Pantheon Loudspeakers

The Gryphon Pantheon floorstanding loudspeaker uses Gryphon’s constant-phase technology to keep all drivers in phase at every frequency and at all times. This is intended to prevent temporal smearing and allow the loudspeaker to recreate the original acoustic event with high spatial resolution.

The Pantheon draws on proprietary technologies and customised parts developed for and introduced in the Gryphon Pendragon and Trident II loudspeakers. It is built into a tall, sleek and heavily braced enclosure, with a precisely contoured modular baffle and driver surrounds. The carefully selected baffle covering is applied to address reflections and reduce diffraction.

High frequencies are handled by an Air Motion Transformer (AMT) drive unit. A powerful magnetic field drives an extremely low-mass folded metal sheet in a semi-perpendicular motion, producing a rapid response to the audio signal. Its pleated structure has a large surface area, allowing it to move a substantial volume of air with minimal diaphragm movement and operate as a point source. The design addresses mass, inertia and internal resonance, while providing fast transients, a flat frequency response beyond 25 kHz, low distortion and no compression.

The cone drivers are custom designed for low Q and minimal dynamic compression by a Danish driver manufacturer. Pantheon’s dual 8” bass drivers are mounted in a precision-tuned reflex chamber and use a triple-magnet motor system to provide force and control. The same tightly focused, ultra-linear triple-magnet system is used for the dual 5” midrange drivers, controlling the movement of their layer-damped fibreglass cones. Their surrounds are developed to match the geometry of the diaphragms, while the dust caps are non-deformable, low-mass and highly rigid.

The drive units are integrated through a fourth-order filter network designed to maintain constant phase across the frequency range. It uses Duelund, Jensen, Holm and Mundorf components, with the layout calculated to reduce electromagnetic interaction. The network is mounted on a decoupling platform to limit the effect of vibration.

High-current, low-loss foil capacitors and low-distortion, low-saturation inductors with negligible DC resistance are selected for their electrical characteristics. The crossover is hand-adjusted and its purpose-built components are hard-wired using special Teflon hard-insulated silver solder. Internal wiring is kept to a minimum, using Gryphon Teflon-insulated, silver-plated oxygen-free copper. Custom-designed Gryphon screw terminals provide the connection to a power amplifier and maintain a tight, durable electrical contact.