The Design; Choice Of Cables; A Long Process - Gryphon Cantata Owner's Manual

Since 1986, Gryphon has manu-
factured some of the finest
amplifiers in the
Reviewers often
Gryphon products as neutral,
transparent and inherently musi-
cal; the choice for the music
lover rather than the tech freak.
We take pride in this profile.
Almost all manufacturers dream
of creating a complete sound
system from the AC cord to the
loudspeaker. This is the only
sense in which we must admit to
being like other manufacturers.
However, a great amplifier man-
ufacturer does not automatically
make a great loudspeaker man-
ufacturer. For an outsider, it is
easy to underestimate the com-
plexity of loudspeaker design.
There are so few parts and it is
basically a box with a couple of
drivers and a handful
crossover components, so how
hard can it be?
Indeed, it is easy to make a loud-
speaker, that is why there are so
many of them and why most are
so cheap, but it is very difficult
and challenging to create a great
speaker worthy of the high end
tag. The paradox is that it is the
few parts that make it so difficult.
There are very few parameters
to adjust and the real problem is
that almost no drivers are ideal,
because they essentially are
made for the much larger and
less demanding market for
cheap "boom" boxes. The tiny
market for high end drivers is not
world. commercially attractive to the
describe driver manufacturers.

The Design

At Gryphon we have a design
tradition of seeking out only the
finest components. If we cannot
find them, we make tem, rather
than settle for second best. Now,
we have applied this experience
and uncompromising approach
to loudspeaker design.
We assembled a team of experi-
enced speaker designers with
original design ideas never real-
ized before. We gave them free
reins to design special drivers as
required to meet our ideal speci-
fications.
A highly respected Danish driver
manufacturer agreed to collabo-
of
rate with us, both as a learning
experience and because of the
prestige involved. We knew that
the audiophile
expectations for a Gryphon
speaker would be high and next
to impossible to meet.

A Long Process

Few people know that this proj-
ect started in 1995 and has gone
through different stages, but
always based on the same
design philosophy and theories.
The Cantata design team is the
original team from 1995.
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