eclipse td510z mk2 loudspeakers
Just how do you better the performance of the TD510 Mk2?
With the TD510 Mk2, you already have a fast, accurate loudspeaker whose single drive unit is anchored to the central pillar of the table top stand. The tabletop stand designed for the TD510 Mk2 does its job perfectly, but what of the furniture or shelf you place it on?
The TD510Z Mk2 adds a bespoke floor stands designed purely to get the very best from the TD510 design. This means producing an inert stand completely free from any ringing or vibration, removing any influence a stand can possibly have on the highly accurate movements of the 10cm fibre glass drive unit. The more accurate the speaker movement, the more realistic the sound - the more realistic the sound, the more natural any instrument will sound.
In a conventional loudspeaker, everything is secured to the cabinet - the one thing that resonates.
Where the Eclipse TD510Z differs to virtually every loudspeaker on the market is that the drive unit isn't screwed into the cabinet - in fact, the only physical connection between the driver and the cabinet is a small amount of damping material around the outer edge of the driver gasket so as not to transfer any vibrations from the cabinet to the driver and vice versa, and also to maintain a seal.
To explain this a little further, you could say that the cabinet is suspended around the driver by the "diffusion stay", which is secured to the speaker stand via a threaded rod, and then tightened with a locking ring. This creates a "floating" cabinet around the driver. It is to the diffusion stay that the drive unit is held firmly in place via the "mass anchor" - this effectively makes every part of this design a single solid part of the bespoke stands, except for the cabinet itself.
As you can see from the cutaway detail above, rather than the reflex port being a plastic or cardboard tube glued to the cabinet, the rear port of the TD510Z is an integral part of the cabinet moulding, and flared from front to back in a non-linear fashion (ie, not a straight tube).
The cabinet of the TD510Z is 14% bigger involume than the TD510, which reduces the back pressure on the driver improving its impulse response - in short, the TD510Z is even more accurately responsive than the TD510.
This cutaway also makes it very easy to appreciate exactly what is (and isn't) inside an Eclipse loudspeaker - no 'lossy' passive crossover components dividing up the signal, and no energy absorption from acoustic material - just a mechanically isolated driver.
One more area where the TD510Z differs to the TD510 is that the TD510Z's driver has a more powerful motor system due to its higher magnetic flux density.
The 10cm carbon fibre cone is extremely lightweight, and along with the highly flexible rubber surround, produces an ability to start and stop that most other speakers can only dream about. This creates far better impact to the leading edge of notes, more accurate sustain and vibrato, better conveyance of texture in bass notes, and more accurate changes in pitch and note bending on strings. This all leads to a far more convincing and lifelike performance.
The bespoke stands lean forward so that not even the base of the stand can have any effect on the sound reproduced by the speaker - the furthest most point is the radius of the front lip of the cabinet just before it attaches to the driver.
The large base plate gives a good solid footing for the whole stand/speaker design to work from, without which a 510Z can't sound like a 510Z. This stand takes the weight of the TD510Z from 9.5kg to 19.5kg.
The stand is constructed from a mixture of extruded and die-cast aluminium, with heavy internal damping. It is then filled with irregular sized kiln-dried sand for extra damping and added mass.
A channel in the back of the stand allows for cable management.
The cabinet sits freely on three solid points fixed within the stand, minimising the contact area with the cabinet. A centre piece fixed to the cabinet is 'pulled down' using the threaded locking ring to secure the cabinet to these points, maintaining the chosen angle of the cabinet for optimum listening, adjustable from -10 to +15 degrees.
