WE THINK A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY
We don’t make ordinary speakers. You won’t find any conventional boxy designs in our line-up, not for any stylistic or superficial aesthetic reasons, but purely and simply because we believe there’s a better way.
For over 20 years the Gallo name has been synonymous with spherical loudspeaker design. Our acclaimed products are designed around spheres, thus eliminating resonance and internal diffraction, the two main causes of loudspeaker distortion.
Quite simply, we produce the world’s finest compact speaker systems, blending real hi-fi performance with contemporary industrial design, wrapped up in an installation and decor-friendly package – guaranteed to deliver exceptional, expansive sound to spaces large and small.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
Anthony Gallo designed his first loudspeaker at the tender age of fourteen. His first commercially available product – the Nucleus reference speaker, went on sale in 1994. Today, Gallo Acoustics loudspeakers are sold in over 30 countries worldwide.
Anthony Gallo was born in 1963 and from an early age he had an interest in the sciences and would take apart just about anything he could lay his hands on. At age 13 he began to become hooked on loudspeaker design. His first audio experiments were with electrostatics. “I got shocked a zillion times,” Anthony recalls. “I was always awed by electrostatics’ transparency and purity. The dynamics, however, were always short of my expectations.”
Subsequent experiments with ribbon drivers proved difficult to drive and limited in dynamic range. However, Anthony’s search for the “Holy Grail of tweeters” took a dramatic turn when he discovered a magazine article about Piezo film in the early 1980s. “I threw the magazine aside for a few years,” he says, “but in the back of my mind I knew that I would work with this material some day.” After a few years of experimentation, the first version of Anthony’s CDT (cylindrical diaphragm transducer) was born in 1987. Further refining the CDT design over the better part of the next decade, Anthony came to the realisation that he was onto something special, and decided to pursue his dream of designing and manufacturing loudspeakers full-time. Anthony Gallo Acoustics was born.
“Anthony Gallo designed his first loudspeaker
at the tender age of fourteen.”
The first fruits of the new venture appeared in the form of the original Nucleus hi-fi loudspeakers, which utilised state-of-the-art wooden cabinet technologies and weighed in at over 130kg per channel. Although the speaker boasted incredible sound quality, it was deemed too expensive and impractical. However, it was a necessary step in the evolution process of Anthony’s loudspeaker design, and led directly to the two key products that would kick the company’s success into a higher gear, the Nucleus Solo and The Nucleus Reference. Audiophiles worldwide soon began to passionately seek out these ground-breaking speakers. In 1999 the company turned its attentions to producing an affordable, ultra-compact hi-fi loudspeaker. The company’s spherical and S2 technology, which provided the ability to obtain high output from small cabinets with no coloration, led to the development of the ultra-successful 4” Micro speaker, a classic still in production today. Further developments to Anthony’s CDT tweeter design saw the development of the award-winning Reference 3 series and Strada/Strada 2 reference speaker, cementing the company’s reputation for audiophile quality delivered in a compact form factor.
OUR DESIGN PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNOLOGIES
Spherical Design: Since our inception our trademark has been the use of a spherical enclosures in our speaker designs. The Nucleus Solo, our first loudspeaker design, began as a solid aluminum disc which was then spun into a hollow 12″ ball. The spheres were then placed in an electrolytic bath, which formed a hard shell that actually bonded to the metal. This anodising process give our enclosures the mechanical properties of a ceramic, one of the most acoustically inert materials on earth. This combination of spherical geometry and anodised aluminum construction made this enclosure virtually free of resonance and diffraction, the two main causes of loudspeaker distortion. Similarly, the properties of heat-treated and powder-coated steel give our smaller, 4″ Micro and 5″ A’Diva loudspeakers the same enclosure characteristics.
“S2 technology extends low frequency response two full octaves lower
than would otherwise be possible in relation to the speaker’s size”
S2 Technology: Employed in all of our loudspeaker products, our proprietary S2 technology extends low frequency response two full octaves lower than would otherwise be possible in relation to the speaker’s size. S2 technology improves ‘Volumetric Efficiency’ – in other words, how the speaker’s drivers perceive the size of their enclosure. Normally a speaker’s volumetric efficiency is between 1 and 2, our S2 technology gives us a rating of 10. This means that our speakers operate as if their enclosure was 10 times its actual size.
CDT: Our patented CDT technology, as employed in our Strada 2 model, is made up of a diaphragm membrane made of Kynar™, a cutting edge aerospace plastic. This diaphragm is then coated with pure silver because of its high conductivity and reliability, next we silver solder high quality, oxygen-free copper wires to each end of the diaphragm. Finally, the diaphragm assembly is tightly wrapped around a rigid polypropylene core. This inner core acts as attenuation for the driver’s back-wave. Unlike conventional drivers, the CDT doesn’t use voice coils or magnets, instead the signal is passed across the conductive surface of the diaphragm, which attempts to expand, while the shape of the driver supplies the necessary restorative forces.