Полочная акустика — AKu Audio ONAR

The ONAR is a fully active standmount loudspeaker from AKu Audio, founded in Athens by George and Kostas Kazantzis, and its name means dream in Greek. The company started designing loudspeakers some 16 years before its official launch in 2020, works with partners including Hypex and Scan-Speak, and makes its products in Greece under quality-controlled processes. The ONAR carries its own amplifiers, DSP and a set of analogue and digital inputs. In Europe the pair was priced at EUR 9,998 before VAT and shipping, and each pair takes about 30 days to build.

Key specs that matter

Two 9.5-inch mid-bass woofers with TeXtreme cones works with a 1.34-inch aluminium-magnesium dome tweeter. AKu quotes a range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz within 1.8 dB, extending to 14 Hz depending on the room, a maximum level of 120 dB and distortion no higher than 0.2% at high playback levels. A custom two-channel AKu-Hypex Ncore amplifier supplies 250 W to the mid-bass section and 250 W to the treble section. The speaker alone measures 67.5 cm tall, 31.5 cm wide and 49.4 cm deep and weighs 35 kg, and the included metal stand, which rolls on low-vibration rubber wheels, adds 12 kg and brings the total height to 126.2 cm.

Engineering and use context

The woofers use neodymium motors with dual shorting rings and an under-cut pole piece. Two flared, non-linear bass reflex vents are 3D printed. The enclosure is a multi-layered composite of CNC-carved MDF layers, high-density absorption rubber and aluminium, and its internal geometry follows sine-based nonplanar surfaces meant to avoid parallel walls. The tweeter waveguide is carved directly into the massive front baffle. A digital processor keeps the outputs aligned in amplitude, time and phase, and the owner can switch between three presets named Flat, Harman and Studio through an OLED status screen or the remote control. Every pair is matched and calibrated individually, and its measurements are stored on AKu servers for later updates, tunings or repairs. The power supply accepts mains from 100 to 240 V.

Pairing

Inputs cover Neutrik balanced XLR for analogue or AES/EBU signals, Hypex Gold RCA for unbalanced analogue and optical Toslink, so the ONAR connects straight to a streamer, a CD transport, a DAC or a preamplifier. No external power amplifier is needed. Finishes are Ivory Black, Titanium White, Pearl Beige, Luminous Orange and Pure Red.

Alternatives

The AKu Audio MaYa ii is a smaller active two-way monitor in the same catalogue.