Soliloquy Factory Tour

For those interested in how Soliloquy speakers are made, we now take you on a short, guided tour through our facility. You'll learn what goes into a Soliloquy speaker, step-by-step, from raw cabinets to shipment of final speakers.

Facilities

Soliloquy is located in an upscale business park in North Raleigh, North Carolina. The main location on 2609 Discovery Drive comprises a 6000sqft manufacturing facility and an adjacent 4000sqft of warehouse area. The neighboring building to the main factory houses a dedicated, built-from-the-ground-up 17 x 23 x 9 listening room in which all initial prototype evaluations for new Soliloquy models take place.

Pre-production

The speakers that our customers eventually enjoy in their homes begin life as an idea. We look at the overall speaker market and study the competition. We talk to our dealers and manufacturer's reps (the team of professionals who interface on a monthly basis directly with our dealers at their retail facilities). We read the feedback from the folks who have purchased our speakers. Once we perceive the need for a new model and have determined where to fit it within the existing line, we create a project file for our chief engineer, Phil Jones. This project file determines appearance, driver complement, performance parameters and retail pricing. As in the case of our current flagship, the Model 6.5, this can also include the creation of an entirely new driver. Like all Soliloquy drivers, the 2-inch doped midrange transducer of the 6.5 was custom designed by Phil and is unique to Soliloquy. Whereas many speaker manufacturers rely on off-the-shelf parts from various vendors, Soliloquy speakers are designed "from the drivers up". The transducers (tweeter, midrange, woofer) are engineered from the very beginning to work together in predetermined enclosure sizes. This minimizes the demands on the crossover.

For each Soliloquy project, Phil Jones uses advanced CAD design and his enormous expertise that stems from decades of work in the speaker industry (Acoustic Energy, Wharfedale, Boston Acoustic's original Lynnfield project, Platinum Audio and American Acoustic Development). Before a new model is released to the public, pre-production prototypes undergo significant betatesting in the homes of employees and the stores of certain key dealers. This is done to insure stability of performance under various conditions. Once a new model has received the unanimous go-ahead for full production, the necessary parts and cabinets are ordered.

Production

Cabinet matching

The process continues as carefully stacked palettes of raw cabinets arrive from our cabinet shop. These palettes are stored in our warehouse.

Upon receipt, individual cabinets are inspected for cosmetic flaws and matched up to the remaining cabinets in pairs, based on grain patterns and veneer color. Those cabinets that pass visual inspection but can't be satisfactorily matched up remain on hold until the next shipment. All cabinets are inspected with white light.

Cabinet construction

All Soliloquy cabinetry is precision-built from machined 1" HDF (medite) stock for all six main cabinet panels - front, back, sides, top, bottom. This overspec'd mass even includes all internal bracing. The Model 6.5's front baffle is thicker yet — 1.5". We categorically eschew 3⁄4" or 1⁄2" stock, miter folding or V-grooving and rely instead on classic furniture-grade construction.

All veneers are top quality center-cut sections of real wood with polyurethane top coatings. The circular cutouts for the driver mount holes are glued inside the cabinets' back walls behind the woofer magnets. This reinforces those certain panel sections and creates 2" thick areas for superior resonance control.

Cabinet prep & driver QC

Further manufacturing steps involve application of the internal sound dampening compound to the inside walls; the fitting of rubber gaskets for the recessed driver mount holes and back plate assembly; the insertion of Analysis Plus internal wire; and the hand soldering of the wire to the custom metal terminals. Before our drivers arrive at the assembly bench, they have already undergone extensive QC testing & matching. All Soliloquy drivers are proprietary designs, designed by Phil Jones and manufactured in his American Acoustic Development factory in mainland China, to very tight tolerances. Still, we carefully test each driver and compare its response curve to the archived curve of the reference unit. In order to pass inspection, each driver must be within a 0.5db tolerance window of the reference driver.

Driver construction

The proprietary Soliloquy tweeter is a silk dome 1.125" inch shielded design with a hand-applied coating and very powerful motor structure to provide high power handling and linear response. The circular mounting plate is heavy-gauge steel and unusually massive to provide rigid coupling to the cabinet and prevent sonic colorations that are common to lightweight plastic plates. The surround, just as with the mid/woofers, isn't cheap foam but high-quality long-life butyl rubber with a maximized profile. Our shielded polymer/mica/graphite 5.25" and 6.5" mid/woofers sit in diecast magnesium baskets with six driver mount holes for superior mounting integrity.

We don't use stamped steel, plastic or composite baskets because they're mechanically inferior. All Soliloquy mid/woofers feature over-size massive vented magnets and precision-machined cones that increase in thickness towards the center and decrease towards the rim where the surrounds are attached.

Our aluminum-cone 10" woofer for the S-10 active subwoofer model uses the entire cone area as heat sink to provide superior power handling while the circular ribs stiffen the cone to prevent break-up modes, ringing and cone flex. It also boasts a dual voice coil system for amazing transient response.

We have also added a cinema driver created to tolerate the low frequency effects generated by home theater source material. The cinema driver clocks in at an astounding 38 lbs. and utilizes a much thicker aluminum diaphragm with a twin-roll butyl surround and a dual layer iron-ferrite magnet structure for superior bass reproduction.

Crossovers

Once the raw drivers are installed, the crossover boards are assembled and inserted. Depending on the model, the crossover is either completely mounted to the backplate or, in the larger multidriver models, a second section is attached to the inside base of the cabinet. Crossover boards are assembled in large batches, sorted in pairs and set aside for final assembly. Critical parts such as inductors, capacitors and resistors are first individually measured. Once the precise value has been determined, they're sorted and pair-matched to insure that the crossover of your left and right speaker is within a 2% tolerance window. All Soliloquy crossovers are hand-assembled and point-to-point wired with 2% silver solder.

Final tests

With the crossovers wired up and installed and the backplate assembly attached and sealed with its gasket, the next step for all floorstanding models involves attaching the steel base plate and plinth assembly. At this point, the speaker pair is fully assembled, the serial number stickers get applied and the pair is ready for final inspection, minor touch-ups, cleaning and the listening test.

Before any Soliloquy speaker gets moved to our shipping department for boxing, it is hooked up to a stereo system and playtested to insure that no human error anywhere along all these steps of production has caused a deviation from perfection.

After the final playtest check, the speakers go to shipping where they are carefully packaged, cross-referenced by serial number and destination and entered into the ship log as well as serial number log.

We hope you enjoyed your brief tour through our facility and gained a better understanding of what goes into each and every Soliloquy loudspeaker model that ships from here to all corners of the world. If you feel we overlooked any interesting aspects that leave you with questions, or have suggestions for future models, do not hesitate to email us.