The two drive units are from ScanSpeak's affordable Discovery range. The 18cm mid/woofer with coated fibre-glass cone has a rubber surround and ferrite magnet with aluminium ring. It is boosted by a large rear port since it naturally declines by almost 8dB at 50Hz. It nevertheless clocks a superbly flat response between 100Hz and 2'000Hz. The 26mm dome tweeter sports a textile diaphragm and double ferrite motor. It theoretically works to 40kHz on axis and has a low resonance frequency of 450Hz. It benefits from a dual ring radiator diaphragm and wave-guide phase plug for broad dispersion. The two drivers cross at 1'900Hz on 2nd order slopes with high-quality Jantzen parts like ultra-fast capacitors, high-inductance coils and MOX resistors. Hookup wiring is Van den Hul large crystal OFC with silver coating. On performance specs, the Deep Breath Duetto promises 48Hz to 40'000Hz at ±3dB which particularly in the treble seems rather optimistic. Sensitivity is a claimed 91.5dB @ 1m, 2.83V and nominal impedance 4Ω. Dispersion at 10kHz hits a happy -2dB at 30° and -10dB at 60° off axis. The two pairs of binding posts do not accept spades but only bananas or raw wire ends.

The sound was a rather pleasant surprise. Considering the shoe-box size and ordinary drivers, it was a real test to run these in my big room which usually hosts big full-range 4-way Vivid floorstanders. The biggest upset was the soundstage which felt unusually wide and stable for such a small stand mount. Even spaced 5 meters apart, these recreated a seamless panorama without any gap or black hole in the middle. Quite often, such speakers must stand closer to offer such results with obvious concessions to the scale of the stage. This indicated truth in advertising for very broad dispersion.

In terms of bandwidth, they behaved exactly to expectation with limited extension in the frequency extremes. But across their audible spectrum, they were subjectively linear and resolved, just lacking the density I am used to from far greater cone surface and bass reach. They also didn't equal the organic sound of an upper-level Sonus faber from the Olympica range for instance. But they remained quite stable when SPL increased, suffering only a small loss in tonal accuracy which was a very good point. Dynamics particularly in the bass were obviously compromised and in general I wouldn't describe the experience as particularly energetic or foot-tapping but more on the contemplative comfort side.

In my downstairs living room of nearly identical dimensions, the listening distance was shorter and the speakers placed at just 40cm from the front wall. The main difference here was relative to the rear ports which produced some obvious loudness effects. The size of the soundstage was a bit smaller compared to upstairs but not by much. Resolution too was slightly lower on my all-in-one Lumin M1 compared to the slew of high-end separates in the upstairs space.