Flat panel video, say hello to flat panel audio

The popularity of flat panel plasma and LCD video displays suggests at least one certainty about the future of home audio. Tomorrow's loudspeakers won't be the boxy, intrusive, room dominating instruments they are today. They'll deliver all the power and realism you've come to expect, but they'll be thinner and more elegant than ever before. And the first of this brave new generation? Infinity's premium Cascade Series. For almost 40 years, Infinity has been advancing the science of sound with breakthrough audio technologies and landmark loudspeaker systems. Design has always been an Infinity hallmark, and Cascade's revolutionary technologies presented their designers with even greater freedom to give you great sound without infringing on your space. With MRS (Maximum Radiating Surface) dual voice coil CMMD (Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm) flat panel transducers and CAI (Constant Acoustic Impedance) waveguides, Cascade delivers uncompromised Infinity sonic performance from strikingly beautiful speakers. The Cascade Model Three C bookshelf or wall mounted center channel speaker features dual 7.75" x 3.38" rectangular mid-bass flat panel drivers and a 1.00" cone high frequency driver. High definition flat panel video, meet high performance flat panel audio.

It's not easy being flat

Imagine you're an audio engineer in search of a something new, a dramatically less intrusive loudspeaker design. The problem is conventional transducer cones, when coupled with their motor assemblies, are nearly as deep as they are wide. And placing a circular cone in a rectangular enclosure makes for a lot of wasted space in all directions. Now imagine you're an audio engineer at Infinity, a company with 30 years of experience in EMI (electromagnetic induction) transducers to guide your work. If you could combine the flat, rectangular diaphragm of an EMI device with the motor technology of a conventional loudspeaker cone, you just might have something. The appeal of flat panel transducers has never been more obvious, and the basic technology is straightforward enough; but earlier flat panels had performance limitations in the low frequencies and were prone to thermal compression, which, for you nonaudiophiles out there, is distortion caused by the nonlinear increased input power demand versus speaker output as voice coil temperatures rise at high output levels. Flat panels were also expensive, and often required several transducers for high performance systems. In developing Cascade's state-of-the-art flat panel transducers, Infinity engineers incorporated new materials and technologies to overcome the drawbacks and to deliver significant performance benefits.

MRS has nothing to do with your wife

MRS (Maximum Radiating Surface) flat-panel transducers in Infinity's Cascade Series permit unobtrusive speaker enclosures that are nearly as thin as they are narrow. And because the MRS diaphragm functions much like a flat piston, Cascade speakers achieve flat broadband frequency response and uniform on- and off-axis dispersion with minimal breakup, even at high listening levels. The flat pistonic response of Cascade's MRS drivers where all points move together in phase sends a cleaner, more uniform sound to your ears compared to conventional cone drivers. The geometry of a cone inherently creates signals of unequal length with different arrival times, causing what engineers call time domain smear. Cascade's signals arrive together, for exceptional detail and resolution. That's performance not even the boxiest of conventional loudspeakers can surpass.

Ribs, gussets, and elliptical voice coils do the trick

Optimizing the parameters of Cascade's flat panel diaphragms presented a serious challenge; but by reinforcing Infinity's patented CMMD (Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm), a uniquely rigid lightweight material, with strategic ribs and gussets, Infinity engineers were able to strike the perfect balance between electroacoustic efficiency and reliability. Another flat panel challenge was finding a way to uniformly drive as much of the diaphragm's radiating surface as possible. A traditional cone is only driven by a small voice coil at its apex, but flat panels require a completely different approach. Infinity engineers developed dual elliptical voice coils for Cascade's MRS drivers. With more than six times the voice coil contact of a typical cone transducer, they move the diaphragm much like an ideal piston, for crystal clear, resonance free operation throughout the driver's entire dynamic range. Besides driving the flat diaphragm more uniformly, the dual elliptical voice coils offer another benefit. The greatly increased surface area of the coils allows them to dissipate heat more efficiently, reducing thermal compression and dramatically increasing the speaker's dynamic range. The result is increased sonic clarity with reduced distortion.

High frequency intelligence from CAI, not the CIA

CAI (Constant Acoustic Impedance) waveguide technology increases the sensitivity of the Cascade Series high frequency drivers, creating more dynamic headroom and enabling a seamless sonic transition between the high frequency drivers and the MRS transducers. This helps ensure uniform frequency response across the entire listening room, greatly broadening the optimum listening area. Working with the CAI waveguide, Infinity's CMMD high frequency drivers extend frequency response beyond 40kHz, resulting in remarkably clear high frequencies and yielding exceptional fidelity even when reproducing today's demanding digital, high resolution program sources such as SACD and DVD-Audio. Finally, the CAI waveguide allows for a simpler, more effective crossover design. The ultimate outcome is distinctly pure, accurate sound, unique to Infinity.

If the ultimate material doesn't exist, invent it

In their quest for unequaled sound, Infinity's goal is to eliminate resonances, the unwanted colorations, or distortions, of the sound reproduced by a speaker. Every transducer has its own unavoidable set of resonances based on its own physical characteristics. The trick is to build a transducer where the natural resonances are either above or below its audible range. To accomplish this, Infinity engineers invented and patented CMMD (Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm) transducer material, a sandwich made up of layers of ceramic alumina (20% top and 20% bottom of total thickness) anodized to a metallic aluminum core (the remaining 60% of total thickness). Among the stiffest materials known, alumina and aluminum were chosen because sound moves through them faster than through conventional transducer materials and the CMMD sandwich responds to electrical signals very rapidly without coloring the sound at all. That's why every transducer in Cascade Series speakers incorporates CMMD technology.

Evaluation takes the guesswork out of design

Music and motion pictures are art. Reproducing that art is science, and science is quantifiable. Before ever putting a speaker into production, Infinity's engineers make and analyze a number of critical objective and subjective measurements. Objectively, they measure frequency response, spatial averages, phase response, and nonlinear distortion to analyze technical accuracy, sensitivity, and power handling. Subjectively, they measure sound quality (timbre and bandwidth), spatial quality (how well the speakers spread out the sound), stereo imaging, the multichannel soundstage (strength of the sound imaging in front, behind, and to the sides), and dynamic capabilities (sound quality for very loud or very quiet inputs) to see if the engineering efforts have been successful. The Infinity Cascade Series speaker you bring into your home has been subjected to some of the most rigorous testing in the industry, all to assure you superb performance and superior quality.