Rockport Lyra
Three years of development, 30 years in the making.
The culmination of three decades of loudspeaker design and manufacture, the new Lyra is the quintessential expression of Rockport Technologies’ craftsmanship. The Lyra embodies an unsurpassed combination of refinement and authority, housed in the most technically-advanced loudspeaker enclosure ever produced.
Extraordinarily complex, beautifully simple
An exquisite marriage of elegant industrial design and optimized acoustic proportion, the entire enclosure for the Lyra is comprised of just two components, the outer housing and the inner housing/baffle. Each of these components is formed as a single, continuous aluminum casting which nest together to create the inner and outer shell of the composite enclosure. All of the bracing, stiffening fins, drive unit recesses, and interior volumes are an integral part of the inner housing/baffle casting, as are the series of elliptical section stiffening ribs in the outer housing.
A form that truly follows function
After the incredibly complex casting process, the entire visible exterior profile of both the inner and outer housings are machined on a five axis CNC, as are all of the surfaces for mounting the drive units and other components. Because of our fabrication process, the Lyra’s form is not constrained by the limitations of flat panel, sheet stock, or extrusion manufacturing methods. Therefore, the enclosure can truly be optimized for correct drive unit placement, reduction of internal standing wave modes, and minimum edge diffraction anomalies, ensuring a clean wave launch for maximum coherency.
Extreme damping meets extreme stiffness—Rockport introduces the DAMSTIF™ enclosure
When nested together, the series of interleaving features of the Lyra’s inner and outer housing form a labyrinth of channels that are completely filled with over 150 pounds of our custom formulated, high hysteresis, high mass (115 pounds per cubic foot) damping compound which, when cured, intimately bonds the inner and outer housing together to form a single, massively stiff, highly damped structure. Due to the specific 3-D geometry of the interleaving features on both inner and outer housing, any microscopic deflection of the enclosure in any axis creates shear in the damping core material, effectively obliterating any resonant signature. This fundamental absence of enclosure induced noise has a profound effect on the Lyra’s presentation, yielding the lowest noise floor of any production loudspeaker enclosure. The Lyra’s DAMSTIF™ enclosure is absolutely unique in that it has no joinery, no fasteners, and exhibits all of the benefits of true monocoque construction, while simultaneously achieving maximum damping, stiffness, and mass.
Uniquely driven
The Lyra utilizes Rockport’s latest generation midrange units featuring state-of-the-art, variable section thickness, carbon fiber sandwich composite cones matched to enormously powerful, ultra-low-distortion motor systems, with a usable bandwidth of nearly 6 octaves, and distortion figures lower than some amplifiers (-60 dB!)
The Lyra is configured as a 3 ½ way, where both midrange drivers are working in unison at the bottom end of their range. As frequency increases, the dedicated low-frequency midrange begins its rolloff at approximately 500 Hz, while the wideband midrange continues up in frequency to meet a waveguide-mounted, beryllium tweeter. By effectively doubling the midrange drive surface area (equal to an 8” woofer) in the lower midrange, and then transitioning to a single 6” unit for true point source coherency, the Lyra delivers an unrivaled combination of midrange authority, presence, and purity.
The Lyra’s high frequencies are handled by our custom, waveguide mounted beryllium tweeter. The waveguide improves the acoustic impedance match of the tweeter at the low end of its range, and allows for lower distortion and greater dynamic expression, as well as improved dispersion characteristics at the midrange/tweeter crossover point. The waveguide is precision diamond-machined and then anodized, rendering a beautiful 3-D luster, and providing an ideal mounting surface for the tweeter itself.
Authoritative, first octave extension is delivered via two, custom designed and built 10″ carbon fiber/sandwich composite woofers per channel. The woofer’s massive 3″ diameter motor systems provide enormous thermal and mechanical headroom and also exhibit the same vanishingly low distortion figures as our midrange driver (-60 dB!) With approximately 20% greater internal volume than the Cygnus, the extension, ease, and harmonic resolution of the Lyra’s bass registers is shocking for an enclosure of these apparent dimensions.
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing
The extreme lengths that Rockport has undertaken to design and manufacture the Lyra would be meaningless if it didn’t fulfill its singular purpose; to present recorded music with such exceptional realism that the listener is essentially transported back to the original musical event.
Simply put, the Lyra offers the highest resolution and lowest noise floor obtainable from a dynamic-driver loudspeaker, combined with unsurpassed harmonic integrity and an effortless dynamic presentation. The solidity of its presentation, singular voice with which it speaks, and ability to actually communicate the artists’ very intent will make the Lyra a welcome final purchase for many well-traveled music enthusiasts.
Rockport Lyra Specifications:
- Woofers (2) 10″ carbon fiber sandwich composite
- Midrange (2) 6″ carbon fiber sandwich composite
- Tweeter Waveguide mounted 1″ beryllium dome
- Height 53.50″
- Width 14.10″
- Depth 26.50″
- Weight 560 lbs. each
- Frequency Response 20 Hz – 30 KHz, -3dB
- Nominal Impedance 4 ohms
- Sensitivity 90 dB SPL/2.83 v
- Min. Amplifier Power 30 watts
Reviews
“What I concluded was that the Rockport Technologies Lyra is surely among the finest loudspeakers on earth; it’s certainly the most extraordinary I’ve heard under circumstances where my exposure was sufficient to have that kind of opinion. Every musical genre—and between my files and the material provided by the other visitors, the musical waterfront was covered—was rendered with complete fealty to scale, tonal color, and dynamics. The sense of occasion, with both live performances and studio recordings, was remarkably consistent and contributed mightily to a tendency to forget that this was canned sound. The openness and transparency, the presentation of natural detail, and the stunning delineation of space all spoke to a complete lack of mechanical distortion. Cues that I was hearing the reproduction of music as opposed to the real thing were reduced to the lowest level in my personal experience.”
The Absolute Sound, Andrew Quint, August 2016, Editor’s Choice
“The Rockport Lyra pushes forward the state of the art in loudspeaker design in its elaborate and innovative construction as well as in sound quality. The Lyra delivers a horn-like visceral immediacy with its absolutely stunning dynamic performance. The musical effect cannot be overstated; the Lyra sounds “alive” in a way that other speakers do not. Yet for all its verve and panache, this is a speaker of great delicacy, capable of conveying the subtlest nuance of texture and shading. It’s also the most beautiful in timbre that I’ve heard, combining high resolution with lush textural liquidity. The icing on the cake is the Lyra’s small size—for a world-class reference, which it certainly is—that allows it to fit in many more rooms than other speakers of this price.
Andy Payor has put into the Lyra everything he’s learned about loudspeaker design over the past 35 years—and then some. It is truly as much a masterpiece of art as it is of cutting-edge engineering.”
The Absolute Sound, Robert Harley, November 2017, Editor’s Choice