Quadral Aurum Montan VIII

The Aurum Montan VIII loudspeaker is a full-size and virtually full-range 3-way, 3-driver, pressure/bass reflex loudspeaker, The loudspeaker stands 44.1 high, 10.6 wide and 17.6deep and therefore, is not a speaker to be overlooked. The driver complement consists of a 10.2 woofer, 6.7 midrange and most interesting to me, a 4.72magnetostat ribbon tweeter. Nominal/music power is 200 Watts/300 Watts, with a frequency response of 25 Hz 65 kHz, impendence of 4 to 8 Ohms and a sensitivity of 89 dB/ 1 Watt / 1 meter. The term magnetostat was new to me when I reviewed the Montans little brother the Altan, so I decided to do a little research and thought Id share what I gleaned from my reading. In simple terms, a magnetostat tweeter might be referred to as a ribbon tweeter, which is how Aurum refers to it on their website; however, magnetostats are actually a different breed, if perhaps within the same species as ribbon tweeters. A magnetostat uses a diaphragm made of a very thin non-conductive plastic (Aurum tweeters use a diaphragm made of Kapton, which is a polyimide film developed by DuPont) onto which conductive (metal) tracks are affixed. This diaphragm sits sandwiched, between parallel rows of very strong magnets. On the other hand a true ribbon tweeter uses a very thin diaphragm that is made of metal or a metalized plastic film that itself conducts current, as opposed to using conductive tracks. Ribbon tweeters typically require a transformer, whereas, magnetostats do not.