Напольная акустика — PranaFidelity Vayu/fs

The Vayu/fs is a floorstanding two-way loudspeaker from PranaFidelity, a company based in Denver, Colorado, and designed by its founder Steven Norber. It is laid out as a quasi line array, with four woofers stacked around a single tweeter on a tall, narrow front. The model was first shown in 2014 at a price of USD 6,950 per pair. In the current range it sits alongside the Dhyana and Fifty90 floorstanders and the Dhara standmount. The Fifty90 uses the same tweeter size with only two woofers in a symmetrical array, in a much shorter cabinet that narrows towards the rear, which places the Vayu/fs as the four-woofer step above it. Pairs have been shown in a red finish.

Key specs that matter

Four 15 cm woofers share each cabinet with a single 30 mm soft-dome tweeter. PranaFidelity quotes a range of 29 Hz to 22 kHz and a nominal impedance of 8 ohm, and states that the load never falls below 6 ohm. Sensitivity is 89.5 dB at 2.83 V and 1 m. The speaker stands 120.7 cm tall, is 25.4 cm wide and 48.3 cm deep, and weighs 42.6 kg.

Engineering and use context

The bass is ported, and each speaker has two ports. PranaFidelity supplies a set of port inserts of different depths that can be mixed between the two openings, with longer inserts giving more low-frequency output and shorter ones giving less but tighter bass, so owners can adapt the bass level to their space. The rear panel carries switches as well. One lowers the band between 16 kHz and 20 kHz by 2 dB, and another swaps between different passive parts, altering the crossover slope and the type of material used in the filter. Spikes and threaded inserts are not part of the delivery, so feet or floor coupling have to be arranged separately.

Pairing

PranaFidelity gives no amplifier power range, so matching rests on the published load and efficiency figures. The benign impedance with its high minimum keeps the demand on the output stage moderate. The port inserts and the two rear switches allow the bass quantity and the top octave to be adjusted after the amplifier has been chosen, without changing electronics.

Alternatives

The PranaFidelity Dhyana is a larger two-way quasi line array floorstander with four 6 inch SB Acoustics paper-cone woofers and a textile dome tweeter, rated at 28 Hz to 23 kHz.