The third Rockport Technologies product launched in 2005 was the ARRAKIS and it was Andrew Payor’s most ambitious loudspeaker project to date. Weighing in at over 900 pounds per channel and standing nearly 7 feet tall, the three-piece, advanced composite cabinet featured thick carbon fiber-epoxy baffles with complex sweeping curves which optimized the cabinet shape for a clean wavelaunch free from the destructive diffraction problems common with rectangular enclosures, all while providing an incredibly stable and inert structure in which to house the drivers. As with other Rockport cabinets the three ARRAKIS sub-cabinets were constructed with inner and outer shells of composite materials with a thick viscoelastic core between to damp resonance and vibrations.
The midrange and bass drivers were custom manufactured by Audiotechnology and for the first time ever featured variable section thickness, carbon fiber sandwich composite cone drivers designed and manufactured by Rockport Technologies. These cones were extremely light and stiff, which allowed them to reproduce both loud and soft musical signals with the highest resolution and accuracy of any driver ever produced or tested by Rockport Technologies. This revolutionary improvement in driver cone technology over traditional paper, plastic, and metal materials led the way for all future midrange and bass drivers at Rockport Technologies.
The ARRAKIS featured massive driver surface area to reproduce any audible frequency with ease, at essentially any volume level. Starting in the bass were two side-firing 15 inch woofers, two front-firing 8 inch mid bass woofers, two 5.25 inch midrange frequency drivers, all with variable section thickness sandwich composite cones. A ScanSpeak 1 inch soft dome ring radiator tweeter reproduced the highest musical frequencies.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the ARRAKIS was that as a very large speaker that was capable of playing the loudest and lowest tones it also had the ability to play the most subtle and delicate musical details, and completely “disappear”, which was a feat that had never been achieved before by such a large speaker.