Напольная акустика — Franco Serblin Accordo Essence

The Accordo Essence is a floorstanding loudspeaker from the Italian company Franco Serblin, named after the idea of a chord in music to express the tuning of its parts into one whole. It was created by Massimiliano Bianca, who continues the work of Franco Serblin with solid wood cabinets built by hand by master artisans. The stated aim of the design is a quality of illusion reached through the balanced integration of every element, from the drivers and crossover to the wooden structure.

Key specs that matter

The Accordo Essence is the floorstanding descendant of the stand-mounted Accordo monitor and shares most of its design, adding a larger cabinet and a dedicated bass driver. It uses a three-way vented layout with three drivers. A 29 mm silk-dome tweeter designed by Ragnar Lian handles the treble, a custom 150 mm mid-woofer with a microspheres cone covers the middle band, and a 180 mm woofer with a reinforced cellulose pulp cone treated with microspheres and an aluminium dust cap takes the lowest frequencies. Published figures give an in-room range of 35 Hz to 22 kHz, a nominal impedance of 4 ohm and a sensitivity of 88 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m. The minimum recommended amplifier power is 20 W per channel. Each speaker measures 1100 mm high, 230 mm wide and 430 mm deep. The pair weighs 60 kg unpacked and 70 kg packed.

Engineering and use context

Instead of a box, the cabinet is a super-rigid, arch-shaped structure of solid wood. The design is fully asymmetric and further braced to stiffen the larger assembly, and it is decoupled with aluminium-magnesium parts, which Franco Serblin uses to control resonance in the enclosure. The mid-woofer cone has been optimised for control of cone break-up. The tweeter comes from a designer who has worked on transducers for around 30 years. The crossover is described as phase coherent and is built to give phase-accurate transitions between the three drivers so that the spatial information in a recording is preserved. Two finishes are offered - solid walnut, or Graphite - and in both cases the metal parts come in chrome and aluminium.

Pairing

The Accordo Essence presents a low nominal load and so wants an amplifier comfortable with low-impedance speakers, while the modest minimum power figure means it can be used with modest amplification as long as the amplifier stays stable.

Alternatives

The Franco Serblin Lignea is a more compact Franco Serblin floorstander, a two-way design with a 110 mm midwoofer and a 27 mm tweeter.