Cabasse Socoa MC170 (unit)

Socoa MC170

The Cabasse MC170 Socoa is a 3-way center speaker featuring Cabasse’s patented coaxial technology and a sealed enclosure design. It aims to deliver precise reproduction of dialogue and sound effects with optimized spatial coherence, drawing on over 70 years of French acoustic expertise.

Cabasse DNA dedicated to vocal clarity

The MC170 Socoa speaker sports a functional design in which every element serves a rigorous acoustic purpose. Its generously sized cabinet (500 × 180 × 380 mm) houses a carefully orchestrated three-way configuration. The ebony black finish lends a discreet elegance that blends seamlessly into any home theater environment.

Choosing a sealed enclosure for this center speaker reflects a desire to maintain perfect control over the bass drivers’ behavior. This configuration, less common than bass-reflex in this segment, eliminates unwanted turbulence and ensures absolute control of low frequencies—especially crucial for the clarity of male voices and the depth of sound effects.

The technological core: the 10T15MC coaxial transducer

At the heart of the Socoa MC170’s acoustic design is the 10T15MC 2-way coaxial driver, a true distillation of Cabasse expertise. This unit, directly derived from technologies developed for the renowned Eole satellites, embodies the SCS (Spatially Coherent Source) principle cherished by the Breton brand since 1952.

This transducer combines a 10 cm polypropylene midrange with a 25 mm textile dome tweeter nested in a horn flare. This configuration ensures that all mid and high frequencies emanate from a single point source, delivering coherent and natural propagation of sound waves. The midrange handles frequencies between 700 Hz and 3.6 kHz—critical for speech intelligibility—while the tweeter extends the response up to 20 kHz with the characteristic smoothness of textile domes.

The 13NT20 woofers: precision and dynamics in the lows

Two 13 cm drivers, designated 13NT20, complete the Socoa MC170’s acoustic arsenal. These transducers, specially designed by Cabasse, feature a voice coil mounted on a Kapton former, ensuring top-tier mechanical and thermal properties. Their optimal 360° ventilation allows efficient heat dissipation, enabling them to handle 100 watts RMS (750 watts peak) without dynamic compression.

The woofers’ cone profile is engineered to maximize mechanical rigidity while minimizing parasitic resonances. This design enables bass reproduction down to 64 Hz with zero coloration, providing a solid foundation for the entire audible spectrum.

HDSE filtering: uniformity and spatial coherence

The Socoa MC170 incorporates the HDSE (Homogeneous Distribution of the Sonic Energy) filtering protocol, the fruit of decades of Cabasse research. This approach not only optimizes on-axis frequency response, but also considers 360° dispersion to ensure homogeneous distribution of sonic energy.

The crossover points, set at 700 Hz and 3600 Hz, have been meticulously chosen to ensure seamless transitions between the different transducers. The result is a stable, coherent three-dimensional soundstage where each element naturally finds its place in space, regardless of listening position.

Integration within the MC170 ecosystem

The Socoa MC170 is part of a comprehensive range designed to create cohesive home theater systems. Its natural compatibility with the Antigua MC170 compact speakers and the floorstanders Jersey MC170 ensures perfect tonal consistency. Adding the Orion MC170 subwoofer allows you to create a 5.1 system where each element shares the same acoustic and technological signatures.

This technical coherence is evident in the use of the same 10T15MC coaxial transducers throughout the range, ensuring exemplary sonic continuity when sound effects move from one speaker to another. Voices remain perfectly anchored at the center of the image, dialogue retains its intelligibility even in the most complex passages, and effects transition smoothly through three-dimensional space.