Напольная акустика — Devore Fidelity GIBBON X

DeVore Fidelity of Brooklyn calls the gibbon X the full-range reference model of its gibbon line, a three-way ported floorstander that the company presents as easy to drive and easy to place in a room. Prototypes appeared at CES in 2012, and the production version followed in 2015 after the tweeter had been redesigned. Of the two gibbon towers now listed it is the larger, sitting above the gibbon Super Nine, and it was priced at USD 15,890 per pair. Cabinets are finished in bamboo, with cherry, mahogany and mink as the listed colours.

Key specs that matter

Three driver types share the work. A 3/4 inch ultra-low-mass textile dome covers the treble, a 7 inch midrange with a phase plug and an inverted natural rubber surround takes the middle of the band, and two long-throw 9 inch woofers handle the bass. DeVore quotes 23 Hz to 40 kHz. Nominal impedance is 8.5 ohms. Before the feet are fitted the cabinet is about 1120 mm high, 230 mm wide and 445 mm deep, and one speaker weighs 38.5 kg.

Engineering and use context

The interior is split so that each driver group gets its own air volume. The tweeter is suspended in an inert chamber, the midrange has a separate sealed enclosure, and the two woofers load into a tuned enclosure divided into four chambers. Those woofers are not on the front baffle - they are mounted on the cabinet sides and fire sideways, which is how such a narrow front panel carries a three-way layout with two large bass drivers. The walls are not parallel and are built from differing materials and thicknesses. The crossover was tuned by ear over several iterations and then checked by measurement. Machined bronze locking cones with nickel plating serve as feet and can be adjusted to level the cabinet or tilt it toward the listening seat. The textile tweeter was new with the gibbon X and later moved unchanged into the cheaper Super Nine, so the two gibbon towers share the same high-frequency unit while differing in bass and midrange layout.

Pairing

For amplifier choice the relevant figures are the impedance extremes and the efficiency. The curve never drops below 7.3 ohms, a minimum reached at 26 Hz in the deep bass, and it rises to a maximum of 16 ohms. Sensitivity is 90 dB per watt at one metre.

Alternatives

The DeVore Fidelity gibbon Super Nine is the smaller 2.5-way gibbon tower, pairing two paper woofers with the same textile tweeter in a shorter cabinet.