Напольная акустика — Xavian Grande Unica

The Grande Unica is a floor-standing two-way speaker built by Xavian, the Czech manufacturer founded in 1996 by Roberto Barletta, a designer born in Turin who moved to Prague in 1994. Production began in 1997 in the Vršovice district, and since 2013 the company has worked from a renovated mill in Hostivice near Prague, where this model is built by hand to order with a delivery time of about one month. It belongs to the Natura series and is the floorstanding version of the Unica stand-mount, drawing on the work done on the Unica and the older Madre Perla. The price is EUR 2,000 per pair, with five years of factory warranty cover.

Key specs that matter

Two 150 mm AudioBarletta mid-bass drivers with a special polypropylene membrane and a short-circuiting copper ring on the pole work with a 26 mm AudioBarletta impregnated soft dome tweeter, and the crossover point is 2870 Hz. Frequency range is 48 Hz to 20 kHz at -3 dB on the reference axis, sensitivity is 93 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m, and nominal impedance is 4 ohms. Xavian recommends 30 to 100 W of amplifier power. Each cabinet measures 900 x 200 x 280 mm, and the maker lists 18.5 kg per speaker.

Engineering and use context

The drivers are custom AudioBarletta units made in Italy, and the crossover uses Jantzen parts. The copper ring on the pole piece reduces distortion caused by changes in the magnetic field as the voice coil moves. The enclosure is a damped bass reflex design with a front port whose organic flared shape can only be made by hand work. The walls are 23 mm solid oak rather than veneered board, with rounded edges and curved corners finished in matte lacquer containing natural wax, and grain differs from pair to pair. Compared with the Unica monitor, which has one mid-bass driver of the same size, 87 dB sensitivity, 8 ohms and a 52 Hz lower limit, doubling the mid-bass drivers in the taller cabinet gains 6 dB of sensitivity and extends the bass. A single pair of individually mounted gold-plated terminals means no bi-wiring.

Pairing

An efficient design like this can run from a modest integrated amplifier in a room of about 20 m2, but the 4 ohm load favours solid-state or valve designs with a 4 ohm tap and some current reserve rather than small single-ended valve amplifiers.

Alternatives

The Xavian Madre Perla Esclusiva is a 2.5-way floorstander from the same Natura series with a Scan-Speak tweeter and two mid-bass drivers in a 920 mm tall solid oak cabinet.