I posted this on SSA just a few minutes ago but I figured I could get good answers here too just without a lot of the BS there.

Well we had our Focal rep come into the shop today, and he was telling me an another co worker about all the new Focal stuff. I happened to ask him about the Focal Grande Utopia Em and he told me that they are the best sounding speakers he has ever heard. With the 180K pricetag for a pair, I would hope they sound that good.

But here's my question, the subwoofer uses some new technology where it doesn't use a permanent magnet at all, but instead uses a huge winding of wire as a magnet. What advantages does this yield? I though I heard someone say something about controlling the force of the motor also. I just want someone to simplify the function of this.

It's gotta be a feild coil driver. They just call it electro-magnetic......
It's powered by a external DC supply I would guess.

Western Electric, Jensen, RCA other companies made large field coil woofer drivers to go along with horns in Theaters as far back as the early '30's. Some were 18" woofers, set-up with a big open baffle. Powered by triodes, 211, 845, 300B, etc....
They were beasts with the big coil on the back and handles.

Awesome!  Thanks Mike.  

I was under the impression that this is a relatively new technology.  I'll have to read up on Paul Voights paper later when I don't have to go to class.

I just wasn't sure what kind of signal would have been applied to the field coil.

Now what you are saying makes sense.

Here's a link to the site.    It shows what the coil looks like and whatnot.
http://www.grande-utopia-em.com/

Pretty cool speakers if you ask me, but a little spendy

Wow I just now saw that for the first time.  Must have missed it before.  They have lots of cool vintage gear, especially all those multi-cell horns.

And to think that I thought Focal was being so innovative using a technology used before perma magnets!