Ribs in the die cast aluminium and the coupling to the MDF baffle will also prevent build-up of resonances.
By using the cabinet, it is possible to use a bass/midrange driver with soft, low loss rubber surround and a spider causing a low resonance frequency for the driver. This would not have been possible without the rear cabinet, because the surround and spider thus would have to be less soft to be able to control the movement of the bass/midrange driver with compromised performance as consequence.
Because of the small form factor of the speaker it is very difficult for standing waves to build-up. Combined with strategically positioned materials inside the cabinet, standing waves are reduced to an absolute minimum.
Amplifier Friendly
The amplifier to loudspeaker interface is influenced by the impedance characteristics of the speaker. Loudspeakers with poor impedance characteristics can force amplifiers (stress the amplifier unnecessarily) to perform badly. A stressed amplifier will typically add more distortion to the music.
The IKON Phantom drivers are optimised so that the impedance loads of the loudspeakers are very close to a pure resistive load, minimizing amplifier stress (a flat frequency response above the resonance frequency of the woofer).
SOFT DOME TWEETER
The tweeter module in IKON Phantom consist of a 1.1”/28mm soft dome tweeter and a 0.7x1.8”/17x45mm ribbon super tweeter. Two tweeters are used to obtain wide dispersion characteristics and thereby obey the wide dispersion design philosophy. The dispersion from the soft dome tweeter will decrease above 14 kHz, which is normal for a soft dome tweeter. Above that frequency, the ribbon super tweeter will be gently rolled in.
The 1.1”/28mm soft dome tweeter is designed with the strongest magnet material available, namely neodymium. An aluminium heat sink is mounted on the magnet to ensure cooling and increased power handling in the event of large loads of the loudspeaker. Moreover, low viscosity ferrofluid is used in the voice coil gab for even better cooling and lowering of the resonance frequency of the tweeter.
The geometry of the soft dome diaphragm and the surrounding face plate is carefully designed to have optimum dispersion characteristics as well as a smooth frequency response.
CROSSOVER
All components in the crossover are hardwired to each other to minimize loss and make the most direct connection possible between each component. The alternative would be a printed circuit board, where there would be loss in the copper traces that would connect each component to each other. All components are either glued or strapped/glued to the base plate to avoid mechanical rattle noise, which is prone to occur when the components are subjected to high sound pressure, which can occur inside the loudspeaker cabinet.
The crossover of the loudspeaker is made of high quality components, which are hardwired and glued/strapped on a stable base plate, which will ensure high mechanical strength and eliminate rattle noise from loose components. The inductors of the crossover have a large cross-section to minimize loss and heating of the inductors in the event of high loads of the speaker. The position and direction of the inductors are carefully selected, so the interaction of the electrical fields, which are surrounding the inductors, will interact as little as possible.
The capacitors are either high quality polypropylene foil capacitors or bipolar capacitors. The capacitors have been carefully selected to obtain excellent sonic performance in collaboration with the inductors and the rest of the loudspeaker construction. The resistors used in the crossover are a ceramic power type.
RIBBON TWEETER
The tweeter module in IKON Phantom consist of a 1.1”/28mm soft dome tweeter and a 0.7x1.8”/17x45mm ribbon super tweeter. Two tweeters are used to obtain wide dispersion characteristics and thereby obey the wide dispersion design philosophy. The ribbon super tweeter has better dispersion characteristics at high frequencies, so it will support the loudspeaker, when listening off axis.
Like in the absolute top of the line loudspeaker, DALI MEGALINE, a ribbon super tweeter is used in DALI IKON Phantom. The ribbon super tweeter is gently rolled in from approximately 14 kHz, where it will support the soft dome tweeter. The ribbon super tweeter is an advanced construction. Three powerful neodymium magnets are used to make the magnet field, which will interact with the electrical field generated by the electrical conductors of the low mass diaphragm. The components of the ribbon tweeter enable very rapid movements of the diaphragm and thereby high bandwidth ranging above the limit of human hearing.
On the rear side of the ribbon tweeter is an acoustical chamber, filled with a material for acoustical treatment. To obtain perfect dispersion characteristics and optimum energy transfer at the highs, a special acoustical lens will lead the energy from the diaphragm to the open. Numerous simulations and experiments have been conducted to carefully optimise the pattern and geometry of the acoustical lens.
The loudspeaker drivers in the IKON series is build on the DALI philosophy about low loss drivers. Consequences of the low loss principle are that all breaking forces and damping mechanisms in the moving parts of the drivers are sought minimized. Also, the moving mass is minimized to be able to make drivers with high bandwidth. As a consequence it is possible for the diaphragms to reproduce small signals from the amplifier. The result is good dynamics, where the fine details in the music are audible. The rubber surround of the 6½” driver is made of a carefully selected soft, low loss material, which do not absorb the energy, which instead will be transformed to air motion.
WOOFER
The 6½” woofer in DALI IKON Phantom is designed to be able to meet the DALI Sound Principles.'
The cone and dust cap can move very fast, because it is made of a mixture of paper pulp and wooden fibres (a very light composite). The composite is rather stiff, which to some extent will cause break-ups of the cone at certain frequencies. These break-ups are eliminated by using a coating on the cone. The moving parts of the woofer (diaphragm, spider and surround), are mounted in a rigid, die cast aluminium chassis, where air compression has been minimized. This is done to prevent the counteracting forces on the amplifier signal, which are to be reproduced. To reduce air compression further, there is a vent in the yoke of the magnet system, and openings on both sides of the spider.
The magnet system is optimized to obtain low distortion by offering a linear, saturated magnet field. It is essential, that the magnet system does not modulate (as a reaction to the field which is made by the voice coil). The magnet system has been optimised to achieve these characteristics.
WIDE DISPERSION
Unlike many of our competitors, the sound distribution from the IKON loudspeakers is designed so that if you listen at off axis positions, the frequency characteristics are flat and smooth.
There are a number of advantages by these principles:
• This will ensure that the timbre is almost the same in a large area of your listening room, meaning that you will not need to be on the exact centre axis to fully enjoy your music.
• The integration between the loudspeaker and the listening room is better, because reflected sound will have almost the same frequency characteristics as sound, which is radiated directly from the loudspeaker. This will cause the sound to be more natural to listen to.
• The wide dispersion characteristics make it unnecessary to toe-in or pivot the speakers so that they are pointing towards a specific listening position.
• Distortion is reduced when the loudspeaker is listened to off axis. Distortion and diffraction phenomena are most pronounced on axis, so you will experience better performance with off-axis listening.
