Напольная акустика — Tune Audio Epitome

The Epitome is a three-way, all-passive design built by hand in Athens at Tune Audio, a Greek firm with its base in Voula, Attiki, in which every frequency band is loaded by a horn. The company describes it as a trickle-down project from its AVATON, itself the result of five years of development, aimed at mid to large listening spaces, and places it directly below the AVATON in a catalogue that continues with the ANIMA, MARVEL and PRIME loudspeakers plus the PULSE and KION active horn subwoofers.

Key specs that matter

Tune Audio rates system sensitivity at 105 dB with a nominal impedance of 8 ohm, and asks for more than 3 W of amplifier power. The three bands are divided at 150 Hz and 1,500 Hz. A super-linear 15-inch driver works into the bass horn, which the maker says stays flat down to 35 Hz. The enclosure measures 165 cm high, 55 cm wide and 115 cm deep. No weight figure is published by the manufacturer. Finish is chosen by the buyer - any paint colour, natural wood veneer or a combination of the two.

Engineering and use context

Loading of the bass horn follows a method Tune Audio calls Virtual Mouth Technology, carried over from the AVATON programme. Above it, the midbass horn opens into an asymmetrical mouth of 6,000 cm2. Its walls are built from three layers of material with integrated damping layers to control unwanted resonances, and the throat carries a coating of an epoxy and carbon nanotube (CNT) compound. As with its other horns, the company picks drivers from European and Japanese suppliers to fit a horn it has already designed. The treble horn is a further development of the cast compound first used in the ANIMA, fitted here with an upgraded driver. All three crossovers are first-order networks mounted outboard, away from driver magnets, with hand-selected parts wired point to point rather than on a printed circuit board. Internal cabling is made by the company from high-purity OFC copper with waxed cotton insulation, and brass bracing pieces sit on felt isolators where the separate horns meet. The owner can trim the midrange and treble levels and alter the beaming angle of the treble horn.

Pairing

Tune Audio names low to mid powered single-ended triode valve amplifiers, or solid-state Class A amplifiers built with little or no negative feedback, as the intended partners.

Alternatives

The Tune Audio AVATON is the larger three-way horn system from which the Epitome was derived, using an 18-inch bass driver in a cabinet 210 cm tall and 210 cm deep.