Albedo

In the early 90s, Massimo Costa (editor in chief of DIY Italian audio magazine Costruire Hi-Fi) and Giuseppe Pucacco (PhD from Department of Physics from University of Rome) faced the general issues of transmission line loudspeaker systems, formulating for the first time a rigorous mathematical model to describe this specific acoustic configuration. The first outcome of this research was the development of proprietary software to model with great accuracy the behavior of any classical transmission line system.  This work was very important as it allowed to highlight the limitations in other projects developed until then, and the inconsistency of several myths existing in the industry with respect to the very concept of transmission lines. In the end, they concluded that although the transmission line system has been the subject of studies for more than half a century, it still deserved further effort in research and understanding. Therefore, they worked at identifying the most suitable absorbing acoustic stuffing and its best disposition inside the duct, with the objective of not penalizing irrevocably the system efficiency. A long and thorough investigation on the fibrous material made available in today’s industry, enabled to eventually identify the answers they were looking for. Obviously, these basic principles were complemented with other completely original acoustic solutions like Helmholtz resonators used to equalize the duct emission. The outcome of this volume of studies gave birth in 1995 to the first Albedo project, a two-way loudspeaker system equipped with a small 4” driver, which was introduced by another company onto the Italian market. It had a good commercial success with excellent reviews on specialized hi-fi magazines. But this is just the past.