Lithos Technology

At Lithos, speaker design is about creating a scientifically accurate product with the aim of reproducing the subjective art form of music.

The subject of speaker design consists of several hundred scientific design equations. Knowledge of all these equations is an absolute must, moreover, their manipulation and final application is also truly an art form. Lithos prides itself in being truly well versed in the knowledge and application of these scientific equations.

At Lithos Acoustics, we evaluate every speaker with utmost care, attention and detail. We use the most sophisticated CAD tools for designing, modeling and manufacturing our products. The design and engineering going into the development of each speaker is typical in competing speakers costing 10 times as much.

This makes each Lithos Speaker a unique and accurate music reproducing component, representative of the best in the world. The Lithos range consists of a minimum number of speakers, each one a winner in its own right. With our accent on design, technology and affordability, we are able to do at affordable costs what rest of the world struggles to achieve at a much higher price point.

Lithos Technology Advantages

• Q-balance Technology
  • While listening to music, the mind sub-consciously perceives flaws in the sound that it hears. These flaws are in the form of harshness, sharpness and other undesirable characteristics, that within a short period of time will cause listening fatigue
  • Fatigue will make you want to turn off your music system soon, and prevents long and enjoyable hours of listening to your favorite music.
  • Over the years, companies around the world have tried to achieve the elusive ‘no listening fatigue’ goal, but have not succeeded.
  • In 1999, LITHOS Acoustics has become the world’s first company to introduce a proprietary, groundbreaking technology that prevents listening fatigue – the Q-BALANCE ™
• Subwoofer and Satellite Combinations
  • The Room is the largest factor in dictating the tonality of the sound, after the speakers. While many know this, few implement it or have the freedom to – especially in places where space it at a premium and listening areas mostly spillover into living areas. Lithos designs all speakers, bar none, with a modular approach. The subwoofer low frequency cabinet and the satellite mid-high frequency cabinet are always separate entities
  • With this approach, many, many advantages are possible. The first being that, now, you can optimise the placement of the lows and the highs to get the best out of your music system and your living space. Want the system to image well? – Place the satellites on a stand away from the back and side walls, yet get the subwoofers back in the corner – to give you optimised bass. No space at all? Place the satellites on the wall – even with our flagship speaker, this is possible! And place the subwoofers, tucked away in the corners – enjoy high fidelity with the convenience of optimised living space. Have a dedicated listening room? Then take the Lithos Speaker in its original design intent – and enjoy the best of both worlds
• Elimination of Doppler Distortion
  • The horn on a moving vehicle increases in pitch as the vehicle heads towards you and reduces in pitch as it heads away. This is called Doppler effect, and is true of any body generating sound, if there is relative motion between the generator and listener
  • Now consider the sound coming from a woofer in a typical 2-way or 3-way system. The woofer in a two way system generates sound all the way to 3 kHz, while for the bass, it must generate sound only up to 125Hz. The woofer has to vibrate (move) a great deal to generate bass notes from 20Hz to 100Hz. While they are moving, the woofers in these systems also generate midrange sounds. Since these midrange sounds are coming from a moving object – which is moving back and forth – the midrange sound that we hear is subject to Doppler distortion. The sounds we hear from a 3-way system are also the same (since a typical woofer for a 3way system crosses over between 300-500Hz). Thus in typical tower speakers where the woofer is made to generate midrange sounds all the way from 125Hz – 3kHz, these sounds are distorted as per the Doppler effect
  • In Lithos sub- sats, the midranges take over from as low as 100Hz. Since bass filters are used below this frequency, there is no visible movement of the midrange to generate sound. As a result and because midrange sounds are only generated from dedicated midrange drivers all the down from 100Hz while the bass is generated solely from the woofers up to 100Hz, the sound from a Lithos Midrange is free from the effects of Doppler distortion…- in other words, cleaner and more natural
  • While Doppler distortion takes place in the frequency domain (peak velocity = max distortion), we should be able to measure it in the frequency response tests. Some measurements have shown this distortion also in the phase domain (peak displacement)…and many call this phase modulation distortion…in either case, the solution is to filter bass from the midrange generator, not possible in 2 way bookshelves and most 3-way speakers
• Elimination of Inter-modulation Distortion
  • Intermodulation is the effect by which, a severely vibrating element (woofer) interferes with and causes sympathetic vibration of the other components (midrange and tweeters) in the same cabinet. When this occurs, the woofer colors/distorts the sound of the midrange and the tweeter by making them vibrate in sympathy
  • Intermodulation distortion is a typical pitfall of 2 way and three way towers due to the cabinet size and weakness of large cabinet formats
  • In a Lithos 3 or 4 piece system, the woofers are independent, with their own cabinets. The vibrations of the woofer are thus contained in this standalone cabinet. Since the mid and high frequency drivers are housed in completely separate cabinets, they are not sympathetically affected by the vibration of the woofer, thus minimizing Intermodulation distortions
• Smaller, Rigid, Frequency-Optimised Cabinets
  • The bass from a Lithos three-piece system is generated from a cabinet that is optimized for bass reproduction. The cabinet doesn’t generate any other sound. Also this cabinet doesn’t need to house the mids and the highs – typically which have to be at ear level. Placing mids and highs at ear – level increases the size of conventional (2 – 3 way) cabinets – and consequently – reduces rigidity. In a Lithos, the mids and highs are placed in small, well-manufactured monocoque-shell cabinets that are obviously more rigid than large cabinet formats
  • The overall price to performance of a Lithos three-piece cabinet system allows for a more rigid, correct and optimized speaker cabinet construction
• Full Deep Bass
  • Perhaps the bane of the 2 – way bookshelf is its lack of any real bass. Now that’s fine if you listen to chamber music for the rest of your days, but at Lithos, we believe that any speaker has to generate a full range sound. That’s another great advantage of the Lithos sub-sat combo. By optimizing bass cabinetry – in well-designed bandpass / isobaric and triple chamber bandpass designs, Lithos speakers generate ample bass. Wall to wall, room filling and clean bass. Now just compare that to you regular 2-way bookshelf or tower where your immediate next upgrade is to buy a powered subwoofer!
• Pin Point Imaging 
  • Large cabinets are subject to greater energy storage and diffraction effects – these effects blur the sound image and deter from good imaging. The diffraction effects are minimized from small cabinets that are the exact size of the drivers. (That is why you see many speakers’ cabinets in high-end speakers – read expensive – that taper towards the top – to minimize the size of the cabinet around the drivers). No such problem here with a Lithos 3-piece. Because of small mid-hi cabinets, time alignment and vertical-in-line point source designs – further coupled with matched pairing – the imaging is rock solid and pinpoint.