Background
Alessandro Schiavi and Paolo Tezzon share the spiritual and cul-tural duty to authentically tribute some of the most fruitful princi-ples of what could be defined as the “Italian school of electroa-coustic design” for home interiors, in the humble hope of makingthem further evolve. “Didascalìa” is – eminently – a cultural ope-ration: it’s about knowledge transmission. A knowledge that Ales-sandro and Paolo strongly believe shouldn’t be lost.
“Didascalia”, in ancient Greek language, means exactly “tea-ching”, “knowledge” and it is the result of the creative imple-mentation of several lessons coming from the school of Italianelectro-acoustic design.
Concept
There is a design concept which has been typical, which alwayscharacterized the “Italian school of electro acoustic for home in-teriors”: the two-way configuration. Such a set-up is able to provi-de the maximum amount of purity, immediacy and musicality tothe reproduction. All the good things such a design choice is ableto “bring to the table” come with limitations in terms of size ofthe soundstage and in terms of extension in the low frequencies.Didascalìa stays faithful to such a configuration but aim to over-come those limitations with creative design solutions.
Cabinet construction
The two Didascalìa outside “wings” are obtained coupling to-gether 8 seasoned solid walnut slats, cross grained and jointedwith the use of a viscoelasticadvanced glue which will allowfreedom of movement to the slats themselves. Each slat has beenseasoned for months to remove humidity present in the fibersand then vacuum roasted in order to further stabilize it. They arefinished with a “0 gloss” open pore water based natural painting.The outside wings of the lacquered version of Didascalìa are re-alized by means of a sandwich construction involving 3 layers ofextreme hi-density HDF enveloped by a tulipwood veneer. Sucha construction matches the mass and the mechanical propertiesof the solid walnut version. The lacquering is about 8 layers ofcoating, each of them finely hand polished by the skilled artisans.An advanced CNC machining gives to the wings their final shape,which is functional in many ways: they are carved inside provi-ding a reflection and standing waves free loading volume to thespeaker units. They also provide to the overall cabinet a “constrai-ned layer damping mode” construction for a virtually resonan-ce-free enclosure. More, their front part is designed for loadingthe transducer’s emission, optimizing their dispersion patternwhile allowing Didascalia to sound big and complete.
The Didascalìa cabinet main structure is realized with a combina-tion of HDF and high-pressure multilayer Baltic birch wood whilesub-structural ribs are strategically placed inside to strengthen the
overall structure. The Didascalìa cabinet construction is further op-timized in its damping/stiffness ratio by means of Aluminum CNCmachined “damp-shelves” which acts like collectors and dissipatorsof any residual vibration while creating an exo-skeleton, envelopingthe cabinet’s main structure. A state-of-the-art implementation.
Mechanical time alignment
The eco leather covered baffle has been designed to mechanicallytime align the tweeter and midwoofer’s emission centers, for an op-timal listening distance starting at 2 meters away from Didascalìa,which is the typical set up in any suitable listening room.
This solution allows for an amazing phase coherence, for a perfectset up of the impulse response, which translates into Didascalìa’samazing staging ability.
Vibration free decoupling system
Didascalìa’s spikes are provided with a compliance calibrated ela-stomer-based suspension system for a vibration-free interface withthe listening environment. This solution has been implemented todecouple the enclosure from the floor,eliminating any acoustic fee-dback and any vibration propagation to the listening room.
Tweeter
The 29 mm tweeter is based on a Kurt Mueller silk soft dome diaphragm,chosen for its natural sound properties.
This diaphragm is then expertly hand coated to optimize its extensionin the highest frequencies, creating this way a truly hi-resolution device.It’s mounted on a Diapason designed faceplate, conceived to avoiddiffractions and optimize the dispersion patterns.
It’s equipped with a large neodymium magnet system and a non-reso-nant aluminum rear chamber.
Mid-woofer
The 180mm mid-woofer is a “state of the art” design, based upon an airdried, hand coated, paper/nylon fiber pulp Kurt Mueller cone, a solutionused in several historical extreme quality studiomonitors and chosenfor its transparency and unmistakable musicality. Such a diaphragm isimplemented with simply the best in terms of magnet system, the “Air-circ” configuration. It is based on six neodymium cylinders providing anamazing flux and avoiding any compression for an exceptionally lowdistortion behavior. The magnet circuit also incororates copper rings toreduce non-linear and modulation distortions while increasing overload.Diapason design, manufactured by Scan speak.
Designed by Diapason, manufactured by Scan speak.
The «active» drone units and the electro-magnetic brakc system
The side 220 x 260 mm side “active” racetrack shaped drore units-the passive radiators-allow to achieve another specific Didascalia design goal:Those units are shring the oversized loading enclosure with the front firing mid-woofer which pressurize them.
They have been thoroughly optimized in moving mass and compliance so that,in combination with the special set of custom T&S parameters of themid-woofer.they extend Didascalia extension way below 40 Hz,a remarkable result.
This way it is possible to select between 3 different drone diaphragms excursion damping, by acting on theDidascalia rear switch knob,obtaining thisDesigned by Diapason,manufactured by Scan speak.
