Except for a 4-days customs hold, DHL's shipment was uneventful. One palette held two compact crates, one per pair. Each speaker came sleeved in a thick felt cover with draw string, side-fire woofer/s protected by an inner foam sheet. Each speaker was protected by foam corners, footer bars, footers, floor protectors and necessary hex key in separate plastic pouches. Inside the outside shipping papers was a smaller hex key to undo the six bolts holding the crate's top cover down.

Aside from some saw dust coming off the raw particle board crate, delivery made a first-rate impression. Unpacking and minimalist assembly of the hardware required no extra tools and took place in the garage. Things were off to a good start. This included the light weight.


With the depth of this enclosure, each box's cheeks, tops and bottoms mean a central veneer seam. The heavily patterned lighter wood shows this fact even from afar with its mirror-imaged paneling. Veneer edging was of good quality, the veneers themselves seemingly raw and not coated even in matte. I found the finish and execution to be on par with Dayens speakers I had reviewed earlier, incidentally also from Serbia. These Poison boxes won't worry Sonus faber but neither will they their owners.


With the ports situated unconventionally high—hence maximally divorced from floor coupling—they double as convenient finger holds. Reaching to just a hand's width below the hip bone on my 6'1" frame, it makes these short narrow speakers a cinch to walk about. That also means they're ideal to store up against the wall, then be moved out for serious listening in situations where permanent free-space placement is domestically unacceptable. Hey, not everyone's living room can become an altar to sprawling hifi dominance. The biggest barrier to better sound very often is the sheer size, grotesque form factor and general fugliness of the proposed speakers. Here that poison dilutes to quasi homeopathic quantities. That spells domestic compatibility and not sexual but musical healing so people can actually get it on with their tunes. In my book, that's an effective performance feature.
Asking Miki about what prompted their Auris speaker project, "our main idea was to create a range of loudspeakers to test our electronics with. After feedback from friends and Serbian audiophiles plus Saša and Mića from Trafomatic, I decided to go into production of compact but high-performance speakers. What we have called the Poison 1 is ready now for a mid October delivery window. It clearly was inspired by Boenicke's W5 but we altered the cabinet dimensions and bass reflex alignment. We get more bass and ambiance, the latter from our larger rear-firing tweeter. And of course our design in black or white lacquer is very modern. The Poison 1 will retail for €1'350/pr in either finish; and €199/pr for the stands. My motivation is simple. Almost all speakers with sensitivity of 90dB or higher are too expensive but it's what customers need to maximize their performance of low-power tube amps. Hence our next project will be a 93dB 2-way monitor and matching floorstander using the same drivers. Those two models will use the Fountek Neo 3.0 ribbon tweeter and an Eighteen Sound 6ND430 6-inch mid/woofer. An optional subwoofer is coming as well. You might call ours European-made product at pricing like today's best Chinese products but without any quality control issues. In Serbia we have highly educated people. So we try to use our knowledge the best way we can and offer something unique to the market."