The third element
Basis Gravis 200.
Fifty-five kilos of dark marble that stay still. The subwoofer of the range: a sealed block, with no visible opening, that completes Vox Lucis and Stele Lucis.
Why it exists
It is not there to go lower.
It is there to make everything else sound better.
Basis Gravis 200 takes on the deepest frequencies and leaves Vox Lucis and Stele Lucis free to do what they were made for.
The result is not simply more bass. It is more space. More ease. More presence.
The voice opens, the instruments breathe, the stage gains depth. The subwoofer almost disappears — and that is exactly when you hear what it has changed.
Below 80 Hz, the work passes to Basis Gravis. Above, everything becomes freer.
It does not add something to the music. It removes a limit.
Proportion
A form born of the material.
Basis Gravis 200 is not a cabinet that houses a subwoofer.
It is a block of natural stone turned into sonic architecture.
Its proportions are drawn from the golden ratio; the square plan keeps the same presence from every side. The 45° edges carry the material past the corner, hiding the join of the slabs.
No edge interrupts the design. No detail betrays the construction.
From the outside, it stays what it should seem: a single block of stone. And it truly is — the Basis Gravis is carved from the solid, hollowed from one block, not assembled from slabs.
The name comes from the same idea. In the classical tradition, the basis is what the column stands upon.
Here it supports the range.
Vox Lucis. Stele Lucis. Basis Gravis. Three elements, one system.
The back
One plate. The settings that matter.
The amplification lives inside the block: 200 W into 4 Ω, on a brushed stainless steel plate set flush into the marble. Crossover, phase and level are set once, on installation day, and never touched again.
The input is line level, on RCA: the Basis Gravis has its own amplification on board, with level and crossover controls. You tune it precisely to the room, without loading the speakers' amplifier.
With a pair of Stele Lucis the recommended crossover sits between 80 and 90 Hz.
Where it goes
Where the sound needs it.
Below 80 Hz the ear barely localises the source. That is why one is enough, and that is why it can stand where the sound needs it rather than where symmetry would.
The right position is not found with a tape measure: it is found by ear, and it is found in half an hour. We have written down how.
Downfiring
The cone looks at the floor.
The driver faces the floor, and the forty-five millimetres under the bottom are not a proportion: they are a dimension. The gap between the bottom and the floor must let through at least as much air as the cone moves. Any lower, and the block chokes itself.
The rest follows: the floor becomes part of the loudspeaker, and fifty-five kilos of marble do not shift a millimetre while it happens.
The data
The numbers.
Every number comes from a decision, not from a catalogue.
The box is sealed because the room does the rest.
- Load
- sealed
- Driver
- 200 mmfiring at the floor
- Extension (−3 dB)
- 47 Hzanechoic
- In room
- usable down to about 25 Hzdepending on room and position
- Power
- 200 Winto 4 Ω
- Crossover
- 40 – 200 Hzadjustable
- Input
- line levelRCA · line signal
- Suggested crossover
- 80 – 90 Hzwith a pair of Stele Lucis
- Enclosure
- dark marblehoned
- Amplifier plate
- stainless steelbrushed
- Feet
- marble and adjustable spike45 mm of clearance
- Proportions
- golden ratioface 456 × 282 = φ · square plan
- Width · depth
- 456 · 456 mm
- Height
- 282 mmplus 45 mm of feet
- Mass
- 55 kg
Documents
Part of the range
The third element. Not an accessory.
In classical architecture the basis is what a stele stands on. This is not a component added afterwards: it is the part of the range that takes on the octave the others let go.