Напольная акустика — Duntech PRINCESS

The Princess is a sealed box floorstanding loudspeaker from Duntech Audio, an Australian company from Lugarno near Sydney, founded in the 1980s by physicist John Dunlavy. The current version was revised from the classic Duntech design, and the maker links its engineering to earlier staff work on ground communication and telemetry antennae for the NASA lunar landings, which informed its approach to time alignment, phase response and diffraction control.

Key specs that matter

Duntech fits two 250 mm woofers, two 90 mm midrange units and a single 25 mm tweeter, wired through first order filters. Its response, taken 3.5 m away on the tweeter axis, spans 35 Hz to 25 kHz within 1.5 dB. Efficiency is 90 dB SPL at 1 m with a 2.83 volt input, and nominal impedance is 4 ohms. Peak power rating for 10 ms is 1000 watts, while Duntech recommends 150 watts of amplifier power. Harmonic distortion is under 0.5% above 50 Hz, propagation time error is less than 10 microseconds, and relative phase varies less than 25 degrees from 110 Hz to 18 kHz. The speaker measures 1900 mm high, 475 mm wide and 700 mm deep, and each cabinet weighs 140 kg.

Engineering and use context

Finnish birch plywood forms the entire cabinet, which is heavily braced for stiffness and has a front panel 91 mm thick. It rests on a metal plinth made as a sandwich of aluminium and stainless steel, supported by four large precision stainless steel spikes. The housing for the midrange and tweeter is milled from a 50 mm thick block of solid aluminium alloy. Diffraction is handled by a combination of felt and angled faces, which the company compares to the shaping of a stealth aircraft. The crossover is hardwired with attention to the direction of signal flow, silver solder is used between the crossover and the drivers, and the whole network sits outside and behind the cabinet to keep it away from microphonic influence. Veneer options are Pommele Bubinga, Pommele Sapele and Santos Palisander.

Pairing

Input is through Cardas CPBP binding posts, which accept spade connectors. With a low impedance load and a heavy cabinet that needs a solid floor, the speaker suits a large room and a powerful solid state amplifier that can drive low impedance loads without strain. All published figures were measured at 23 degrees Celsius.

Alternatives

Within the same range, the Duntech Sovereign is a seven driver sealed floorstander with two 300 mm woofers and response down to 27 Hz.