Source: Press Release, Last Accessed: 2016/03/17

Opera Loudspeakers' newest addition to their Classica Series is a two-way reflex-loaded loudspeaker, offering a pleasing aesthetic and a well-balanced audiophile sound performance that places it at the top in terms of its size and value. But more than that, it has also been designed to be as efficient, stylish and easy-to-place as possible, the company says.
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 ideal 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 finely 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 stabilize the sound performance.
According to the press release, Prima uses the same one-inch Scanspeak tweeter that features throughout the Classica Series because of its first-class characteristics. 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 center the voice coil. The tweeter has been specified for 1mm (peak-to-peak) linear excursion, ensuring outstanding power handling as well as very low harmonic and inter-modulation distortion.
The woofer is also from Scanspeak and has been specially developed for the Classica Series. It’s a 6.5-inch (180mm) driver with a 38mm voice coil. The diaphragm is made from aluminum and the rubber surround has been sourced from Dr. Kurt Muller. It is characterized by a particular semi-exponential profile. There is also a copper ring utilized for the stabilization of magnetic flux, effectively reducing distortion in the midrange. Two series of holes are located on the voice coil 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 technical design has therefore resulted in a speaker that’s compatible with a wide range of amplifiers, from valve to solid state. The crossover in the Opera Prima has been designed to be both simple and high-quality. Utilizing Mundorf capacitors and MOX resistors (which are made to within very fine tolerances) in the signal path, as well as self-bonding coils for the tweeter and the woofer, the whole design has been optimized 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.

For more information: http://www.operaloudspeakers.com/

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