Напольная акустика — Göbel High End Epoque Aeon Baforce (Passive)

The Epoque Aeon Baforce (Passive) is the larger of the two Baforce bass systems made by Göbel High End, the German builder of loudspeakers and cables based in Munich. Despite its full-height column form, it is a dedicated sub-bass unit rather than a full-range speaker, intended to sit alongside a pair of main loudspeakers and cover the lowest octaves. Göbel offers the Baforce in active and passive forms, and this passive version leaves amplification to the owner.

Key specs that matter

The passive tower carries 16 Aeon long-throw woofers of 9 inch diameter, made by Göbel with aluminium diaphragms and mounted in two mirrored groups on the side walls of the column. Their combined radiating area exceeds 3,600 cm2, and linear excursion is more than 2 cm. Göbel specifies an operating band of 15 Hz to 80 Hz. In passive form the system presents a 4 ohm load. The base plate measures 52.5 cm wide by 65.5 cm deep and the column stands 216 cm tall. The passive unit weighs 335 kg without packaging and 385 kg in its flight case, against 355 kg for the active version, which carries sixteen 250 W Class H amplifiers for a total of 4,000 W at 1 percent THD.

Engineering and use context

Every driver sits in its own sealed chamber, a layout Göbel uses for impulse behaviour and control of cone motion. With the drivers facing each other from opposite sides, the array is impulse compensated, and the company claims harmonic distortion falls to roughly one tenth as a result. The drivers themselves use glass-fibre voice coils, very stiff aluminium cones and a magnet system with a linearised field. The cabinet is a multi-layer sandwich of composite material and an aluminium alloy, built to suppress panel resonances and surface waves. On the passive model the base is a composite part sandwiched between stainless steel plates, whereas the powered model has a machined aluminium foot that holds its electronics. The enclosure is finished in white or black piano lacquer, combined with anodised aluminium parts in natural silver or dark space grey.

Pairing

The crossover is not built in. Göbel supplies it separately as the Epoque Aeon Baforce Controller, an analogue active filter kept in its own chassis away from amplifier circuitry to limit electromagnetic interference. A passive Baforce therefore needs that controller plus an external power amplifier with enough current for its low impedance at very low frequencies. The floor must also be checked for the concentrated weight on a small footprint.

Alternatives

A shorter option from Göbel is the Epoque Aeon Baforce Petite (Passive), which halves the driver count and stands 119 cm high.