Opera Classica Prima Loudspeakers Announced

Opera Loudspeakers say they are delighted to announce the newest addition to their Classica Series of hifi loudspeakers, the Prima, a two way reflex loaded speaker.

“The Prima has been designed to be as efficient, stylish and easy-to- place as possible; suiting it to a wide variety of high-quality audio systems, say the company.

The Prima’s 25mm thick cabinet is less than 30cm deep and has rounded edges. Its size makes it suited not just to speaker stands, but it’s also for placement on a shelf in smaller listening rooms. The easy placement is further assisted by the front-firing reflex port, reducing interference from rear walls. Aesthetically, the design has notable similarities to the rest of the Classica Series, with polished veneered real wood on the sides and faux leather on the front, top and rear panels. Internally, a wooden brace connects the two opposite sides, forming a rigid reinforcement for the entire cabinet. Elsewhere in the cabinet a substantial amount of 3mm open cell polyurethane sound-absorbing material is employed to stabilise the sound performance.

Prima uses the same one-inch Scanspeak tweeter that features throughout the Classica Series. It’s an extremely solid and powerful soft-dome design that boasts a large decompression chamber and a well-measured use of ferrofluid to cool and centre the voice coil. The tweeter has been specified for 1mm (peak-to-peak) linear excursion.

The woofer is also from Scanspeak and has been specially developed for the Classica Series. It’s a  6.5″ (180mm) driver with a 38mm voice coil. The diaphragm is made from aluminium and the rubber surround has been sourced from Dr. Kurt Müller. It is characterized by a particular semi-exponential profile. There is also a copper ring utilised for the stabilization of magnetic flux which Opera say effectively reduces distortion in the midrange. Two series of holes are located on the voice coil in order to eliminate the effects of compression behind the dust cap. Internally, the die-cast basket is fully open, even below the internal suspension (spiders), and the driver is connected via gold-plated terminals.

Opera have designed the Prima as a nominal 4Ω load, where to comply with DIN standards the impedance does not drop below 3.5Ω. They are also a very efficient speaker with a comparably high 91dB sensitivity rating.

The crossover in the Opera Prima uses Mundorf capacitors and MOX resistors in the signal path, as well as self-bonding coils for the tweeter and the woofer with the whole design having being optimised to eliminate any interference between the low and high frequencies. The crossover also uses a classical configuration with symmetrical slopes of 12 dB per octave, and the cut-off frequency is set around 2000 Hz.

SRP is £1,400.00 and the Opera Prima will be available on stock in the UK from April 2016

It will be available from stock in Cherry finish. Mahogany or Black Ash finish are special order.

Technical Information