Floorstanding loudspeakers — AudiaZ Opera

The Opera is a full-range floorstanding loudspeaker from the German maker AudiaZ, part of its purist design range and intended for medium to large rooms. Its cabinet follows clear Bauhaus-style lines. The Opera uses larger bass and midrange units from the Accuton Cell range than smaller AudiaZ towers, and the ceramic-driver version was priced at EUR 39,000 per pair.

Key specs that matter

Acoustically, the Opera works as a three-way system with a reflex port. A 30 mm Accuton ceramic dome tweeter works above a 16.8 cm Accuton C168 Cell ceramic midrange, and two 22 cm Accuton ceramic woofers handle the low range. The tweeter crossover point sits at 2,000 Hz. Measured sensitivity is 88.5 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m, and the lowest impedance point is 3.2 ohm at 23 Hz. Continuous output reaches 105 dB with peaks of 117 dB. Each speaker stands 125.7 cm tall with a footprint of 28.4 by 28.4 cm and weighs 56 kg.

Engineering and use context

In the Opera the pair of woofers is mounted at a 90 degree angle to each other, which is intended to cut vibration transferred to the enclosure. The cabinet is built from 19 mm maple plywood and is braced and damped on the inside. For the crossover, AudiaZ selects mica capacitors and film capacitors from BMC, Duelund, Intertechnik and Mundorf, and in the tweeter path a capacitor of silver foil with silver leads is used. All internal wiring, from the terminals through the crossover to every driver, is solid pure silver with an extruded Teflon dielectric made by GORE. A single pair of WBT 0710 silver binding posts takes the speaker cable, so the Opera is wired for one amplifier channel per side rather than bi-wiring. AudiaZ also offers the design with a diamond midrange and a ceramic or diamond tweeter. That midrange comes from Accuton in Cologne and has a 90 mm diamond membrane in a 124 mm basket, and in the full diamond configuration a pair costs EUR 168,000.

Pairing

The low minimum impedance in the deep bass calls for amplification that keeps delivering current when the load drops toward 3 ohm. For the highest levels the speaker can reach, a figure of 160 W of amplifier power is recommended. A solid-state stereo or mono power amplifier suits that combination better than a low-powered tube amplifier, and the single-wire terminals keep cabling to one run per speaker.

Alternatives

Within the same range, AudiaZ also builds the Opera Grandezza, a floorstanding version fitted with diamond drivers.