To celebrate Starke Sound's 12th anniversary, a new breakthrough

To celebrate Starke Sound's 12th anniversary, a new breakthrough（Part I）

--P Series of professional, private cinema products

In 2009, Starke Sound, an audio company, was founded in Los Angeles by a team of enthusiasts determined to advance the state of the art of multi-channel sound reproduction in the home. Our motto "Bold is Beautiful” speaks to the drive to break through. Starke Sound has created many widely recognized products, implementing the best balance between ultimate sound quality and extreme dynamics for playback of movies and music. We relentlessly pursue immersive realism through audio technology.

To mark our 12th year in business, we bring you a masterpiece that combines the essence of our company with the best technology in the audio industry: P Series private cinema loudspeakers—for your dream theater.

01

An acclaimed audio brand: Starke Sound

The Starke Sound brand was founded in 2009. In 2011, Starke Sound, Inc. was formally established in Los Angeles, California. In just a decade, Starke Sound has developed and manufactured an array of loudspeakers, subwoofers and amplifiers built on advanced technologies—from the patented LMF magnetic drive of our Halo speakers, to the Delta Force passive radiators of our subwoofers, to the Class A+AB smooth switching of our high-powered amplifiers. Numerous awards from the consumer electronics industry attest to the excellence of our product design and performance*.

"P Series Professional Private Cinema" is the culmination of our efforts to push the envelope of multi-channel sound reproduction in the home. P Series integrates our best technology with that of the pro-audio world. “P” is for Professional, Precise and Proud. We crafted P Series as our ultimate offering to audio enthusiasts around the world who have supported Starke Sound over the past 10 years.

The concept for P Series was created in a 2018 brainstorming session with our   international team in Los Angeles. This same approach resulted in our high-end Halo Series of loudspeakers and its innovative fusion of sound quality and industrial design.  

From our inception Starke Sound has pursued the ultimate cinema sound system. In most larger cinemas, appearance and cosmetics are not crucial when “invisibility” is the goal of system integrators and preference of their clients. Without the aesthetic constraint, loudspeaker dynamic range can be greatly extended. The remaining challenge is to deliver superb sound quality along with extreme dynamics.

Over the past 10 years, Starke Sound has been successful with products for private theaters, media rooms, and 2-channel music listening rooms. We have not addressed the medium to large private theater segment—until now. Our distributors and fans from all over the world, as well as professionals who are confident in Starke Sound’s technical heritage, are all looking forward to the new series, engineered for medium to large environments (500 square feet to 5000 square feet). They expect true high fidelity and huge dynamics.

In 2019, the research and development of our P Series was officially launched. During the R&D stage, our objective was not to replicate products already available. We focused on the medium to large theater segment. Performance is primary so our R&D team began this project at a fundamental level to ensure we tackled all the needs of audio enthusiasts in this segment. We had planned a year’s work but a thorough review of requirements extended it to 18 months. Our team finalized the P Series in early 2021.

The pandemic also affected our plans. This year, raw material prices have soared, and many companies have stopped working or even gone bankrupt. Our engineers have pressed on, completing hundreds of P Series prototypes and delivering them for testing and reliability assessment. With steady project investment and hard work, Starke Sound has more than achieved its product performance standards in the testing phase. The P Series has far surpassed our goals.

The product concept of P Series is the pursuit of extreme dynamics and high-fidelity reproduction. It is specially designed for use in medium to large-sized theaters.

Under extreme dynamic playback at high sound pressure levels, it can present details of the sound and acoustic space with minimal distortion. It performs optimally in medium to large theaters of 500 to 5000 square feet, as well as in small, high-end commercial theaters and clubs.

02

A tribute on our 12th anniversary: P Series

Ordinary dome tweeters are used in many custom install theaters. This common hi-fi design is fine in short-distance and low-energy environments but not for many newer movie productions with higher dynamics over 105 dB at reference level. Audience members beyond 16 feet will lose the immersive experience, especially with acoustically transparent screens due to attenuation (treble loss of more than 3 dB even with the best screens). Standard theater configurations with dome tweeters will exhibit compression and distortion in the mid to high frequencies that can become severe during playback of modern feature films. Listeners suffer a loss of immersion and harsh sound quality.

The P Series solved this by 3 technologies:

1. “Black Rhino” AMTHorn®️

AMT denotes Air Motion Transformer, a unique electroacoustic transducer that moves air laterally using a pleated membrane embossed with a circuit path that acts as the voice coil moving within a magnetic field. It is a dipole (exciting both front and back wavefronts) with extremely fast response. It is recognized by the audio industry as among the best treble (high frequency) reproduction technologies. The diaphragm area of the AMT tweeter is 5 to 15 times that of a dome tweeter. In P Series, the specially customized AMT160 diaphragm area is more than 30 times that of a dome tweeter. Its ultra-thin film material is of the latest DuPont Kapton®️ resulting in 80 watts rms power-handling capability, 97 dB sensitivity and frequency response to beyond 40 kHz. The result is powerful and exquisitely detailed treble reproduction. Combined with the horn enclosure developed by Starke Sound in the new custom AMTHorn unit, the maximum sound pressure level and dynamic range are further increased, distortion is reduced, and the angle of sound diffusion is controlled.

2. Innovative mid-bass diaphragm material

For full-range reproduction of detail, it is necessary to blend the mid and high frequencies while preserving phase (timing). Starke Sound cooperates with top international diaphragm suppliers to produce a special hybrid carbon fiber/paper diaphragm which reduces weight and greatly exceeds the rigidity of typical mid-bass units. Combined with a special rigid, reinforced damping glue, it solves the problems of ordinary professional paper film units in the mid and high frequency region that can cause a “nasal” sounding distortion. The end result is the reproduction of effortlessly natural voice and movie dialogue.

3. TurboCooling System

The mid-bass of P Series employs a unique air-flow design for heat dissipation of the voice coil. It can accelerate the convection speed of air in the voice coil and the outside air of the frame. During the movement of the dust cover and the elastic wave, the heat generated by the voice coil is "squeezed out" of the voice coil area more quickly, thereby improving the power endurance of the entire mid-woofer unit by more than 20%. We call this a “TurboCooling” System and it also increases the maximum sound pressure output, which means higher dynamics.

To be continued…