Rockport's Lyra Forms a Highly Damped Structure

The culmination of three decades of loudspeaker design and manufacture, the new Lyra is the quintessential expression of Rockport Technologies craftsmanship. The Lyra embodies an unsurpassed combination of refinement and authority, housed in the most technically advanced loudspeaker enclosure ever produced.

Extraordinarily complex, beautifully simple

An exquisite marriage of elegant industrial design and optimized acoustic proportion, the entire enclosure for the Lyra is comprised of just two components, the outer housing and the inner housing/baffle. Each of these components is formed as a single, continuous aluminum casting which nest together to create the inner and outer shell of the composite enclosure. All of the bracing, stiffening fins, drive unit recesses, and interior volumes are an integral part of the inner housing/baffle casting, as are the series of elliptical section stiffening ribs in the outer housing.

Form follows function

After the incredibly complex casting process, the entire visible exterior profile of both the inner and outer housings are machined on a five axis CNC, as are all of the surfaces for mounting the drive units and other components. Because of our fabrication process, the Lyra’s form is not constrained by the limitations of flat panel, sheet stock, or extrusion manufacturing methods. Therefore, the enclosure can truly be optimized for correct drive unit placement, reduction of internal standing wave modes, and minimum edge diffraction anomalies, ensuring a clean wave launch for maximum coherency.

Rockport introduces the DAMSTIF™ enclosure

When nested together, the series of interleaving features of the Lyra’s inner and outer housing form a labyrinth of channels that are completely filled with over 150 pounds of our custom formulated, high hysteresis, high mass (115 pounds per cubic foot) damping compound which, when cured, intimately bonds the inner and outer housing together to form a single, massively stiff, highly damped structure. Due to the specific 3-D geometry of the interleaving features on both inner and outer housing, any microscopic deflection of the enclosure in any axis creates shear in the damping core material, effectively obliterating any resonant signature. This fundamental absence of enclosure induced noise has a profound effect on the Lyra’s presentation, yielding the lowest noise floor of any production loudspeaker enclosure. The Lyra’s DAMSTIF™ enclosure is absolutely unique in that it has no joinery, no fasteners, and exhibits all of the benefits of true monocoque construction, while simultaneously achieving maximum damping, stiffness, and mass.

Uniquely driven

The Lyra utilizes our latest generation midrange units featuring Rockport’s state-of-the-art, variable section thickness, carbon fiber sandwich composite cones matched to our enormously powerful, ultra-low distortion motor systems, with a usable bandwidth of nearly 6 octaves, and distortion figures lower than some amplifiers (-60 dB!)

The Lyra is configured as a 3 ½ way, where both midrange drivers are working in unison at the bottom end of their range. As frequency increases, the dedicated low-frequency midrange begins its rolloff at approximately 500 Hz, while the wideband midrange continues up in frequency to meet our waveguide mounted, beryllium tweeter. By effectively doubling the midrange drive surface area (equal to an 8” woofer) in the lower midrange, and then transitioning to a single 6” unit for true point source coherency, the Lyra delivers an unrivaled combination of midrange authority, presence, and purity.

High frequencies

The Lyra’s high frequencies are handled by our custom, waveguide mounted beryllium tweeter. The waveguide improves the acoustic impedance match of the tweeter at the low end of its range, and allows for lower distortion and greater dynamic expression, as well as improved dispersion characteristics at the midrange/tweeter crossover point. The waveguide is precision diamond-machined and then anodized, rendering a beautiful 3-D luster, and providing an ideal mounting surface for the tweeter itself.

Kick the bass

Authoritative, first octave extension is delivered via two, custom designed and built 10″ carbon fiber/sandwich composite woofers per channel. The woofer’s massive 3″ diameter motor systems provide enormous thermal and mechanical headroom and also exhibit the same vanishingly low distortion figures as our midrange driver (-60 dB!) With approximately 20% greater internal volume than the Cygnus, the extension, ease, and harmonic resolution of the Lyra’s bass registers is shocking for an enclosure of these apparent dimensions.

Swing

The extreme lengths that we’ve undertaken to design and manufacture the Lyra would be meaningless if it didn’t fulfill its singular purpose; to present recorded music with such exceptional realism that the listener is essentially transported back to the original musical event. Simply put, the Lyra offers the highest resolution and lowest noise floor obtainable from a dynamic driver loudspeaker, combined with unsurpassed harmonic integrity and an effortless dynamic presentation. The solidity of its presentation, singular voice with which it speaks, and ability to actually communicate the artists’ very intent will make the Lyra a welcome final purchase for many well traveled music enthusiasts.