Exciting new line of fullrange drivers from Feastrex

[cdwitmer]

Some of you may remember my posts some time back about the "Exact" (now "mu:xacta") brand of fullrange drivers made by Mr. Takashi Sano in Japan. Last year he entered into a joint venture with IBI Co., Ltd. to start a high-end brand called "Belle Lab" (now "Feastrex"). Mr. Sano and IBI have since parted ways and Mr. Sano continues to make ever more awesome drivers on his own (he is now working on a 30cm fullrange that makes his previous drivers seem both puny and inexpensive by comparison) and IBI has continued making drivers on their own. The two manufacturers are now going in quite different directions with regard to their respective product lines. The purpose of this post today is to introduce IBI's new Feastrex line of fullrange drivers, but I thought I should mention the (now severed) former connection between IBI and Mr. Sano in order to help prevent any confusion, as there are some superficial similarities between some of the drivers.

From January 5 to January 8, IBI Co., Ltd.'s "Feastrex" brand shall be exhibited at CES in Las Vegas (Alexis Park, Booth No. [Room No.] 1362). Speaking from personal experience as a user of their fullrange transducers, I can confirm that Feastrex has some truly outstanding products. They not only produce the world's most powerful fullrange drivers (both AlNiCo and field coil models), but they also have developed a highly innovative technology, the Naturflux (TM) magnetic circuit, that is surely a major milestone in the history of audio. After hearing it, I believe many will concur with the general assessment of hearers that it is the finest fullrange driver ever produced.

As I write, the Feastrex English website is in the process of being updated, so if you go there right away the English pages may still be "under construction"; Your understanding and patience are requested. (http://www.ibi.co.jp/feastrex/english/index.html )

I have prepared JPEG images of the new Feastrex product brochure. The printed version is a single sheet of paper printed on both sides and folded into thirds (for a total of six faces). Please take the time to check out the brochure images and the website. Those specs are for real, folks! They paid good money to have proper tests done by a testing facility and I have seen the data printouts. Those tests were done on pre-production prototypes, and they have tweaked the drivers somewhat to address a few minor areas that needed improvement (the test results showed them what they needed to work on), but the description of the drivers does not go beyond what they can demonstrate, or what a user could demonstrate with his own drivers. I have heard all the drivers except the most innovative model, the one using the Naturflux magnetic circuit. People who have heard it say it is definitely better than the other Feastrex drivers, which blows my mind because I thought the Feastrex drivers were already as good as a fullrange driver -- or any speaker -- could get. So I am really looking forward to hearing these new drivers at CES in a few days. Anyone who has a chance to hear these at CES should definitely take the opportunity to do so.

Here are links to the images:








Please feel free to share this information with anyone who might be interested.

Sincerely yours,

Christopher Witmer
Tokyo

P. S. I will also be at CES 2006 with Feastrex, acting as an interpreter. In the interests of full disclosure: I shall receive remuneration from Feastrex for my interpreting, but beyond that, I do not have any financial interest in the company, and I do not derive any financial benefit from sales of the products. I do not have any arrangement with them to receive a percentage on sales, etc. (The payment for my services as an interpreter shall be exactly the same whether they sell zero units or 10,000.) I am taking time off from my real job in a securities company to do this. It is high time these exotic drivers got some actual exposure outside Japan, and I am glad to see that it is finally going to happen.

P.P.S. The pricing -- where did I put that price sheet? Sorry, I can't find it. But if I recall correctly, the Naturflux drivers have a local price in Japan of 148,000 yen each. That includes local 5% consumption tax which would not apply to exports.

[Godzilla]

The drivers look amazing but i dont like the name of the company... Feastrex.... yeachhhh!

LOL.... this is a great example of 'what's in a name'.... a rose would still smell as sweat even if it were called Feastrex.

Peace,
Godzilla

[layertone]

WoW!! from a visual standpoint, it looks awesome!! when do should we expect to be available to US Market?

Thanks for the info

[maxro]

Originally posted by Godzilla
LOL.... this is a great example of 'what's in a name'.... a rose would still smell as sweat even if it were called Feastrex.

If roses smelled as sweat, what would be the point of perfume?javascript:smilie('')
Max

[pinkmouse]

148,000.00 JPY = 730.865 GBP

Hmm, not as expensive as I expected. I agree, it is a naff name for a company though!

[speaker]

Originally posted by cdwitmer
but they also have developed a highly innovative technology, the Naturflux (TM) magnetic circuit, that is surely a major milestone in the history of audio. After hearing it, I believe many will concur with the general assessment of hearers that it is the finest fullrange driver ever produced.

If it is indeed the finest FR ever produced, that is a far more important distinction than the magnetic circuit. As far as I can see though, nothing fundamentally in the magnetic structure differs from a standard neodymium cup type other than the returns being bow shaped as opposed to straight. I'd love to see the FEA on the magnetic circuit of this driver in contrast to that. If there are definitive advantages of the Naturflux design, FEA should show it.

[cdwitmer]

I don't know whether they are using FEA in house or not, but I suspect they are not. One of their staff did tell me that they were not able to simulate the actual results they obtained with their magnetic circuit, and that the level of performance came as a surprise to them. Can you (or anyone) recommend a suitable finite element analysis package (I assume 3D modeling would be called for) that would be affordable for a very small outfit and could run on a desktop computer of reasonable power? And it would be nice to get an idea of the learning curve that goes into using such a tool . . .

Thanks!

Chris

[Bill F.]

Interesting drivers--pretty.

However, just looking at the magnetic circuit, I can say without a doubt that there is a serious bottleneck in the pole piece. I'll see if I can do an FEA and put some numbers to it.

Bill

[Bill F.]

Ok, here it is:

I specified an alnico magnet capped with shaped permendur (giving some benefit of the doubt, since I didn't see permendur specified in the writeup). The rest of the yoke is pure iron.

As you can see, there is indeed a flux bottleneck in the permendur below the gap, where flux density surpasses 2T, which is nearing the limit of permendur. If the pole cap is not permendur, this restriction would be quite a bit more serious. As it is, I wonder about the wisdom of encouraging saturation anywhere other than the gap faces, though such is all to common in motor design, usually because of penny pinching.

Bill

[Bill F.]

BTW,

Can you (or anyone) recommend a suitable finite element analysis package (I assume 3D modeling would be called for) that would be affordable for a very small outfit and could run on a desktop computer of reasonable power? And it would be nice to get an idea of the learning curve that goes into using such a tool . . .

I use FEMM, a free and easy-to-use magnetic FEA application that is slim, free, and easy to learn. I highly recommend it. It can handle planar (2d) and axisymmetric problems.

Cheers,

Bill