High End 2018 • Hot Product

Audionec was another French speaker maker with an innovative and impressive product to show. The Diva XL stands fully 6’6” tall and features twin 15” bass drivers. But in between those you’ll find Audionec’s own Duo-pole midrange/treble driver, a single unit that extends from 202Hz to 20kHz, where it is augmented with a ribbon tweeter. That long central drive unit consists of two flexible tubes, pressed together and deformed by a 1 Tesla magnetic field to “squeeze” pressure waves from between them. With its single wide-bandwidth driver, the speaker's seamless coherence was never an issue, while bass output that can extend to 14Hz guaranteed scale and impact. Helping out at low frequencies was the included DSPV4 processor, which provides digital crossover, DSP room correction and amplification for the bass drivers. The 96dB midrange sensitivity allowed the system to run Jadis JA-80 Mk II monoblocks for the rest of the range.

The price of the speaker system with crossover/amplifier is €250,000. Running from Audionec’s own server, the system was notably transparent and articulate, suggesting that the company is definitely on to something with their unusual driver technology.