Usher

Usher’s Drivers
Usher has been producing speakers in Taiwan for more than thirty years, and makes a number of specialized in-house drivers featuring DMD diamond & Be beryllium ceramic diaphragms.  

USHER Diamond DMD Technology:
Uncovering Key To Superlative Diamond Sound

Because of its extreme hardness and excellent thermal conductivity, diamond has always been considered a potentially great material for loudspeaker diaphragm. Tweeter units with a diaphragm made of synthetic diamond, from the traditional CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) method, have been around for quite some time, but many find their sonic performance compromised, due mainly to the relatively high mass of the diamond dome and also to the unfavorable resonance signature of the material itself.

At Usher, we saw the promise of diamond as an ideal diaphragm material, but we also reckoned that it would take some original thinking and an innovative approach to the engineering, in order to bring out the best of this unusual material for application in audio. In typical Usher fashion, we took our time to carefully research and develop our own original solutions for both pure diamond and laminate diamond diaphragms, tackling the issues with both imagination and extensive measuring/listening tests.

Today, years after we began our quest for the ultimate diamond sound, we're pleased to present to the music-loving public and audiophiles the exciting result of our first diamond technology research project, and we believe the key to superlative diamond sound: The new Usher Diamond DMD series speakers.

Employing the Usher Diamond DMD Technology, our Diamond DMD speakers have a new tweeter unit with an USHER Diamond DMD dome. The DMD dome is effectively a diamond dome with a reduced mass and a well-controlled, appealing sound signature, resembling very closely a perfect piston in its behavior. This is made possible by its laminated diamond-metal-diamond structure, which consists of a proprietary metal alloy base layer coated with an amorphous diamond-like carbon layer (pure diamond is carbon atoms arranged solely in sp3 bonds; amorphous diamond-like carbon has mixed sp3 and sp2 bonds to achieve its desirable properties) on both sides. The base metal layer of the Diamond DMD dome tames all the diamond layers' unfavorable sonic traits and brings out the best of both materials.

The true revolution, however, is in the Diamond DMD tweeter's unprecedented micro-dynamics resolving power. The DMD dome's structural integrity makes possible a surprisingly intact and undistorted reproduction of the input signal, which clearly shows in the reproduced sound as a sense of purity and completeness that is at the same time new and familiar: New in reproduced music but familiar in live performances.

Last but not the least, owners of Usher's BE series will have the option to upgrade to the Diamond DMD tweeters at their cost.

Audio Is No Black Magic At USHER:
Correlating the measurements and the perceived performance by human ears at USHER, we believe audio is a science. There was a time in the history of audio when measurements couldn't really explain a lot of the perceived listening impressions, but we discovered, through extensive listening tests, experiments and measurements, that it was because people didn't measure the parameters that really matter. For years, USHER have worked hard on correlating measurements and perceived performance. The initial success USHER have achieved in this pursuit has allowed us to greatly improve the effectiveness and precision of our R&D work, making possible an even more friendly pricing policy, despite the ever-heightening level of quality in our products' absolute sonic performance.

A Relentless Quest For Precision and Musicality: Tools and mindset
Almost all first-time visitors to USHER's labs and factory were awe-struck by the quality and quantity of the precision equipment they saw in service. Perhaps they would be even more surprised if they knew the amount of research and trainings put into utilizing these pieces of high precision equipment. As the saying goes, "There are no accidents." At USHER, we don't leave it to chance to improve or to innovate. We even developed a computer-based measuring system of our own, which has since become an industry standard and is now widely used at many factories in Asia.

A Word about Dr. Joseph D’Appolito

We are very happy to have Dr. Joseph D'Appolito as Usher’s technical consultant since early 2000. He provides guidance on all our speakers’ crossover designs. A world-renowned authority in audio and acoustics, he specializes in loudspeaker system design with credentials galore: BEE, SMEE, EE and Ph.D., degrees from RPI, MIT and the University of Massachusetts. As a member of the Audio Engineering Society, Dr. D'Appolito has published over 30 journal and conference papers. His most popular and influential brainchild has to be the MTM (midrange/tweeter/midrange vertical array) commonly known as the D'Appolito Configuration that’s used by dozens of manufacturers throughout the world.