Arteluthe Stiletto

[Arteluthe]

 

[tobiasrankin]

Care to tell us more ?

 

[Arteluthe]

Of course: Arteluthe Stiletto. Designed and built in Montreal, Canada. I am the owner and designer. Previously worked at Gemme Audio. My shop has been working with the same people for the past 15 - 20 years. Stiletto is a lot different from other loudspeakers because the reproduction is centered around a quasi full range driver in a sealed sub enclosure, reproducing seven octaves with perfect coherence. Below, from 25 Hz to 50Hz, a pair of low frequency transducers in a folded, tapered and sealed transmission line. Above 5000 Hz, a high definition 1,2 in. silk tweeter with back chamber extends response to 23 kHz.
With Stiletto, I wanted to achieve true full-range performance in a compact enclosure. Above all, I wanted low-end punch, definition and transperancy. I wanted a speaker that could reproduce - for example - the work of Billy Cobham like no other speaker. Obviously, all designers and manufacturers aim for the best sound for the least amount of money. I removed the "cost" factor and just went for sound, and quality.
Manufacturing in Canada is expensive, but being a small operation, exclusively geared for low volume production made Stiletto possible. we were able to implement a level of refinement that would be impossible to achieve in large-scale manufacturing.
For example, Stiletto features twin-hull enclosures, where custom multiply (maple / birch) panels are machined and assembled with all mounting hardware to form a chassis. Then, the chassis is fitted with dressed panels, each of them decoupled from the chassis but also decoupled from each other adjoining panel. The resulting construction is both inert at low frequencies and highly damped at higher frequencies.
Drawback is a lower than average sensitivity of 82 dB, partly compensated by higher than average impedance.

 

[Arteluthe]

Picture of the chassis assembly: all panels are interlocking. Once assembled, the chassis is both light (higher natural resonance) and extremely strong, thanks to the multiply made of birch (soft wood) and maple (hard wood). Each wood layer changes material impedance. The larger holes create a non-flat surface to scatter any standing wave, while the smaller holes are all filled with a special damping compound that never dries out.

 

[Arteluthe]

Dress panels are lacquered in a multi-steps real piano finish. Unlike automotive finish, multiple coats of polyester laquer are applied with hand sanding between each coat. 4 coats of primer followed by 8 coats of solid black laquer, followed by 3 coats of black-tinted polyester. The finish is deep and hard. Polishing is done after 28 days of curing time.

 

[Arteluthe]

Front and back baffles are covered with Alcantara, contrasting with the high gloss piano side panels.

 

[Arteluthe]

 

[Arteluthe]

 

[Barry2013]

What a lovely looking speaker and I will look forward to reading reports on its sound.
It reminds me of the Tidal loudspeakers which have such a good reputation.
What are the dimesions?

 

[Arteluthe]

Thank you! in real life, they look smaller than the pictures suggest, at around 37 inches high (around 90 cm). It is a sealed design of very low resonant frequency that can be placed closer to corners than a ported system. There is a thread on AE forum.

 

[Arteluthe]

A little bird told us a bigger model is in the works, but we're far from introduction. Perhaps a year.

 

[marmota]

The speakers look absolutely incredible, love the idea of the sealed transmission line and the heroic construction of the cabinet. I think that the only thing that could improve the look, in my opinion, would be the addition of rings to cover the visible screws of the woofers and tweeter, like Göbel does (or also Scanspeak with the Ellipticor drivers).

Glad to read you're working on a bigger model, some 10+ (or 15!) inch woofer to move air effortlessly would be incredible with that sealed transmission line cabinet, is refreshing to see a speaker that is not a bass reflex design or just a sealed box with some mdf panels.