EMILAR

Established in 1980 by Manny Mohageri, Harold Lindsay, and Jonas Renkus, Emilar Corp produced excellent compression drivers and cast aluminium horn flares in Anaheim, California, for 27 years. Jonas designed a radical silicone suspension for the aluminium diaphragm, which avoided the pitfalls of typical roll, tangential and diamond pattern surrounds, and provided good mechanical damping. The EA-175 was their first product, and offered superb performance, but employed a large Alnico-V magnet at the exact moment that price of Cobalt (a major component of Alnico) rose to over ten times it's normal price. Jonas reworked his driver into the more affordable EC-175 with a ferrite magnet, and introduced the higher output ECH-175 version using two ferrite magnets.

Emilar's famous EH-800 'bow-tie' horn was an unusual exponential 800Hz flare and 25mm (1") entry, found immediate acceptance in pro sound for its low distortion and almost perfect 90-degree dispersion. Larger Emilar drivers, such as the EC-314 and EC-20 shared the same magnet structure, phase plug and diaphragm, differing only in their throat size. This was a strong design and Radian's compression drivers are direct descendants from these Emilars, with some cosmetic changes. Emilar's EH-500 (50mm) 2"entry, 500Hz horn flare was smaller, lighter and sounded better than the contemporary JBL or Altec offerings, becoming a reference standard.