Floorstanding loudspeakers — AudiaZ Cadenza Riva Diamond

The Cadenza Riva Diamond is a tower speaker built by AudiaZ in the Bavarian town of Rosenheim, described by the maker as a new development based on its compact Cadenza. The main change is the driver set above the bass section. A newly developed Accuton midrange is combined with the diamond dome tweeter from Accuton, and AudiaZ states that it is the first German manufacturer to put this midrange into series production.

Key specs that matter

A 30 mm diamond dome handles the top octaves. The midrange uses a ceramic membrane, yet its motor and suspension match those of the 90 mm diamond midrange from Accuton, with a 1.8 Tesla drive and a fabric surround. The Cadenza it is derived from uses three ways in a reflex cabinet, with two 173 mm ceramic woofers, crossover points at 180 Hz and 2 kHz, a 4 ohm nominal load and a quoted range of 29 Hz to 40 kHz. That cabinet measures 24.4 x 112 x 24.4 cm.

Engineering and use context

In the Cadenza cabinet the woofers sit on angled faces 90 degrees apart and fire sideways, inside a seven-sided enclosure that AudiaZ names OVO, with no parallel walls. The Riva Diamond keeps a massively braced multiplex housing. Its network uses Duelund, Intertechnik, Mundorf and BMC parts, mica as well as film capacitors, while the tweeter capacitor uses a solid pure silver foil and pure silver leads. Inside, every link is solid silver wire whose insulation is extruded Teflon from GORE, and the tweeter section is wired with pure silver solid core cable. On the Cadenza, joints to the driver terminals are silver soldered rather than plugged. The diamond tweeter was previously offered in the Cadenza only as an option or in the silvered M-Edition, while the Riva Diamond pairs it with the new midrange as standard.

Pairing

For the Cadenza platform AudiaZ specifies a minimum of 50 W per side from a Class A amplifier, and the base model dips to 3.8 ohm, so the amplifier must cope with a low minimum impedance. The side-firing woofers need open space next to each cabinet, and for the base Cadenza a rear wall distance of at least 60 cm is advised, a guide worth following here too. Wiring connects to one pair of WBT terminals per speaker on the base model.

Alternatives

The AudiaZ Cadenza Gen3 is the floorstanding model this design is based on, with ceramic drivers from the Accuton CELL line and a revised crossover.