Напольная акустика — HECO La Diva

HECO's La Diva is a three-way tower that the German maker calls its top model and a statement drawing on more than 65 years of loudspeaker building. It carries eight drivers in total, four of them passive bass radiators mounted on the sides of the cabinet, and it is finished only in a black high-gloss piano lacquer over the whole enclosure.

Key specs that matter

Its driver set comprises a dome tweeter with a double magnet system, a midrange unit driven by an AlNiCo magnet, two 200 mm woofers with linearised magnet systems and four 200 mm passive radiators. Kraft paper is used for the woofer and midrange cones, while a polyfiber compound forms the tweeter dome, and the whole set is part of what HECO calls its current state of chassis technology with the Fluktus tweeter. HECO quotes a frequency range of 17 to 52,500 Hz, a sensitivity of 93 dB at 2.8 V and 1 m, and an impedance of 4 to 8 ohm. Load capacity is given as 300 W RMS and 550 W maximum. The cabinet measures 295 x 1,310 x 435 mm in width, height and depth, rising to 385 x 1,340 x 465 mm once the feet and terminal are included, and each speaker weighs 49.8 kg.

Engineering and use context

Signal division happens at 290 Hz and 2,750 Hz in a network HECO describes as phase optimised. Two level controls on the rear allow the tweeter to be set to linear or +2 dB and the midrange to -2 dB or linear. Instead of a reflex port, the bass output is supported by the side-mounted radiator array working with the two active woofers, with two radiators on each flank of the cabinet. The midrange sits in its own open-back chamber with aperiodic damping. The housing is built from solid MDF with rounded sides and internal bracing, flanked by aluminium side struts that protect the lacquer, and it stands on a solid aluminium base plate. Height-adjustable metal cone spikes come fitted with interchangeable tips in metal or rubber, and a removable acoustic fabric grille attaches magnetically.

Pairing

HECO recommends amplifiers from 30 W up to the maximum load rating. The gold-plated screw terminals accept bi-wiring and tri-wiring along with bi-amping and tri-amping, so owners can drive the woofers, midrange and tweeter from separate amplifier channels. In a tri-amped setup that means three stereo amplifiers or six amplifier channels for the pair, each fed from the same preamplifier output.

Alternatives

Within the HECO floorstanding catalogue, the Victa Elite 702 is a far smaller three-way tower using two 170 mm woofers in a one metre tall bass reflex cabinet.