That's because Donatas' high-tech flocking emulates velvet. It's fuzzy. Bolting two cab halves together drivers down, then affixing the cross bars sans spikes mandates that one turn the speaker over onto the other flat side before standing things up. Now the non-braced front can't gap in the process. Alas, sliding two halves into assembly position across reluctant carpet fibers then turning a heavy tower over had fine wool pile from the carpet cling to its furry paint. In hindsight, a drop cloth, the supplied loose black or one of those giant plastic sheets which TV killers always have handy for a chainsaw chop job will be the ticket.

Once the speakers are upright, one must install five tinned jumpers through vertical channels to distribute the signal to the upper half. Then it'll be time for vacuuming or brushing down 2-meter tall giants to remove all the hairy tuft they collected during assembly. The high-gloss cheeks however behave more like glass than lacquer. They wipe down without any swirl marks or dulling because they're much harder than paint. That said, when my wife saw the final install polished and defuzzed, she said something she's never yet uttered during 20 years of watching my audiophile career. "I'm embarrassed." It was unmistakable shorthand for testosterone run amok and amuck. The clear subtext was, "don't let anyone see these and think they're ours". So we'll be polite and call these the audiophile equivalent of an aging man's midlife-crisis Corvette. After all, it is a very cool car. Would Linga's sound make all the effort pay off?

Just a day prior I'd had Cube Audio Nenuphar Mini BASiS speakers in the exact same spots. I knew perfectly well just how clean, agile, light-footed and articulate 12" sealed woofers EQ'd to +3dB/30Hz could work here without any bloat or boom. Alas, Linga's twin-ported array behaved very different. It suffered clear room interactions with lengthy ringing which I'd have to minimize. If I couldn't, I'd have made the classic rookie mistake. I'd have pursued too much speaker for the room.

Before entertaining concerns, it's good to study a speaker's impedance curve. I asked Donatas for Linga's.

The 50Hz peak at 6Ω only doubles the minima to be unusually mild. But in the critical bass range, this certainly is a low-impedance load which dips slightly below 3Ω between 70 and 80Hz whilst corresponding phase shift centers on 60Hz.