ZenSati Australia has announced the local availability of Canadian high-end specialist Arteluthe’s new Stiletto loudspeakers.
Founder and designer Robert Gaboury (ex-Gemme Audio) has been producing Arteluthe loudspeakers since 2011 and now the company’s latest creation, the stunningly beautiful Stiletto loudspeaker system, is for imminent availability in Australia. The Stiletto was slated for its first official showing at the postponed Montréal Audio Fest.
The Stiletto loudspeakers’ design combines art and science in order to produce Gaboury’s subjective version of beautiful sound while also showcasing the talented engineer’s respect, thorough understanding and uncompromising application of acoustic and electronic principles.
For starters, the Stiletto’s enclosure construction features a Maple and Birch ply skeleton chassis which is adhered to very stiff and inert exterior panels. The panels are coupled to the skeleton chassis via an elastomer compound which remains compliant, therefore cancelling vibrational distortions. The enclosure is finished in high quality gloss paints and is luxuriously accentuated via a leather-lined baffle.
The 3-way first order design employs a transducer complement of high quality drive units. The ‘Ultra-low Mass’ 30mm soft dome silk tweeter features a large magnet and a bespoke ‘decompression’ rear chamber which acts as an air pressure and back-wave energy diffusor. The custom midrange driver is a 140mm hand-coated paper cone with a cast basket and features a vented pole piece allowing voice coil cooling for high output. The wide range of this driver, combined with the first-order crossover design and sloped baffle would suggest potential phase and time coherence.
The low frequencies are catered for via twin high power 165mm drivers with coated paper diaphragms and ventilated voice coils/magnet systems via open cast baskets. Bass enhancement is provided by the low-Q, quasi anechoic tapered, folded, sealed and damped transmission line.
The Stiletto speakers are quoted as having a frequency response from 25 Hz to 25 kHz at -6dB (27 Hz in-room quoted) while the impedance numbers of 6 ohms with a 4 ohms minima would suggest a relatively benign amplifier load (Arteluthe has not provided sensitivity/efficiency specifications at this stage).
ZenSati Australia Proprietor George Fracchia told SoundStage! Australia, “We at ZenSati Australia have refrained from distributing loudspeakers until now. There is, finally, a very superior technologically advanced speaker designed and built by Robert Gaboury, a man with innovative ideas who has been able to implement the technology in a speaker that is truly the Formula 1 of speakers.”
Fracchia went on to say, “The Stiletto speakers are a compact and unusual, but beautifully designed, product. Robert has been able to remove all enclosure-induced capacitance so the amplifier can easily drive the speaker. Furthermore, by lowering the sensitivity Gaboury has gained almost two octaves of low frequency bandwidth. There is so much more…”
We’re told Arteluthe’s new Stiletto loudspeakers will be available for audition in Sydney from early April via importer ZenSati Australia (see details below). (Please note a name change is imminent in order to reflect a distribution company with a wider variety of audio products available around Australia)
Arteluthe Stiletto Loudspeakers
Price: AU$29,500
Australian Distributor: ZenSati Australia
+61 413 007 440
www.zensatiaustralia.com
