Loudspeakers

For DeVore there’s no substitute for the classic German Müller blue paper cone, untreated here except for some reinforcing lacquer at the cone’s throat where it’s bonded to a multi-layer copper voice-coil and Kapton former. We saw the same in DeVore’s O/96 model [HFN Apr ’21] and the O/Bronze also shares the same rubber surround and ferrite magnet. The bronze phase plug, however, is taken from the flagship O/Ref speaker, replacing the O/96’s ABS plug. This bronze bullet not only acts as a heatsink for the driver under load but also secures thick copper shorting rings inside the magnetic gap, linearising impedance and response and reducing distortion.

Bronze, in both the main driver basket and tweeter body, is key to this O/96 derivative’s sound. Designer and company CEO, John DeVore, experimented with a number of non-magnetic materials, including aluminium, brass and classic leaded bronze in place of the stock zinc woofer chassis. In practice, subjective differences were most pronounced with the tweeter horns, with bronze sounding best followed by brass. The influence of different woofer chassis metals was more subtle, the differences easily masked by burn-in, etc, but old-school leaded bronze still had the edge. ‘I was predisposed to use the bronze chassis, to help with the astronomical costs of developing and casting the units for the Reference’, says John, ‘but it truly did sound better’. PM