Minimum Diffraction Enclosure (MDE™) Technology
Minimum Diffraction Enclosure (MDE™) for uncoloured sound reproduction.
A common problem with standard free-standing loudspeakers is that the front baffle discontinuities cause diffractions and the loudspeaker sharp corners act as secondary sources through reflections.
In order to improve the flatness of the frequency response and the power response of free standing loudspeaker systems, Genelec have designed a highly innovative enclosure optimized to match the properties of the monitor drivers, featuring rounded edges, and gently curved front and sides. In addition to achieving an unsurpassed flatness of the frequency response, the enclosure having minimum diffractions yields superb sound stage imaging qualities.
To achieve such a smooth and elegantly curved cabinet surface and to reduce the outer dimensions of the enclosure, maximising at the same time the internal volume for improved low frequency efficiency, we designed a cabinet made off die-cast aluminium. Aluminium is lightweight, stiff and very easy to damp to yield a “dead” structure. The cabinet walls can be made fairly thin, providing at the same time good EMC shielding and excellent heat sink for the power amplifiers. Die-casting is made in two parts, front and rear, and they are easy to separate for potential servicing needs.
The DCW waveguide has been integrated in the MDE aluminium enclosure to provide improved control of the loudspeaker’s directivity. Basically, the low frequency limit for constant directivity is determined by the size of the waveguide, so the larger the surface the better the control. With a very controlled off-axis radiation, the listening window becomes consistent, which is of utmost importance with multi-channel audio monitoring. Controlled directivity also reduces possible first order reflections on surfaces near the loudspeaker, helping to provide consistent audio reproduction in different acoustical environments. In fact, the entire front baffle is gently curved and the acoustically transparent grilles are part of the outer cabinet aesthetics, blending perfectly with the various other curved surfaces.
