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have either the purest soprano or
the noblest baritone. In fact, you
have both. I think this metaphor
may be getting a bit perverse.
The point I’m meandering
my way around to is that Infinity’s
new Cascade line reimagines every
aspect of the loudspeaker. The
newest feature is a reshaped
woofer, a flat, rectangluar dia-
phragm that’s not cone shaped.
The woofer and the tweeter
are both made of a proprietary
ceramic/aluminum blend not
unfamiliar to Infinity fans. The
look is as distinctive as a finger-
print, and the sound is superlative
Flat and fit.
How would you feel if you
woke up one day in a perfect body?
You’d pull back the blanket and
look down on a perfectly flat
tummy (something I haven’t seen in
years, although heaven knows I’m
trying). Combination skin is a thing
of the past—you seem to have been
remade in some wonderful mate-
rial. Eager to check yourself out
in a mirror, you cross the room to
find yourself resculpted in new
and slimmer proportions. And,
when you open your mouth,
depending on your gender, you
in ways that correct ailments
common to most speakers.
Oh MoMA
The Cascades could be in an
exhibit at the Museum of Modern
Art. Their newly designed, flat,
rectangular woofers share the front
with a conventional dome tweeter.
Although they’re trimmed in plas-
tic, the drivers actually attach to
the underlying wood. The Model
Seven floorstanding speaker pre-
sents an unbroken front surface;
the high-gloss black of the speaker
transitions to the stand’s gray
matte aluminum.
The top of the Model Seven
tapers back, making it appear
slightly smaller than it really is. This
tapering reappears on both ends of
the Model Five monitor, the Model
Three C center speaker, and the
Model Fifteen subwoofer. The sides
and the rear are constructed of
curved extruded aluminum in
matte black. When I knuckle-
rapped the enclosures, I heard var-
ious pitches in various places, but
they were all muted compared with
the pitches of my fiberboard-
enclosed reference speakers. These
speakers are solid.
Conspicuous in its absence is
the cone-shaped woofer that 99 per-
cent of speaker designs employ.
Round cones and sharp-cornered,
rectangular speaker enclosures are
easy to manufacture, but fitting
the former into the latter is a waste
of space. Boxy enclosures also
Cordero Studios
BY MARK FLEISCHMANN
Infinity Cascade Speaker System
ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM SEPTEMBER 2006