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Schenker delivery was by pallet to minimize shipping risks. Without a pallet strapper, I would have to use rope or basic plastic wrap for the return. Eric Poyer had included extra wrap for just that purpose. Proper packaging is a very unsexy subject to talk about. Yet little disappoints an expectant client more than receiving brand-new toys damaged in transit because of insufficient packaging. Until the right number of badly settled damage claims convince them otherwise, the latter is quite common for newer companies. For Europe, no such worries with Apertura's triple-boxed scheme with hard-foam end caps, hard-foam lateral skeleton, cloth bag, a separate foam layer for the magnetized grill and a separate inner cardboard box for the plinth hardware.

Folks with hardwood floors will flinch in agony whilst staring at the massive spikes. Proper receiver shoes from the UK's Track Audio are one perfect antidote but hoisting the weaponized speaker upright whilst inserting the protectors should still be done by two people to avoid costly oops. Once the speakers are leveled, lengthening their central 'energy-drain' footers until they become weight-bearing finishes off.


Wiring up takes standard not biwire cables whilst the rear port benefits from front-wall distance. Because of the cabinet's unusual geometry, having the narrow spine parallel to the wall automatically creates a mild toe-in of the front baffle. That and the fact that the absorbent felt crescent next to the ribbon tweeter belongs on the outside to minimize sidewall reflections makes it obvious which speaker goes left and which one right.


On to predictive basics. As an 8-inch two-way, the Edena's surface area for the mid/bass frequencies is 50% larger than that of a common 6" bookshelf speaker. Super monitors like EnigmAcoustic's Mythology 1 and Kaiser Kawero's Chiara get a solid 40Hz response from such smaller drivers when ported or loaded by a passive radiator. That the Edena's larger enclosure alone would support a lower F3 is self-evident. The main advantage or difference of its larger midrange then is tonal fullness. Compare the 5", 6" and 8" Rethm widebanders from Jacob George to illustrate this. From Trishna, Maarga to Saadhana, they're all augmented by active bass arrays. They all behave full bandwidth when matched properly to room size. The key changes from scaling up those widebander diameters become tone mass, textural lushness and general chunkiness.


Pushing a midrange's diameter beyond 8 inches as do Zu with their 10.3" Eminence-based platform or classic Tannoys with their 12-inch or 15-inch dual-concentrics diminishes presence region clarity. For utmost speed and lucidity in the band where human hearing is most keen, a 4-inch midrange like Anthony Gallo champions is arguably as big as you want. This is where priorities and compromises enter. To overdraw for emphasis, speed freaks get an Accuton 4-inch, lovers of vintage valve tone a 10" or bigger paper driver. With his Edena, Christian Yvon's largest two-driver 2-way goes for eight inches. The Armonia and Onira models which bracket it get one or two paralleled 7-inchers. The 8" shows up again doubled up in the top model Enigma. Clearly that's Yvon's favoured midband artillery.

Jefferson Torno's twice-priced Grand Cru Audio Horizon prefers dual 6.5" mid/woofers and hornloads its ribbon but also gets a compound-slope frequency divider. One very significant difference of his filter is parts count. It's at least four times higher than Christian's (38 junctions of which some use multiple parts to arrive at the desired values). As we discuss sonics of two speakers with shared design genetics—Yvon's representing the peer or tribal elder—remember these differences. At the same time we're mindful that no reviewer or standard listener should ever assign categorical cause and effect unless they can strategically alter discrete parameters to adjudge their relative contributions on the overall performance. Obviously changing crossovers, drivers and cabinets is completely beyond our purview.