Напольная акустика — Ø Audio Ymir

The Ymir is a tall two-way tower speaker made by the Norwegian company Ø Audio, announced in April 2026 with a target price of around USD 65,000 per pair. It joins the company's existing floorstanders, the Icon 12 and the Verdande, and shares design elements with them. The range of the brand also includes a model called Frigg. The Ymir combines one big cone driver and one compression driver in a steel-fronted cabinet, and a flight case is used for delivery.

Key specs that matter

A 12-inch woofer with extended linear excursion handles the low and mid band. Its diaphragm is a carbon fibre composite built around a damping core. Above it sits a compression driver with a 76 mm carbon diaphragm. Ø Audio quotes a range of 26 Hz to 22 kHz, a nominal impedance of 8 ohm and a sensitivity of 93.5 dB at 1 W and 1 m. Each cabinet measures 114.5 x 38.2 x 52.9 cm without its feet and weighs 120 kg. The speaker is offered in two finishes.

Engineering and use context

The compression driver fires through a proprietary waveguide that Ø Audio calls Quad Vertex Soundfield, designed to control directivity. The crossover follows what the maker describes as an assisted first-order topology, and it uses custom capacitors and inductors made from copper foil and potted in resin. A new 10 mm front baffle of solid stainless steel adds rigidity to the front of the enclosure. The rear of the cabinet tapers to reduce internal reflections and standing waves. Three bass reflex ports are fitted to each tower. Solid stainless steel outriggers widen the footprint to 62.6 cm, and the height-adjustable feet use a two-stage decoupling system with a tungsten ball interface between cabinet and floor.

Pairing

With its easy load and high efficiency, a small amplifier drives the Ymir to ordinary domestic levels without strain, so a valve amplifier of modest output is a practical partner, and a transistor amplifier will rarely approach its limits. The high efficiency also makes any hiss from the amplifier easier to notice, so a quiet partner with a low noise floor makes sense, and a preamplifier with fine volume steps near the bottom of the dial is useful. The wide outrigger footprint and the heavy cabinet call for a room of at least 20 m2 and a solid floor, and moving the towers after placement needs two people.

Alternatives

The Ø Audio Icon 12 is an existing floorstanding model from the same Norwegian maker.