Grand Reference

Concept

The Io Design Grand Reference system rehashes and reinforces all the unique and exclusive concepts and features already present in the Naked models but, without any budget constraint, we pushed the concept to the limits of current parts and materials availability.

IO Design goal is to further enhance the Naked concept ability, to materialize a live event in your room, recreating a scale reproduction evermore closer to reality. Some may object that any loudspeakers manufacturer claims the same, but the flaws of the old concept of boxed or dipole speakers is repeated again and again with new designs, materials and even some intuition, but not getting down to the point that those old designs can’t allow reproducing the most important parameters of a live performance in a totally faithful way, always introducing something that, at IO Design, we completely reject.

This approach allows IO Design listeners to experience the emotion of the original sound’s physical and tangible presence in all its complexity. The Grand Reference is extremizing this result thanks to an approach free from any budget constraint.

The challenge was tough indeed because we did not set any limit in our pursuit of the true live performance of instruments and the IO Design team worked tirelessly to achieve this uneasy target.

Thanks to our team’s dedication and clear vision, we are now proud of what we have accomplished. The Grand Reference has ventured into a realm of sound presentation in your listening space that is unique and yet unexplored by any other company on the market.

As with the Naked model, the Grand Reference leverages its distinctive emission concept to use the environment as an integrated component in the propagation of sound waves, transforming the limits of traditional speakers into a much valuable asset.

Sound Reproduction And Dynamics

Even with a proper acoustic correction, a closed-box loudspeaker can never achieve the speed, presence and decay, just to quote some parameters, meaning the genuine energy of an acoustic instrument played live. All manufacturers well know this basic truth and try to mitigate it with evermore heavy and stiff boxes that are still doing the same job, distortion creation… In fact the old boxed concept, produces an uncontrolled loudness effect contaminating all frequencies, drastically staving off home reproduction from the true performance of live instruments (regardless of the brand or the cost of the loudspeakers).

One of the greatest challenges that IO Design faced, was achieving an even energy distribution across the entire sound spectrum. Our aim is to deliver the same sound pressure at a constant distance regardless of the frequency, and with the minimal possible distortion. This meticulous balance results in a listening experience that is natural, balanced, lively immersive and delivering an undistorted high sound pressure regardless of the listening point position.

Sound pressure is a crucial aspect of reproduction. When we experience a sound featuring a very low distortion and an excellent frequency balance, less expert listeners may fail to fully appreciate the true energy of that sound; this applies to both dynamics and micro-dynamics. With IO Design systems, where the Grand Reference is paramount, these parameters are pushed to the limit of today’s available materials. The Grand Reference, by concept supported by the environment, propagates energy throughout the room, plunging the listener into a tangible, real presence drastically narrowing the gap between live music and home reproduction.

The Grand Reference system is designed to the limit to recreate that sonic impact, that realism, and those harmonic nuances, along with the interplay of silences and micro/macro dynamics, to result in a total emotional experience so entangling that it leaves no room for any other alternative regardless of the price.