Unlike conventional loudspeakers, the magnetic field of M-Force’s genuine push-pull engine interacts in a linear fashion to provide a controlled force to the moving elements. The nature of the design means that, unlike conventional loudspeaker drivers where the voice coil can hit the back plate or jump out of the magnetic gap under extreme conditions, M-Force is self-limiting.
“As the magnet moves back and forth in the magnetic field there’s a magnetic braking effect, so it can’t mechanically damage itself due to over-travel,” says Harmala.
The subwoofer project began when Harmala and business partner Michael McDonald, president of ATK, visited Powersoft’s facility in Italy.
“They revealed to us some of their research and secret projects—one of which was the M-Force driver. We started talking about how we could utilize it as a development piece. We were really interested in gauging the true real world performance. Does it sound good? Will top mixers enjoy mixing with it?
“So we got involved with Mario Di Cola and he started working with me on a prototype box for proof of concept and in order to qualify its performance envelope. The current test box is the result of that collaboration.”
The next step is to finalize the cabinet configuration so that it can be easily flown and arrayed, and can be more efficiently packed into a truck.
“Currently the box is unpowered. We’ll be receiving some power modules to test with it before we engage in designing a production box,” says Harmala. “But all-in-all the performance should be similar to our test design.”
Once the production package is complete, he says, “I could see us using it as our premier sub bass with any PA system. The secondary reason to use it is for low frequency effects. We do a lot of movie premieres and other events where they want a lot of low frequency information. This would be the champion of all the alternatives that we could use.”