Subwoofers

Eclipse is the audio side of Japanese automotive technology company Fujitsu Ten. As a speaker brand, it is famous for its egg-shaped single-driver models, the Time Domain series. The design of these premium speakers isn't just for show – its effect upon the internal physics is to reduce back wave disturbance. And a single full-range transducer has no passive crossover, nor tweeter, thus no distortion in that crucial part of our hearing. In these days of bat-frequency super-tweeters there are those who deride the ability of a single driver to reproduce the absolute top tones, saying they are not as bright as designs with separate HF drivers. But then you actually hear the Eclipse speakers and such discussion goes out of the window. It's hilarious to watch someone get their first Time Domain experience; the detail and accuracy literally boggles.

Applying cunning enclosure acoustics and profoundly muscular motors driving very rigid small diaphragms works a treat for most musical frequencies. But bass is different. It requires logarithmically more energy and power to move a thousand times more air than a mid-band/high-frequency transducer. Yet essentially, Eclipse’s approach to bass remains the same. It wants speed and it wants accuracy.