Hi-Fi
Fluid Audio may not seem like a Hi-Fi house-hold name but the founders of the company have been designing speakers for over 25 years. Now, after painstaking tuning and voicing, Fluid Audio is proud to present the CX7 Hi-Fi active monitor.
You may recognize this speaker as it is a close cousin to the Studio monitor, FPX7.
Following in the footsteps of its cousin (found in recording studios all over the world), the CX7 is another coaxial design monitor with an AMT tweeter. Air Motion Transformer tweeters have been legendary in the audio industry due of their transparent sound, fast attack and high efficiency. Designed by Dr. Oskar Heil, the pleated diaphragm of the AMT acts somewhat like bellows that “squeeze” the sound out in accordion-like fashion. This design results in an extremely fast response and fine detail.
Mounting the AMT tweeter in the center of the woofer gives the CX7 all the benefits of a coax design: A compact footprint, being a “point source” device as well as great off-axis response. This coupled with a high-output, 7″ woofer creates a powerful, full frequency monitor. The 140W custom designed amplifier incorporates two options for EQ flexibility: The Tweeter Trim switch and Acoustic Space switch, to account for placement issues you may face in your home. Like the other Fluid models, the amplifier also has a generous heat sink, and auto-off Standby function. All of these features make the CX7 monitor the best choice for a great home HiFi experience.
Amplification and Crossover Network
The specially designed Class A/B bi-amplifier separately drives the low and high frequency drivers -allowing each to work independently and more efficiently. Like the FPX7, the CX7 uses an oversized toroid transformer for the power supply. This provides plenty of clean power, with a ton of headroom. Utilizing an external heat sink on the amplifier keeps the heat outside of the enclosure, which allows both the amps and the drivers to operate at lower temperatures. When the speaker is not in use, there is an integrated standby function that powers down the amplifier to conserve energy. Combined with phase-optimized crossover networks, the drivers blend together, resulting in a coherent soundstage across the entire DSP controlled audio spectrum.
Woofer
The woofer driver is 7″(178mm) in diameter and utilizes a low distortion magnet structure. That magnet drives a high temperature voice coil, which is mounted to a polypropylene coated, paper pulp cone. The cone is anchored to the frame with a pliant butyl rubber surround which minimizes high frequency resonant peaks that may be transmitted from the cone. Although many claim to use “space age” materials in their cones, since the 1920’s, the most popular material for woofer cones has been paper pulp. Why? Not only it’s great strength-to-weight ratio, but because of its excellent damping characteristics – leaving the woofer to reproduce pure tones, not the ringing resonances.
Tweeter
The CX7 tweeter is what makes this speaker so unique and sound so extraordinary. The yellow part in the middle of the speaker is a 28mm x 43mm Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter with a neodymium magnet. AMT tweeters have long been known for their precise detail and lightning fast attack. What makes the CX7 so unique, however, is that it is mounted in the center of the woofer, in a coaxial configuration. Not only does this make the “acoustic center” the same for both the woofer and tweeter, which drastically improves the speaker’s vertical off axis response, but it also allows the speaker cabinet to be a little shorter and more compact. Besides it’s extremely refined detail, the AMT provides outstanding imaging and depth.
Bass-Reflex Port
The circular hole at the bottom of the front panel of the CX7 is the bass-reflex vent port. It is designed to effectively tune the speaker cabinet to a certain frequency, and maximize the bass output of the speaker. It is put on the front panel in order to fire directly at the listener, and also to allow for flexibility of placement (as a rear firing port may interfere with the wall behind it).
Enclosure and Protective Grille
The enclosure design of the CX7 has a very important role in shaping the overall sonic response of the speaker. Besides being made of acoustically efficient MDF material, it is internally braced to dampen out internal standing waves inside the cabinet. This lowers audible distortion which can cloud up the imaging of the speaker. The front baffle also has a cloth grille, which adheres with neodymium magnets. This grille is acoustically transparent, but protects the speaker drivers from damage.
Specifications:
Fluid Audio ble grunnlagt i 2011 av Kevin Zuccaro. Han startet som tekniker hos JBL i 1990, gikk videre til Cerwin-Vega i 1998 og M-Audio i 2005. Her fokuserte han utelukkende på aktive høyttalere og designet alle M-Audios monitorer. I 2011 gikk Kevin Zuccaro sin egen vei for å starte Fluid Audio. I dag representerer Fluid Audio høy lydkvalitet med moderne funksjoner og solid konstruksjon.
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