I’ve somehow missed interesting Hestia speakers from Alta Audio, that were introduced this year. Here are the official insights.
There are several unique design points of the Titanium Hestia.
First, it is in our Titanium series of the Alta Statement line. Therefore all of the formers (bobbins) are made of titanium for smoother more extended dynamics, power handling, and frequency response. Titanium’s added stiffness also allows for a larger voice coil. The midrange voice coils are 3 inch and the woofer voice coils are 5.1 inch. Titanium is an expensive and difficult material to work with, but well worth it for the increase in quality and performance.
Also, the Hestia’s drivers are in what we call a “Dipolito” configuration. In a D’Appolito configuration a midrange is place above and below the tweeter to create a unified wideband pulse response that most closely mimics the original sound pulse. In our configuration there are two 7 inch midranges below and one 6 inch midrange above the ribbon tweeter. In the crossover passband with the tweeter. The output of the two lower midranges matches the output of the single 6 inch midrange above the tweeter, thus creating a unified pulse, but in the woofer crossover passband the two 7 inch lower midranges have the extended lower midrange and bass response needed to meld seamlessly into the woofer. The midranges are also in a Dipole open baffle configuration. This setup gives a larger more palpable feeling of stage size with the higher midrange driver casting images realistically high and clear. Blending in the pinpoint accuracy of the monopole ribbon tweeter keeps the individual images from becoming diffuse or bloated and lays them out realistically on the sound stage.
The crossover design is managed to smoothly blend the monopole sub bass and high frequencies to match the Dipolito midranges in their open and dynamic sound.
This is in addition to our use of DampHard on all sides and the baffle face, which creates a sonically black background on which fine details are easily heard, and our XTL transmission line base for exceptional bass extension and control.
Our Tweeter: The ribbon tweeter in the Titanium Hestia is simply the fastest, smoothest, most open tweeter we have tested in 40 years of testing. The magnet assembly is so powerful they must be shipped with tweeter guards to prevent any magnetic metal from being pulled in.
The woofer is tuned into our Alta XTL tuning for fast extended bass response.
The tweeter uses amorphous core transformers with an extremely powerful magnet structure to produce a nearly perfect impulse response making them both smooth and dynamic.
The crossovers use 10 and 12 gauge Litz coils and silver foil capacitors.
The internal wiring is 10 gauge.
Height: 53 3/4 inches
Width: 15 inches at the bottom narrowing to 81/2 inches on top
Depth: 18 inches at bottom
Weight: 135 lbs
Driver complement:
1 Titanium former 10 inch Woofer in Alta XTL bass tuning
2 Titanium former 7 inch lower midranges
1 Hex cone titanium former 6 inch upper midrange
1 Amorphous core high output ribbon tweeter
Sensitivity: 90 dB / 2.83 Volts @ 1Meter
Frequency response: 28Hz to 47kHz
Impedance: 4 Ohms
Requirements: Minimum 50 to 400 Watts, Can be Bi-wired, or Bi-amped
Configuration: Open backed Dipolito
