Audio First Cadentia 3
Harry Yeung's, First Audio loudspeakers are designed and assembled in Cambridge, England. Harry's first design was the astonishing compact two-way 'Fidelia' and he has followed this with his latest design another passive three-way the Cadentia 3.
Harry kindly brought the prototype Cadentia here and it immediately impressed, it was both incredibly dynamic and completely transparent, as he correctly states it has the performance of a contemporary active design but allows you to use your amplifier of choice.
The Cadentia's default finish is Oak veneer and a pair including vat will set you back £5680 which includes vat and delivery.
Erin's Audio Corner measured the Cadentia 3 here,
https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/audio_first_cadentia3/
The sound you hear is a combination of the direct radiation from the speakers and the reflections from the room. The radiation pattern, ( the directivity ) is what determines the tonality and timbre of the loudspeaker's sound and the precision of its imaging.
Sculpted to minimise diffraction, the Cadentia 3's baffle incorporates an in-house developed super-elliptical waveguide-loaded tweeter and mid-range section that produces a wide, smooth directivity profile as shown in the polar graph above.
The closely spaced tweeter and mid-range driver work together to produce a single coherent point source .
Resulting in a design that balances soundstage width with pinpoint imaging.
Both the tweeter and mid-range driver use TPCD ( thin ply carbon diaphragms ) these diaphragms exhibit excellent structural rigidity whilst controlling break up modes whilst maintaining their light weight.
For the woofer a hardened paper cone was chosen, which is both light and with the necessary rigidity.
The carefully designed crossover ensures that each driver operates within its pistonic range.
The Cadentia 3's crossover consists of high quality film capacitors and air-core inductors chosen for their low current distortion characteristics.
Designed using the Klippel NFS ( near field scanner ) and CAD software the crossover achieves an extremely neutral tonal balance, it simply sounds real!
All of the Cadentia's drivers are equipped with an FEA optimised, powerful neodymium motor featuring distortion suppressing components. The three way topology significantly reduces IMD, inter modulation distortion, a common cause of graininess and harshness that often become evident as playback levels increase.
The low-distortion and long-excursion 9" woofer bestows the Cadentia 3 with explosive dynamics.
Audio First's 'Cadentia 3' passive three-way loudspeaker, one of a new generation of measurement led loudspeaker designs which are dynamic and transparent.
Essentially they just accurately reproduce the source programme, nothing added nothing taken away.
A loudspeaker is entirely characterised by its measurements, if a loudspeaker manufacturer does not measure its loudspeakers and publish those measurements then personally I would not consider them.
The days of loudspeakers being sold on a 'myth' are thankfully well and truly over.
Audio First Cadentia 3 available to audition at Purité Audio. now.