What sets a Clarisys Audio ribbon apart from every other ribbon speaker?

Most loudspeakers marketed as "ribbon" or "planar" are not, strictly speaking, ribbon drivers at all — they are planar-magnetic (sometimes called quasi-ribbon) designs, in which a thin film carries an etched or bonded serpentine conductor. Clarisys builds true ribbons, and combines that with a set of engineering choices no other manufacturer makes in the same package. Here is what separates a Clarisys ribbon from the rest.

1. A true ribbon, not a planar-magnetic. The conductor in a Clarisys driver is the diaphragm: a free-standing aluminium foil that spans the full width of the magnetic gap and carries the signal current directly. (See the dedicated article on why this is a ribbon and not a planar-magnetic.) Most "ribbon" speakers on the market are planar-magnetic, with a film diaphragm and a high-impedance serpentine trace. These are different technologies, resulting in a different type of transducer.

2. Bipole, not dipole. Clarisys mounts a second ribbon on the rear of the cabinet, driven in phase with the front — a true bipole. Conventional ribbon and planar speakers are dipoles (rear wave out of phase) or monopoles. The bipole configuration energises the room uniformly and supplies spatial cues that a dipole or monopole cannot.

3. A dedicated transformer for the midrange and treble sections. Each midrange and treble ribbon section gets its own purpose-wound transformer. Shared-transformer designs (the industry norm) couple the bands through one magnetic core. Clarisys isolates them, so the treble is never modulated by midrange excursions.

4. First-order (6 dB/oct) crossovers. Almost every modern speaker uses steep slopes. Clarisys uses first-order because it is the only slope that preserves linear phase — and it is only viable because the ribbons are clean enough to overlap over a wide band. This preserves transient integrity and waveform structure.

5. N52 neodymium throughout. The highest-grade permanent magnet material available, used in every model. The strength of the magnets used strongly determines the sensitivity of the speaker (the Atrium reaches 101 dB) and how cleanly the ribbon can be driven.

6. Ribbon bass — no cones, no boxes. Where other panel and ribbon speaker manufacturers hand off to cone woofers or conventional subwoofers for the low end, Clarisys uses ribbon bass panels — and, in the flagships, dedicated infrasonic ribbon subwoofer towers. No cone flex, no surround, no enclosure resonance. The bass ribbons are not clamped on all four sides; instead, each bass ribbon is attached only at its ends and swings within the magnetic field. Other manufacturers tension a membrane on all four sides under static tension, with no individual adjustment per bass ribbon — a construction that belongs to the planar-magnetic family, not to a true ribbon.

7. The piano-string tensioning system. Clarisys ribbons are tensioned at their ends like piano strings, with an adjustable tensioning system that lets each ribbon be set and maintained at its correct mechanical operating point. No other manufacturer does this. (See the dedicated article.)

8. Pure aluminium bipole ribbons (mid-range and treble). The mid-range and treble ribbons are pure aluminium — a free-standing foil with no Mylar, Kapton, or any other polymer substrate. In these sections the aluminium itself is both the electrical conductor and the moving diaphragm. There is no additional carrier film, no adhesive layer, and no composite membrane adding unnecessary mass or introducing different mechanical properties. This results in an exceptionally low moving mass and a direct conversion of electrical energy into diaphragm motion; the ribbon responds extremely quickly to the signal, with no additional substrate that must be accelerated, stopped, and controlled. Both the mid-range and treble ribbons are configured as a bipole — a second pure-aluminium ribbon on the rear, driven in phase with the front. Many designs commonly described as "ribbon" speakers are actually planar-magnetic designs, where conductive traces are bonded to a plastic film such as Mylar; while this can be an effective engineering approach, it is fundamentally different from a true ribbon.

   The bass ribbon is the one section that uses a composite material: a pure aluminium foil bonded to a Kapton (polyimide) substrate. Its large radiating area and the deep excursions of low-frequency reproduction demand the dimensional stability the Kapton backing provides. The mid-range and treble ribbons carry no substrate at all — they are pure aluminium, and the bass ribbon is the only Clarisys ribbon that is a composite.

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In summary

Taken together, these are not incremental refinements — they are the difference between a true ribbon loudspeaker and everything else that carries the label. A Clarisys is built around a genuine ribbon transducer, tensioned like an instrument string, crossed over at first order, driven through dedicated transformers, and radiated from both faces as a bipole. That combination, in one product, is what sets it apart.