As it turns out, Tadeusz 'Ted' the dad is the team's resourceful resident electrical/mechanical engineer who had a generation 1 Essence already many years back when still living in the US. The es-2 commercialized in Switzerland still used bent aluminium panels sourced from Ellerns AG, a close partner to Victorinox; a preamp without DAC manufactured by Werap Elektronik AG; and more complex sub assemblies which led to protracted hand labour, hence cost inefficiencies. Today's analog/digital Essence was optimized to go together a lot easier and quicker. It combines just three main interlocking aluminium parts as shown below. Those are high-pressure die cast in Germany. It's what allows for thin walls to create about 2 litres of internal volume; and fine integral detail work like the logo, company name and rear-panel descriptors which would wash out with gravity casting.

The choice of 4.5" coax* with a measured 130° of dispersion was predicated upon wanting minimal baffle width. Here Tadeusz considered this exact diameter with a massively oversized 32mm voice coil, Kapton former and cast basket ideal for the bass performance he was after. With a very soft compliance and deep profile, this cone's resonant frequency is a very low 55Hz, its moving mass a mere 4.5g (Qts 0.28, Qms 6.0, BL 6.7T, efficiency 88dB). Because it mounts to the baffle from the inside, the gasket is on the front. Interestingly, the port of the right active speaker is tuned to 70Hz, that of the left slave to 50Hz for a split "bass follower" scheme of attack and follow-up. His passive crossover with air-core inductors and PP capacitors mounts to the back of the driver and with all sub assemblies delivered to Schaffhausen, basic assembly of a speaker takes about 15 minutes. A perfect seal of the three metal parts is achieved without standard gaskets along their main seams but ultra-high parts tolerances and nearly brutal clamp pressure in both the vertical and horizontal axes. That's locked in with six tension rods torqued to just about shearing off the bolts (they broke plenty of those before sourcing bolts that could tolerate the targeted torsional forces).

Here we see the rear panel with many custom connectors and a gasket which seals off their openings from the internal air space to prevent leaks (checked with high-amplitude 40Hz sine waves during final QC); and Gordon Rankin's custom board with USB/Toslink 32-bit ESS Sabre DAC and 12dB-gain active linestage with dedicated headphone amp.

With the driver facing down, here we see two side views of the innards and the four horizontal plus two vertical tension roads. The analog Alps pot and pin-prick status LED sit inside the cutout of the white open-cell foam damper panel. The ICEpower module is "generation 3.5".

Here we see the stand/port reflector assembly added. In a forthcoming TV speaker version with remote control based on the exact same guts and driver, this metal piece will simply elongate sufficiently to make for an integral floor stand. A subwoofer styled to match is on the drawing board as well.

Mechanical engineers would grow wood inspecting how this ultra-compact super-strong speaker goes together. The average customer will merely wonder how come it can play unsuspectingly loud without losing any clarity. Same reason. The smarter prettier sex instead will count flower blades to decide on black or white C panels with black, white, red, blue or green cheeks for a total of 10 stock finish options (others on demand and for a surcharge).