Fyne Audio's F700SP Special Production Speakers

Fyne Audio’s SP (Special Production) is a designation for a family of loudspeakers which are indeed specially placed in the Fyne Audio inventory and have very special features. Fyne Audio is well known for inventive design and bright engineering research headed by an industry veteran Dr. Paul Mills. Special Production models take the latest driver technologies developed by Fyne Audio and cleverly adopt them to fit in a less sophisticated and less costly cabinet which is already in production. In next step, Fyne Audio’s engineering team revises some other design details which directly influence sound quality including crossover components, input terminals, cabinet damping and bracing. This allows to highlight some of the models in current popular ranges which, after SP revision, will come out a bit more expensive than the original one, but will also offer a significant step forward in performance and sound quality.

After a very successful introduction of SP models in the F500 series (multi-award winning F500SP, F501SP and F502SP) the SP treatment is now applied to certain models in the higher F700 range. They are taking advantage of state-of-the-art IsoFlare drive units developed for flagship F series while using the standard F700 series cabinets with their slimmer contemporary appearance.

Currently the 700SP series include two floor-standing loudspeakers: F702SP and F703SP. Here is what what makes them special:

The most advanced IsoFlare (coincident high and low frequencies) drive units were designed and produced by Fyne Audio for high end F1 series.

IsoFlare drivers explore the concept of point source sound radiation, where both high and low frequency are generated on the same axis and roughly on the same plane. This allows for a uniform (isotropic) sound field in the room devoid of beaming or steering, spacious soundstage and very natural imaging for the listener. IsoFlare driver essentially is a hybrid design where a dome tweeter is positioned inside a pole piece of a bass speaker. To ensure efficiency, perfect timing, and no interference, the hollow pole piece is profiled as a mini-horn and a sophisticated waveguide is inserted in the mini-horn’s mouth. The tweeter uses a powerful magnet and stiff metal dome. Woofer cone is also serving as an extension of the tweeter mini-horn. Fyne Audio IsoFlare woofer cones are made of a mixture of traditional wood-based fibres with wool and synthetics. Fyne Audio designed a special rubber surround with FyneFlute profile to ensure linear motion of the woofer cone.

F703SP uses the exact same IsoFlare LF/HF-driver from the F1-10 speaker. It has a 10-inch multifibre woofer cone on a FyneFlute surround driven by ferrite ring magnet and a huge 3-inch titanium dome tweeter with a neodymium magnet. Smaller F702SP gets F1-8 IsoFlare with 8-inch woofer cone and 1-inch magnesium dome.

While being very close to a perfect point source sound radiators both IsoFlare drive units are designed to have extended frequency response, very high power handling and no dynamic compression.

High performance should go along with attractive visuals so the new F700SP-series speakers look just beautiful from the outside. Nicely curved slim cabinets are manufactured in the following finishes: natural walnut veneer or high gloss piano lacquer, black or white.

High density birch ply is a classic cabinet material with multiple sonic benefits. It is not used very often today for cabinet production because of high material and tooling cost. Luckily Fyne Audio’s production team has years of experience in cabinet manufacture and for F700SP (as well as F1 and Classic) series they have chosen the best material available. The cabinet, made from thick birch ply curved panels, is internally braced for extra stiffness and sectioned to form an another Fyne Audio special: twin cavity low frequency enclosure with a BassTrax wave diffuser uniload port.

BassTrax system allows for ‘spherical’ room coupling of bass frequencies which results in much less effort to position the speakers in room.

The cabinet base is a metal plinth precisely machined from an aluminium alloy slab. The plinth has threaded holes for metal cone-shaped floor-couplers. Thus the cabinet can be levelled on the floor ensuring no bass seeping occurring due to uneven cabinet position.

Obviously the crossover for SP models had to be redesigned from scratch with the use of new drive units. Dr. Paul Mills and the Fyne Audio team took a great effort to find the best topology and components, the final decision always being made after extended listening session with a friendly circle of musicians, industry experts and end users.

Selected ClarityCap capacitors are used throughout, all the wiring is made by Neotech with long-grain pure copper conductors and the input terminals are low loss Nextgen 0703 made by WBT.

Fyne Audio has an in-house cryogenic lab, so after soldering the F700SP crossovers undergo a time-controlled processing in liquid nitrogen. This kind of temperature treatment is widely used in making of musical instruments and certain precision tools. It removes stress, deformations and irregularities from metal structures. Fyne Audio cryoprocessing has a great influence on the resulting sound quality and performance.

F703SP is an impressive floorstander with a 10-inch (250 mm) IsoFlare LF/HF-driver alongside with 10-inch paper-fibre woofer. Its cabinet measures 1195 x 505 x 468 mm. F702SP is a more compact floorstanding speaker with an 8-inch (200 mm) IsoFlare driver and 8-incvh woofer, its cabinet measures 1126 x 439 x 443 mm.

Both speakers are manufactured at Fyne Audio’s facility in Scotland. Suggested retail price F703SP — €16999.99. F702SP — €13999.99