Flatiron Wedge Prototype
While the Flatiron Wedge is not our first bespoke lifestyle speaker, in many ways this is the first design I envisioned years ago to start the Heinsenfolg moniker. If I could go back and recall my thinking, I’d say a word about the “classic hi-fi setup.” Starting with some sort of rack or media console right in the middle of the room against the front wall, one would fill it with audio electronics like a turntable or other source component(s), a big ol’ heavy amplifier and looooong wires running out to the corners of their listening room. It is the corners where those rectangular cubic behemoths live their lives using the philosophy, “It’s a good a place as any, right?” Well, the answer to that question is that it’s “kind of OK,” but also “kind of NOT.” I certainly have been guilty of this exact same setup.
It gets them out of the way so they don’t become the sole focus of the entire room. Putting acoustics aside for just a moment (I’ll get to that later), the big problem I have with traditional boxy speaker designs in the corners is that they simply don’t fit quite right. Face them out perfectly square to the wall then all the sound goes straight down the side wall and right into the back corner. If you “toe them in”, which is to angle them into the center of the room, they sound much better, but they look totally cockeyed— all aesthetics go out the window as the right angles of the speaker fight the askewed right angles of the corner walls.
What if we could have our designer audio cake, and hear it too? Enter the Flatiron Wedge floorstanding lifestyle speaker created specifically for corners.
By starting with the traditional form factor of a floorstanding box speaker then cutting it down the hypotenuse, we get the best of both worlds. A 40” tall design which lives comfortably right in the corner AND naturally toes itself inward towards the center of the room for an incredibly effective audio throw. Additionally we’re utilizing a 6.5” coaxial with a compression horn tweeter. Unlike common dome tweeters whose extra wide dispersion can bounce & distort off walls, the 70º horn controls the sound within the confines of the room to produce an incredibly detailed lifelike sound. Additionally, the speaker cabinet design is an acoustic suspension, which means that it has no open port (often featured in the rear of a speaker cabinet). This type of sealed enclosure in the Flatiron Wedge interacts with the walls around it much less relieving it of unwanted vibrations & acoustic anomalies.
The result takes a less than ideal speaker placement, and finds an elegant solution that balances the art & sound of a room.
