Напольная акустика — Ayon Audio Ayon BlackEagle

The BlackEagle is a floorstanding loudspeaker made by Ayon Audio in Austria, a firm whose main catalogue covers valve preamplifiers, amplifiers, converters, streamers and CD players. Ayon announced it in May 2019 and showed it in Munich at High End 2019. The company frames it as the continuation of its ceramic speaker line of 2003 to 2010, which included the Seagull, Hawk, Falcon and Eagle, rebuilt around ceramic driver technology developed some nine years later. The North American pair price is USD 39,980.

Key specs that matter

This is a 3.5-way design with five drivers per side. A 1-inch Cell-Ceramic tweeter and a 6.7-inch Cell-Ceramic midrange handle the upper bands, while three 6.7-inch ceramic woofers work below, and the crossover frequencies are listed as 400 Hz and 3,500 Hz. The published response reaches from 32 Hz to 33 kHz at -3 dB. Nominal impedance is 4 ohm, sensitivity is 93 dB for 1 W at 1 m, and Ayon suggests amplifiers of 15 W to 150 W. Each speaker measures 122 x 37 x 26 cm (height, width, depth) and weighs 52 kg.

Engineering and use context

The woofers use voice coils produced specifically with a higher impedance. Ayon explains that this pulls the overall impedance of the speaker upward and makes it possible to use a much simpler 6 dB acoustic crossover. The elliptic cabinet is made of resonance-optimised instrument plywood and is left almost undamped inside, and its elongated elliptical front plate is meant to spread output far into the room and nearly all around. Ayon calls the arrangement an Airflow Damping System, or ADS. A switch adapts the crossover network to either a transistor or a tube amplifier. Connection is through WBT NextGen terminals, the internal wiring is custom made, and buyers choose from high-gloss French Walnut, Tineo or Etimo veneer as standard, with others to order.

Pairing

Ayon addresses the BlackEagle primarily to owners of low-powered class A solid-state amplifiers and vacuum tube designs, while stating that it also works with high-powered amplification. The low minimum power keeps small valve amplifiers within the maker's guidance, but the low nominal impedance means the chosen amplifier should be stable into that load, and the network selector should match the amplifier technology in use.

Alternatives

The Ayon BlackFalcon is a 3-way floorstander from the same range with a 6.2-inch ceramic midrange, three 6.7-inch woofers and a recommended power window of 7 W to 350 W.