In all directions, as far as the eye can see, you find speakers of every conceivable size, technical conception, and price. Such variety is only "skin deep", however, because after a moment's thought you inevitably come to a bewildering conclusion: virtually all the speakers available today are directional. But is directionality the ultimate truth? We don't think so.

SPEAKER PHILOSOPHY

If we seek vivid, organic, and true-to-life music reproduction, we must first try to understand how sound arises in nature. One stroll in the park later and it becomes painfully obvious that the directionality of conventional speakers is entirely un-natural!

Drive unit cones in a directional configuration are pointed at the listener like a funnel, and they behave accordingly - like megaphones. It makes no difference what type of cabinet design, drive units, cone materials, toe-in, or crossover techniques are implemented. A directional speaker will always YELL in your face.

If we want to produce sound as it emerges in nature, there is only one genuine solution: omnidirectionality. Of course, we are well aware of the fact that the confirmed views and practices of today�s loudspeaker industry make such an assertion virtual heresy! And, yet, namedropping the likes of Mirage, Ohm/Walsh, Precide Heil A.M.T and Shahinian, and reassures us that we are not entirely alone.

The ENVOY, Heeds first non-directional speaker, arose out of Heeds experience and never-ending frustration with �directionals�. Conventional speaker systems cannot faithfully recreate music as we hear it in a live setting. No matter how large or expensive, they are always lacking in their reproduction of true space and real time. As renowned hi-fi journalist/ Paul Messenger writes: �an omnidirectional speaker is much more effective at creating the impression that the musicians are actually playing in your room�. Heed's acceptance of this was the first step on the long road of research and development which ultimately resulted in the ENVOY. The radical approach of this remarkable loudspeaker, however, only begins with omnidirectionality.

CABINET DESIGN

The clean angular aesthetics of the Envoys cabinet design and construction are a functional part of the total experience - the striking omnidirectional sound-radiation pattern that immerses you right in the heart of the music. However, the ENVOY also employs another unique solution - the TMR� loading of its bass-driver.
TMR� combines two normally �either/or� loading principles: transmission line (�TM�) and bassreflex (�R�), resulting in an exceptional bass response which defies the compact physical size of the ENVOY.

TMR� loading successfully unifies the exceptionally deep and voluminous bass of a �quarter-wave� labyrinth with the remarkably fast and dynamic bottom-line drive of a correct bass-reflex tuning. The open and space-filling nature of the mid and upper ranges achieved by our omnidirectional principle seamlessly blends with this bass response to provide unsurpassed performance full of organic insight, vivid physical presence, and natural detail.

DRIVE UNIT & CROSS-OVER TECHNOLOGY

The ENVOY is a fully-fledged 3-way design. In the process of its development, heed had three main criteria in mind:

� to create a loudspeaker which displays fewer of the negative attributes commonly associated with multi-driver speakers, so that it approaches the speaker alchemist�s dream, the �uni-driver� ideal, as closely as possible.

� to develop an impulse response and sound pressure capability over the entire bandwidth most closely resembling real music.

� to achieve these characteristics in the context of an omnidirectional and evenly distributed, yet musical, sound pattern in the listening room.

Technically speaking, the biggest challenge was to find three units: a bass driver, a midrange unit, and a tweeter, which are very closely related to each other in their efficiency, off-axis frequency and impulse response, as well as in their �step response� and �group delay� parameters. The application of mechanically robust drive units with extremely light and stiff cones proved to be paramount in achieving this goal.

The 8-inch bass driver uses a ceramic/aluminium composite cone in an aluminium-cast chassis with double magnet and 1.5�� voice coil. The midrange is a 50mm titanium dome tweeter with ferrofluid cooling, whilst the tweeter is a 25mm titanium dome with neodymium magnet. The exceptional coherence of these drive units is achieved by a 6 dB low-pass/18 dB high-pass crossover using Linkwitz-Realy filters while at the same time uniquely avoiding the use of resistors. High quality aircore coils and custom-made ClarityCaps polypropylene capacitors are used in the network, the latter being connected by a proprietary puresilver, teflon-insulated speaker wire to the drive units.

Technical Specification:

Recommended Amplifier Power: 40-200 W
Frequency Response: 42Hz-20 kHz +/- 2.5 dB
Sensitivity: 90dB / 1 m / 2.83 V
Max. Sound Pressure: 110 dB (at 1 metre)
Nominal Impedance: 8 ohms (min. 6.2 ohms)
Mode: Floorstanding
Weight: 26 kg
Dimensions: 27 x 34 x 84cm (W � D � H)
Finish: Available in various real wood veneers