HISTORY
The main creations that have made the history of Diapason
INTRODUCTION
Back in 1987, Alessandro Schiavi, founder and president of Diapason, was just a young teenager when he began his adventure in the world of live classical music recording. While still very young, he became the official technician for the “International Piano Festival” held at the “Teatro Grande” in Brescia. He had all the necessary equipment but desperately needed a reliable mixing monitor. Dissatisfied with what was available at the time, he decided to build a speaker that would meet his professional needs.
1987 PRELUDE I
The Diapason Prelude was the beginning of it all. The project, born from Alessandro’s professional needs, was based on two iconic speakers: Seas P14 RCY mid-woofer and Audax HD100 D25 tweeter. The resulting speaker system’s cabinet was made of solid chestnut with a baffle covered in natural leather and was 100% tuned by ear. Interestingly, Alessandro’s taste dictated that the tweeter’s sound needed to be softened, and he found an intuitive yet effective solution: placing a small arch above the diaphragm—vertically—attaching a small refractor. This deflected a portion of the direct emission, distributing the relative acoustic energy all around. The result was a sweeter high-frequency spectrum, combined with an extraordinary ability to reconstruct the acoustic scene. At that time, Alessandro had a small control room on the proscenium wing of the Gran Teatro and the musicians used to come in to listen to the recordings: they were all impressed by the sound of Prelude I. The Diapason adventure had just begun.
The level of satisfaction provided by the Prelude I was great: an extremely pleasant listening experience, particularly with strings and baroque music. However, Alessandro began to feel the desire to improve further: he thus started a project that would expand the already notable prerogatives of the progenitor, identifying the power handling and the extension of the low range as areas of potential improvement. He began to “play” with the form factor of the Prelude, keeping the base and height unchanged, but increasing the depth, in order to provide an adequate load volume to the chosen speaker, a 6.5” instead of 5”, the Seas P17 RCY / P. The increased volume made necessary to devise a stratagem in order to come up with gentle shapes: the idea of the facets was born, initially placed only in the upper part of the baffle and then extended to the lower part. However, it was not only the aesthetic aspect that guided Alessandro’s pencil, there was also the intuition that this solution would have drastically reduced diffractions, approximating the new project to an ideal point source. It was decided to use solid chestnut wood, in order to proceed with subsequent realizations of the cabinet: the definitive version included a further increase in volume – in terms of depth – which was added on the back and was also faceted. Among the additional peculiarities of Adamantes I, it is worth mentioning the customized connectors with 24K gold-plated brass body, the Van den Hul internal wiring https://www.vandenhul.com/ that – still today – accompanies every Diapason creation. In 1989 they were launched at the Top Audio in Milan and demonstrated by reproducing the original masters of the recordings made by Alessandro, a choice that gave value to a pillar of the Diapason philosophy: “you cannot effectively develop a loudspeaker without the experience of assiduous attendance of live music!”
In 1991, an enthusiastic review of the Adamantes I was published on Audio Review, by Bebo Moroni who wrote the following: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1466030693614896&id=1460265690858063&set=a.1460268157524483&locale=it_IT (He will later mention them on videohifi.com https://videohifi.com/classifiche-diffusori/ calling them an absolute reference mini speaker), shortly thereafter the adventure of international distribution of Diapason began.
It was 1991 and Diapason had by then consolidated itself as a small and solid artisan reality, thanks to the success of Prelude I and Adamantes I. The relationship with the main technical supplier, the Norwegian Seas, was in the meantime becoming more and more fervent and fruitful.
In particular, the Norwegians showed up proudly submitting to Alessandro a new small speaker that they proudly considered a very well executed design. It was a 4″ mid-woofer, the first iteration of the current ET11RC4Y-DI. Alessandro found the idea of making a micro speaker with such a tiny mid-woofer extremely intriguing. Furthermore, the project allowed the brand to expand its range downwards, proposing an “entry level” concept, an open door into the Diapason universe.
The way forward was to pair the small speaker with the classic 25TFFC tweeter, also produced by Seas, and to create a simple but effective cabinet, in solid wood and based on that of the Prelude I. From a circuit point of view, it was a classic “two-way” with the peculiar characteristic of an impedance module that sas extremely easy to drive.
The success was immediate and continues to this day: Micra has reached its third iteration and is still there to remind us how a small speaker, despite its obvious limitation in terms of low-frequency extension, has enormous advantages in terms of mid-range expressiveness. and the emotional component contained in every musical performance. Micra is an intimate connection with the emotional component contained in every musical performance.
1998 KARIS I
The first generation of Karis was born in 1998, from a specific need: Alessandro wanted to be able to express the best of Diapason’s soul and sound philosophy even in very intimate spaces. The intent was to create a speaker that was small in size but gigantic in sound. The result was, in effect, a compact version of the Adamantes: however, it was not a simple “scaling down” but, if anything, a distillation of its essence. From the Adamantes, Alessandro maintained the exact proportions and the characteristic multi-faceted – diamond – design that characterizes the front and back of its bigger sister. As with the Adamantes, the Karis benefited from this design expedient, “disappearing” from perception and delivering a soundstage completely independent of the speakers. This result has always been particularly dear to Alessandro, who has made it a cornerstone of Diapason’s design philosophy: the sole protagonist must be the music, and each speaker is conceived as a work at its service, like a true acoustic instrument. The Karis cabinet is crafted from solid walnut slats. This is where the time-tested craftsmanship of our master craftsmen comes into play: a workmanship that is art and has made Karis a precious little gem, pleasing to the eye and to the touch.
But, as had become consolidated knowledge by then, it was not simply an aesthetic choice: solid wood is functional to the musicality, offering a unique timbre that allows the speaker to “sing” with a naturalness not otherwise attainable, conveying the emotion of live music. For the Karis, Alessandro chose to use an improved version of the exceptional 4″ mid-woofer used in the Micra, optimized to work specifically with the load volume represented by the Karis. It was paired with the same 19 mm tweeter as the Adamantes, the legendary Scan speak D2010, a transducer capable of reproducing harmonics with disarming clarity.
Focusing on speed, Alessandro also applied Direct Drive technology, developed in collaboration with Norway’s Seas, which produces these drivers exclusively for Diapason. The principle is simple: the natural frequency response of the mid-woofer allows for direct connection to the rear connectors, without the use of a low-pass circuit. The result is immediately perceptible: exceptional speed and control at low frequencies. Pure dynamics.
