Напольная акустика — Odeon Audio CELESTE

The Celeste is a passive floorstanding loudspeaker from Odeon Audio, a German company whose loudspeakers are handcrafted in Germany. It pairs a cone bass-midrange unit with a compression tweeter loaded by a spherical horn, and it sits among a range of Odeon floorstanders that also includes the Nova S, Orfeo, Helix, Semper and Carnegie.

Key specs that matter

Odeon quotes a frequency range of 32 Hz to 25,000 Hz and a sensitivity of 93 dB into a nominal 8 ohm load. The two-way layout hands over at 2,400 Hz. The cabinet stands 108 cm tall, 24.2 cm wide and 39 cm deep, set on a wider socket measuring 28 cm across and 43.5 cm front to back, which widens the footprint for stability.

Engineering and use context

Bass and midrange are handled by a 22 cm GAP driver with a hand-made cellulose cone, a very flexible rubber surround, a neodymium motor, a 37 mm voice coil and a cast aluminium frame. Above the crossover, treble is reproduced by a 1 inch compression unit that uses ring radiator technology. Its light Mylar diaphragm is moved by a neodymium magnet that generates 2.2 Tesla in the gap, and Odeon states its linear output reaches beyond 26,000 Hz. This tweeter is mounted in a 19 cm spherical horn made of birch multiplex. A double horn throat fires downward through four inlets. The enclosure uses high-density MDF that Odeon describes as up to 1.8 times heavier than conventional board, with many internal braces around the multiplex throat to keep panels stiff. Every filter is hand-wired and soldered point to point on Pertinax boards, using WIMA film capacitors matched to within 1 percent between channels, Mundorf flat coils and New Old Stock bridging capacitors. Acrylic plates hold the filter boards and connect straight to the speaker terminals. Internal wiring is oxygen-free copper of German production, and the treble branch uses thin 7N single-crystal copper with Teflon insulation. WBT nextgen terminals of gold-plated pure copper sit on acrylic mounts.

Pairing

The maker says the Celeste can be driven by many valve and transistor amplifiers. With its efficiency, low-powered designs such as small single-ended triode amplifiers are a sensible option alongside solid-state integrated amplifiers, and in a room of about 20 m2 even modest output goes a long way.

Alternatives

The Odeon Audio Orfeo offers a different floorstanding design from the same German workshop.