Полочная акустика — Apertura Audio SENSA

The SENSA is a slim two-way loudspeaker made by the French company Stentor SAS under its Apertura name, based in Puceul in the Loire-Atlantique area, a maker that marked its 35th anniversary in 2018. Of the nine current models it is the second smallest, placed just above the SWING and just under the STELA. Acoustic design is by Christian Yvon and mechanical design and production by Eric Poyer. The maker presents the SENSA as a descendant of the Armonia, sharing its main features in a narrow tall cabinet that can stand on its own base.

Key specs that matter

A 16 cm mid/woofer works with a 25 mm dome tweeter, with the handover set at 3.8 kHz. Apertura lists a range from 40 Hz to 40,000 Hz within 3 dB, with a sensitivity of 87 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m and a nominal impedance of 8 ohm. The cabinet measures 170 mm wide, 240 mm deep and 864 mm high, or 210 x 260 x 921 mm with its stands, and each speaker weighs 14 kg net. Connection is through terminals for banana plugs. Buyers can choose light oak or American walnut in a satin surface, or white and piano black in high gloss.

Engineering and use context

The woofer cone uses an isotactic matrix of woven polypropylene strips, chosen for a mix of stiffness, low mass and internal damping. A long voice coil gives extended linear excursion, and the suspension has radial stiffeners to limit interference. The tweeter comes from the Ring Radiator family, with a bullet-shaped waveguide and a rear damping chamber, and it reaches above 40 kHz. The crossover follows the proprietary DRIM structure with triple attenuation slopes intended to cancel intermodulation between the sections. Each drive unit is measured and the crossover values are adjusted for every pair, while the hand-soldered network sits on a 140 micron copper board whose layout avoids magnetic interaction between parts. The enclosure is built from 18 mm panels with an internal multi-cavity frame of three bracing panels, bass reflex loading with a double resonator, and damping in two different materials. A magnetic grille attaches without visible fixings.

Pairing

This benign load with middling sensitivity suit conventional solid-state or tube integrated amplifiers of average power. The narrow front and the optional stands make the SENSA easy to place where a wider cabinet would be awkward.

Alternatives

The Apertura SWING is the brand's compact two-way model with the same isotactic matrix woofer in a compact stand-mount box.