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Though beauty is more than skin-deep, it starts there. The Edena's glossy veneer work proved to be wickedly good. It not only was stringently book-matched on the fronts. It also matched across all four cheeks. Very classy eye candy indeed! Grand Cru's original paint paled by comparison; their rectangular boxes with profiled fronts were quite basic by contrast. One probably looks for the Horizon at smaller production runs completely outsourced to Italy; plus higher parts density and their matching labour for the potted filter networks as two factors to explain the serious price delta. Sonically the Edena and Horizon diverged just as much. On perceived exactitude and articulation, the latter behaved as a pseudo ceramic-driver box. The former excelled at harmonic envelope. Envision two or more instruments. They play in perfect octave-matched unison. Their intonation is spot on, tone changes are immaculately sync'd. Yet they parallel each other only over parts of a musical phrase. Such teamwork acts as fluctuating overlays without really giving things away. It's a subtle game. Here the Edena was truly brilliant at sleuthing out not only how such compound timbres were created but exactly where their various contributors phased in and out. Following Jan Garbarek's saxophone, Anna Lechner's cello or Anouar Brahem's oud in another session, I entered deep inner space whilst admiring their many subtle tone modulations. Here the Edena painted from an admirably expansive palette. The upper registers of a piano also had proper weight to avoid getting overly metallic.

The Horizon played it clearly drier and more damped. The Edena was decisively lusher, more fluidic and elastic. Against the earlier proviso of attempting cause/effect connections, I'd be inclined to point at a much more complex filter to explain that trait of the Grand Cru. In the ±3kHz band the Horizon was sharper and leaner to get more incisive. Here the Edena was warmer and softer without sacrificing the ability to lock onto soloists in strong 3D. In fact ambient recovery was in no way second. The Horizon simply felt starker as though its recreation of recorded space occurred with shorter decay times. With two duelling ribbon tweeters at hand and being familiar with the Serbian Raal ribbon from long-term use of first Aries Cerat's Gladius then soundkaos' Wave 40, Grand Cru's evinced more metallic elements. This must have contributed to the more incisive nearfield handling of transients. My Swiss owners and the current French loaners sounded 'tweeter-less' or sweeter by lacking this tell. In the bass both French were comparable on mid-30s reach but diverged again on textures. The Horizon was drier and tighter, the Edena more redolent, generous and mighty. 


Both speakers could cover our two chairs in stereo as shown but the Edena had the slightly broader window. It didn't shift the center at all whilst the Horizon moved it a bit for each off-center seat. The social aspect of listening in a living room tends to get short shrift. Here it's useful to mention when speakers are excessively demanding of a solitary sweet spot. These aren't. Using small-signal valves in the preamp followed by vertical power Jfets in the amps, the Apertura produced the far more compelling tonal substance. Whilst in my setup the Horizon left me wanting a bit on that score to wonder what a push/pull valve or hybrid amp might do, the Edena categorically silenced such musings. This was a speaker whose tonefulness materialized fully with transistor kit. Now we'll remove the Grand Cru from consideration.


If you agree that live sound beats hifi playback on sheer substance—tone density, bass power, dynamics—whilst most modern hifi means to compensate primarily for the loss of actual vision (unless we're doing concert videos); and how this shifts our perspective from being a participant to being an observer, from gut-level feel to more mental abstraction... then Yvon's choice for the Edena was substance over ultimate visuals. Extreme separation during playback gets better than actual live sound. It assists our starved visual faculties to fill in the gaps. Unfortunately it also separates us from emotional involvement. We turn into watchers and music competition judges. We stand aloof not immersed. When we feel like being in the music not as surround sound but with our attention, we focus less on particulars. That's just like admiring your home's exterior. You must step out of the house and walk far enough away to turn around and look. And the Edena weakened that impulse to step out of the music to inspect it. I responded more like I would during a concert where even hard-boiled career audiophiles must finally give up thinking about soundstaging, imaging and all the silly rest of it. [For a lengthier essay on this subject which I wrote for John Darko's site, click here.)

When inquiring into why/how the Edena prompted this—or why my wife reading a book on the balcony sang along with every cut she recognized to soon have me play her favourites just to watch; or why she danced a bit to the music whilst hanging laundry indoors—I'd point at this chunky meaty substance. It's built upon strongly saturated tone colours and chewy textures to become the antithesis to bleached, pale, nervous and wiry. This was a musical speaker, not a hifi box. Now clearly playback is a cleverly manufactured illusion. It's supposed to entertain us. There's nothing at all wrong with creating a personalized version of this illusion. Whatever pleases us most. If we fancy better-than-life outline sharpness, separation, focus, treble detail and 3D-ness, I'd call it 'hifi' not in judgment but because it exceeds concert sound. That's very popular but not what the Edena goes after.
On insight for example—penetrating the musical weave from the outside in as it were—Sven Boenicke's 3-inch wideband tweeter for his W5 crossed in at 600Hz digs deeper and unwinds more threads. That's the price to pay when using an 8-inch mid. Vapour Sound's Aurora makes the same big choice. How the W5 adds redolence is with its sidefiring 5-inch long-throw woofer. It energizes the ambient field earlier than a front-firing equivalent would to enhance tone exactly like subtle reverb on a mixing console enhances pale vocals. Gallo's Strada II with its d'Appolito 4-inchers is more electrostatic of resolution but also leaner and cooler on colour temperatures. I'd not call the Edena dark per se. That expertly exploited ribbon tweeter won't allow it. But it's fair to invoke hints of darkness as they pertain to the upper midrange. That makes for a very non-fatiguing sound which won't get frisky even on hot fare. It's easy listening also because it doesn't blur. I would speculate that this and the lovely harmonic richness are functions of a phase-coherent crossover which doesn't put fundamentals and their overtones through a coarse time scrambler. To see how much vigour the Edena was capable of, I replaced my FirstWatt SIT1 monos with the Crayon Audio CFA-1.2 and Job 225 amplifiers.

Roland Krammer's Austrian champ took the crown as the best match from my amp collection. It honed articulation and focus and with it a greater sense of forward projection. By tendency the Edena staged very deeply behind its base line. The Crayon didn't alter that perspective. But it did project sound more strongly across space. The static induction transistors had me reach for it. That's not a fancy verbal distinction. It was an actual perception. It even held way off-axis behind my work desk. That's four meters past the left speaker in the same open space. Another improved parameter were microdynamic inflections. With the 60wpc Crayon there was more microdynamic contrast. On raw loudness the 10-watt Yanks had been more than sufficient. I never listen to more than 90dB peaks and tend to stay around 70dB median levels. But without undermining its naturally wet tone, the Crayon had the Edena sound 'faster' and more vigorous for an ideal dovetailing of qualities.
Looking at my writing desk in front of two paintings by Ivette.
Or to put it back into earlier terms, the Edena starts with a musically very material foundation. This can subsequently be seasoned to some extent with certain more hifi-ish qualities. If desired, I'd pick a very wide-bandwidth direct-coupled fast gain circuit as enabler. The speaker's innate virtues remain dominant however. It'll never be a dry, prickly, lean, whitish or monochromatic performer. In my book that's high praise indeed. Here it reminds me a bit of Kevin Scott's upper-end Living Voice Avatar models. Textures, colours and the expressivity derived from them are the priorities. There's nothing pushy, jagged or hyper-pixilated about any of it. If subjective detail count is a bit lower than much of what HighEnd Munich 2014 proposed as the going rate, that would seem to have been a very deliberate design choice to shift emphasis on other virtues.

Conclusion. From the outside in with its fancy veneers, sterling finish, complex asymmetrical cabinetry, quality drivers and advanced filter, the €6'500/pr Apertura Edena offers a lot in today's high-end currency. Despite its seeming modesty of just two drivers, this cleverly appointed box acts full-range for 95% of applications. It really is all the speaker most serious music lovers would ever need. It comes on song at lower volumes to cross off early morning or late night sessions amongst family and neighbours. Its off-axis response is generous enough to produce a fully centred soundstage for two chairs spaced a bit apart. Most importantly, it majors on the musically fundamental qualities which so much of modern hifi turns its back on: harmonically developed fleshy tone and wet textures; weightiness not from tacked-on subwoofer bass but from actual substance in the midrange which won't turn a poorly recorded piano into a tinkle machine; a very fine gossamer treble that lacks any metallic or grey textures; and the kind of temporal elasticity that has far more in common with Chopin and nothing whatsoever with Techno's drum machines.
With Crayon's CFA-1.2 in the hot seat, Goldmund/Job 225 and Clones Audio monos in standby.
Being earmarked for review by its designer and not their flagship or second in line when my room would have supported either is also telling. Whilst I can't be certain without working my way through their catalogue, I'll wager an educated guess: this model is their hottest buy. It sports what clearly is Christian Yvon's favourite midrange driver; doesn't rely on a d'Appolito array to keep things pure and simple; and has sufficient coverage or room-fill power to lack for naught even in a 100m² space. Colour me impressed. As my show sighting had suggested, Apertura's Edena really is entirely my kind of loudspeaker. If it were a postcard, it'd be signed from Nantes with love. I'm of course ignorant on how available Apertura the brand might currently be outside France. Based on my two encounters with this model, I'd simply say that foreign markets without representation would be foolish not to look closer at Christian Yvon's lineup. His Edena isn't yet another box in the usual sonic vein. It's for those who feel that somewhere, modern hifi has made a wrong turn and never really gotten back on track. If that resonates whilst you're reading this, here's a speaker that pulls in the other direction.
Apertura website