High End 2014: Göbel High End shakes the foundations

By Dr. Panagiotis Karavitis A friend asked me if I have seen any interesting innovative design during the Munich show. "Not that much", I responded, but then I remembered the Goebel Audio room. These futuristic looking, extremely tall speakers are not like any other I’ve seen or heard. Not for the twelve emitting 6.5” midwoofers or the composite cabinet but for the nine layered wooden and carbon fiber board that looks like a tablet out of power and acts like a full range driver. Yes, that is correct, a precision laser cut board driver with wide dispersion and frequency range covering the entire audible spectrum. This technology is patented by Göbel® and goes by the name of “bending wave loudspeaker”.

As you all know, twelve midwoofers per speaker is just not enough to get you all the way down to 20Hz, so Goebel decided to use an additional two meter woofer tower with sixteen more drivers.

Having a total of 40 (!) woofers requires some serious amplification. This was not an issue as Analog Domain Audio brought some of their top amplifiers bursting a few thousand Watts each. As a source, a full stack of MSB electronics Diamond series was implemented, controlled by the omnipresent during the show iPad. Cables were naturally Goebel’s own Lacorde series.

Sound on Billy Idol’s “Sweet Sixteen” was as expected big but bass was too overwhelming and showed the limits of the room in terms of standing waves, in other words boomy.