High End Munich 2025 Systems - new Viva Audio Verticale speakers

Chief designer Amedeo Schembri spent two years chasing a specific goal with this loudspeaker - distilling the scale and agility of Viva Audio's considerably larger Credenza, Nuda and Master Horn flagships into a more compact, more affordable format, and the result, the Verticale, made its world debut simultaneously on two continents in March 2025 before appearing at Munich, where Hifiverse rated it for sound that "remains clear and rich even at high volume."

The system at a glance

One component, a three-way design with a fourth, separately powered low-frequency section, and a price around $135,000 per pair. This entry captures the Verticale itself as the Munich room's centrepiece, the newest addition to Viva Audio's horn-loaded loudspeaker range rather than a fully documented complete electronics chain.

Why these components work together

The Verticale layers a proprietary horn super-tweeter, a 1.4-inch horn-loaded compression driver and a 6-inch horn-loaded midbass-midrange unit above a dedicated low-frequency module housing four 10-inch long-throw woofers with their own separate amplifier, crossed over at 200Hz, 1,200Hz and 10,000Hz for a claimed 35Hz-to-23kHz response. That combination pushes sensitivity to a high 98dB into a 6-ohm nominal load, a specification Viva Audio has specifically engineered so the loudspeaker's horn-loaded upper sections can be driven by low-power amplification - the company's own Solista MkIII, a 22-watt single-ended-triode Class A design built around 845 output tubes, has been paired with the Verticale at multiple shows because that combination of extreme sensitivity and horn loading needs nowhere near the power a conventional dynamic loudspeaker of comparable scale would demand. Separating the woofer section's amplification from the horn-loaded upper sections lets each part of the frequency range be driven by electronics matched to its own requirements, instead of asking a single amplifier to simultaneously satisfy an ultra-sensitive horn tweeter and a quartet of substantial long-throw woofers with fundamentally different power and control needs.

How it sounds

Show reports describing the Verticale consistently highlight impact and agility carried over from Viva Audio's larger flagship models despite the smaller cabinet, with Hifiverse's own Munich verdict, clarity and richness maintained even at high volume, reflecting exactly what horn loading combined with high sensitivity is meant to deliver - dynamic headroom that a conventional dynamic-driver design of comparable size would struggle to match without audible compression