What is a Planar Magnetic Transducer ?
A long strip of thin material is impregnated/coated with several conductors which act like the voice coil on a regular speaker. This assembly, typically a kapton or polyester film with aluminum strips, is suspended between continuous rows of bar magnets. When energy passes through the ribbon/voicecoil sandwich, it is repelled and attracted by the surrounding magnets. A planar magnetic driver is capable of seamlessly reproducing almost all of the sound spectrum, from highest highs to mid bass, almost 8 octaves. This eliminates crossover distortion, phase distortion and avoids the different “voicing” of the various cone speakers necessary to cover the same frequency range. The voicecoil has typically no reactive component which makes it an easy, almost pure resistive load for any amplifier. This contrary to cone speakers and ESL’s. Impedances are in the 2.
