Напольная акустика — AKu Audio Athena

The Athena is a wireless omnidirectional active speaker from AKu Audio of Athens, meant to spread output evenly around the room so that listeners are not tied to one fixed seat. AKu Audio was founded by the brothers George and Kostas Kazantzis and sells direct from its base in Athens. The Athena is an active two-way design with three internal chambers, a 3D printed body and full network streaming, operated through its own control app, and apart from a mains lead the unit needs no cables at all, since audio arrives over the network or Bluetooth. The satellite and bass sections sit in separate chambers of one body. AKu offers it in Matte Black, Phtalo Blue, Vermillion and Zinc White.

Key specs that matter

The satellite section uses two 2-inch full-range drivers with flat pistonic cones, neodymium motors, long-excursion design and foam surrounds, each rated at 15 W. Below them a 6.5-inch subwoofer driver with a paper and Kevlar cone and a rubber surround handles the bass and is rated at 200 W. A three-channel Class D amplifier with DSP supplies 100 W to the bass and 2 x 50 W to the mid-high drivers, for 200 W in total, with distortion under 0.03%, while SNR is 106 dB. AKu quotes a range of 45 Hz to 14,500 Hz within 5 dB. The speaker is 440 mm tall with a diameter of 265 mm and weighs 7.8 kg.

Engineering and use context

Its enclosure is a triple-layered 3D printed construction with double walls and several chambers, and the cavities in the walls are filled with quartz sand to damp vibration. Internal surfaces are nonplanar, and stainless steel electroplated brackets support the structure in a two-material layout aimed at low vibration. A proprietary 360-degree diffuser spreads the output of the drivers in all directions, and because of this the Athena does not rely on precise placement relative to the listener. Maximum power consumption is 140 W, the unit accepts mains from 100 to 240 V, and it uses a 3-pin IEC inlet feeding a universal 24 V DC power supply.

Pairing

Streaming is built in, with Bluetooth 5.0, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi to 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA and UPnP, AirPlay and Spotify Connect, so a phone, tablet or network music library can feed it with no other hardware. Multiroom capability lets several Athena units play the same stream in different rooms. No separate amplifier or preamplifier is needed.

Alternatives

Within the same catalogue, the AKu Audio Talos is the model the company describes as a design-focused floorstanding speaker.