Напольная акустика — Gauder Akustik ARCONA 60 SD

The ARCONA 60 SD is the slimmest floorstander in the Arcona series, the range Gauder Akustik of Renningen presents as the entry point to its catalogue. It began as the Arcona 60 MK II of May 2020, which carried an inverted ceramic dome from Accuton. When deliveries of that tweeter kept stalling, Gauder turned to Bliesma, a small maker in Saarland, for a fabric dome, and the SD suffix marks this soft-dome version. List price in Germany is EUR 5,000 per pair, the same as the ceramic variant.

Key specs that matter

This is a 2.5-way bass-reflex design rated at 4 ohm nominal and 130 W power handling. The cabinet is 18 cm wide, 99 cm tall and 28 cm deep, it weighs 18 kg, and it is the only Arcona tower with a narrower footprint than its siblings. Two 15 cm mid-woofers with aluminium XPulse cones share the lower range - the bottom unit rolls off gently from 120 Hz, while the upper one runs on until the tweeter takes over at 2.5 kHz. The lower limit is 38 Hz for minus 3 dB and 34 Hz for minus 6 dB, with the tweeter reaching beyond 40 kHz. Efficiency is low, at 78 dB for 2 V input. Only black or white piano lacquer is offered.

Engineering and use context

On a normal soft dome the fabric and surround are pressed as one piece, which leaves folds in the surround. The Bliesma dome is pressed, stiffened with resin and trimmed, and a separate surround is then glued on, a method usually kept for metal, ceramic or diamond domes. Its moving mass is half that of the ceramic part and its motor is slightly stronger. A bore through the neodymium magnet core stops air being compressed behind the dome, and the rear wave dies away in a fibre-damped chamber. Because flange and parameters match the ceramic unit, owners of a ceramic Arcona MK II can have it converted for EUR 700 per pair with no crossover change. The two crossover boards carry only Mundorf and Intertechnik parts and filter at 50 dB per octave. The teardrop cabinet is made of laminated MDF with a 23 mm front baffle and split into two chambers in a 1 to 2 ratio, and the reflex port fires downward. A bridge on the WBT Nextgen terminal switches the Bass Extension on or off and can be swapped for plug-in modules. Internal wiring is Clearwater, and the warranty runs 10 years.

Pairing

The impedance swings from 15 ohm down to 4.4 ohm in the upper bass, so a valve amplifier with a low damping factor will shift the bass balance. A solid-state amplifier giving 75 W into the nominal load reaches the maximum bass level the speaker can handle. An optional spike extender set costs EUR 400 for the pair.

Alternatives

The Gauder Akustik ARCONA 80 SD is the next Arcona floorstander up, with a deeper 39 cm cabinet rated at 170 W.