Body and speaker chassis
For the body Edifier uses highly compressed MDF with excellent 25 mm thickness along with a glued solid cherry wood veneer. This is also expressed in the rather high weight of a single box and it is visually a feast for the eyes and acoustically a feast for the ears. The quality of workmanship is beyond reproach and the complete surface treatment is carried out in the company’s own joinery at the very highest level. I had already shown what it’s like there in an on-site report a few years ago.
The sound-absorbing mats inside the speaker are a middle ground between corrugated and pyramid foam and serve the intended purpose without any problems. The Airpulse A200 use a newly developed 5.5-inch mid-bass driver with a special metal cone made of aluminum. Significant is the quite short voice coil design, which works with low distortion and therefore more linear force in the magnetic field.
To ensure sufficient low-frequency output from the small 5.5-inch chassis, a so-called long-stroke design is used, in which the maximum possible excursion of the diaphragm driven by the voice coil is relatively large. Of course, this concept has advantages and disadvantages, but first and foremost saves space.
In addition, the bass reflex tube, which is actually round, but ends in an oval opening at the back of the box. Here, the plastic has been deformed accordingly, the tube assembled from several pieces and then rigidly glued. The opening inside sits exactly above the tweeter, which is also common.
Thankfully, the Airpulse A200 uses ribbon tweeters, which is a type of flat diaphragm speaker. If something like this is used as a tweeter, then the tweeter can be kept in the same plane of vibration as the mid-bass driver. Equal vibration level here means that there is inherently less phase distortion between the individual drivers and you have to correct less. Such a ribbon tweeter consists of a very thin metal material (usually aluminum, beryllium, titanium or other materials). The A200 uses aluminum, also for cost reasons. Since it is a conductive material, it can be placed as a membrane as well as directly in a magnetic field and can be driven directly.
The width of the aluminum membrane is only a few millimeters, the length here is about 50 millimeters. The thickness is minimal, ten microns or less, resulting in a weight of less than 50 mg. Compared to a conventional dome tweeter, the equivalent vibrating mass of the entire unit is therefore over ten times smaller. The inertia effect is extremely low, so that the reaction speed is very high. However, such a ribbon loudspeaker also has electrical and mechanical disadvantages, since it requires a matching element due to the low impedance and is also not particularly protected against strong vibrations. You just can’t have everything.
I did not disassemble the good piece, it is sufficient for the first assessment. Good to see that the tweater was not soldered, but the cables were screwed tight with eyelets and nuts. You don’t see that too often either.
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