Just to cover basics for Adamantis, Æquo's first purely passive speaker, took one facts-heavy page. Yet we only managed to touch upon what its enclosure is made from. We haven't covered drivers, filters and performance specs. You'd expect proprietary materials from big names like Magico, Rockport and Wilson. You see firms like Crystal and Kroma rely on Hi Macs, Krion and related synthetic kitchen-counter stone from big petrochemical corporations. Mark & Daniel pour their own. Kaiser prefer tank wood. That newly engineered better alternatives would come from a small Dutch company could be a surprise unless you'd read our reviews of their Ensis and Stilla. Those included plenty of advanced engineering. With Ivo's latest Diluvite development, that part just exploded. If Æquo Audio's first iPad presentations at HighEnd Munich 2019 were any indication, there'll be a number of licensees wanting to secure the rights to design with these novel building blocks. As to Adamantis, not just its enclosure could benefit. Definitely for the pending Diluvium super speaker, we should get driver diaphragms beyond graphene never seen before.

"Unfortunately, some issues also apply to graphene. On paper it may have the single highest stiffness value but as a coating, it doesn't much help gained stiffness because the thin 0.334nm layer related to the specification is usually insignificant to performance. The boosted high paper spec only applies to the in-plane direction of the platelet, hence the actual improvement when structuring it as a nano tube. Multiple layers fail to help because they don't bond and freely slide over each other. By definition, only fewer than 10 layers are considered transparent graphene. Higher layer stacks turn grey in color to become exfoliated graphite."

Five months after I'd penned the above, Ivo's partner Paul Rassin dispatched an update.

"I’ve been meaning to catch up for quite a while but things are so very hectic at the moment. Time has become a most precious commodity.

"We are currently installing a new precision CNC machine. That will be able to make the detailed molds for the new passive model and other Diluvite applications. Since the new model has been completely redesigned after its birth as the wooden Gladium, we changed the name. New design, new material, new name. It is now Adamantis. When the first casting trial is complete, I will get back in touch. I will then have more information and a realistic timeline.

"To show the difference, here we have the original wooden Gladium on the right, the Diluvite Adamantis on the left. Adamantis is smaller yet maintains the same optimized cubic volume. It gets more curves, gains in elegance and of course wins that resonance-free enclosure.

"We had been talking about this model for quite some time but after the presentations of the new design in Munich, communications with our distributors became a bit confusing. That ignited the name change because it is indeed a very different loudspeaker.

"Regarding Diluvite, we decided to split it off from Æquo Audio. Diluvite will aim much broader since we also want to supply other audio companies. But for speakers, we will keep the cast material exclusive to us, then offer it to manufacturers of all other audio equipment such as amplifier heat sinks, DAC enclosures, tone-arm tubes, hifi rack shelves, struts, footers and more. This way Æquo speakers will remain the only ones which are completely built from our proprietary material.

"We have not decided yet what to do with the driver membranes we already designed. Keep them exclusive to Æquo, sell them to other brands, something in-between? Ivo has now made a sheet so thin and light, it is perfect for tweeter membranes. It has the same stiffness as beryllium but 15 times better damping. Very cool stuff. Who the hell needs diamond?"

If you want to be a girl's best friend is who.

Can you see the tagline? "Adamantis – a speaker even Wolverine can't scratch."