Rediscover meaning in music with our gorgeous, emotive australian designed and made speakers

Unique design and sound
We are a small high-end designer of speakers that both look and sound like nothing else available.
Our years of research, design, listening tests and fine tuning allow us to share with you the gift of emotive music in a timeless format that is sure to be passed down in your family for generations to come.

Our Technology
Our Celata 88 speaker incorporates new technologies we developed, such as the Dynamic Waveguide™ and Celata® push-pull subwoofer configuration, both patent pending designs, that make our sound emotionally impactful and one of a kind.

Engineered for Versatility
In addition to visual options that will look fantastic in any home, our speakers have also been engineered to sound great in any listening environment. We achieved that through listening tests and fine tuning in both acoustically ideal and reverberant rooms.
HOW WE’RE BETTER THAN THE REST
The majority of high-end speakers get the technical aspects right—they produce high levels of detail, clarity, and convincing bass—but they sound bland and lack emotional impact. In HiFi, much is made of hearing music as the artist intended, but what the artist really intended was for their music to convey meaning through emotion, and that is where our Celata 88s surpass the rest. We designed the Celata 88 with emotional impact as the goal of every design step and decision. We started with no assumptions about the technology we would use and questioned conventional wisdom.
In the process we developed our own new technologies, the Dynamic Waveguide and the Celata push-pull, slot loaded subwoofer designs because they sounded better than traditional horns or waveguides, or direct radiating woofers, respectively. The result is exceptional sound that lets you feel the music the way the artist intended and the way you’ve been hoping to experience the joy of music through your HiFi journey.
HOW SPECTRAFLORA CAN HELP YOU
R&D for the Celata 88 began out of frustration with what is available on the HiFi market—bland sounding speakers that cost a fortune and either look like black boxes or something off the set of a sci-fi movie. It’s a frustration shared by many HiFi enthusiasts, and their families, and we understand it.
The Celata 88 physical form is a result of its functions, but also it is designed to look beautiful in any home. All the timber is responsibly sourced and Australian and we offer customisable finishes to suit any décor.
We showcase Celata 88s at HiFi shows and HiFi enthusiast meet-ups, where we recommend, if possible, seeing and hearing them for the first time. Additionally, we offer free in-home auditions, with a refundable deposit, starting in Victoria, Australia, in 2025. We’ll work with you to hear the Celata 88s and help select existing models or design a custom one for your interior. The result for you will be outstanding sound that enriches your life both emotionally and visually. All that and you’ll support Australian technical experts and craftspeople who produce what we expect will be timeless heirlooms.
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FROM THE EXPERTS
“It's an audiophile cliche, but the Celata 88 just gets out of the way so that you can enjoy the tunes. The detail and clarity are all there, but what truly impressed me was the coherence of the sound. It was full-bodied and grounded. It brought out the life force of the music. We talk a lot about EQ in audio, but in the case of the Celata 88, EQ could just as well stand for Emotional Quotient. It gets the sonic EQ right, but it scores very high on the measure of soul EQ, too. These are speakers for the heart, mind and ears.”
“They certainly have a unique style and just when you think that all speakers look the same along comes this design…. the Spectra Flora Celata 88 loudspeakers showed that every genre and volume level was within its abilities. They convincingly conveyed emotion and feeling from the music which is often rare to find. Visitors to the room just sat and listened to track after track, enjoying what was heard”
“Using a crossover design perfected through 11 months of measurements, modelling and listening tests, and twin horizontally-opposed slot-loaded subwoofers in the cabinet base, these are new speakers not to be missed. Put them on your tour of Australia's best, at the Sydney show!”
Celata 88 Features
- 3-way, stand-mount passive speakers. By using a passive design, you can be sure that the speakers will not become obsolete as amplifier and connectivity technologies improve.
- Made from responsibly sourced Australian timber species grown and processed or reclaimed and recycled in Australia.
- Finishing options fall into three categories: popular, which we can always make or have on hand; limited, which are designs we’ve created to showcase timber with limited availability; custom—designs by you or your interior designer in consultation with us.
- The patent pending Dynamic Waveguide design combines a cutting-edge waveguide profile in the horizontal dimension with a traditional horn profile in the vertical dimension. The result is the dynamics and intimate sound of a horn, but without horn honk colouration, combined with transparency and even horizontal sound distribution. That means instrumental and vocal timbres stay true from wall reflections even in reverberant rooms.
- The graphene coated magnesium mid-bass driver remains pistonic across its range. It is critically damped in its own sealed enclosure so it doesn’t overshoot or ring. The result is crystal clear, lifelike vocals and instruments.
- The patent pending Celata subwoofer design uses two horizontally opposed 8-inch subwoofers that are slot-loaded in a push-pull configuration to minimise cabinet vibration, overshoot and ringing. The result is exceptionally clean, crisp bass that is integrated perfectly with the mid-bass driver and Dynamic Waveguide, as opposed to using separate subwoofers that are virtually impossible to perfectly integrate with speakers.
- The crossover is 18 V DC biased by two 9 V batteries to avoid distortion effects from capacitors. The components are the best we could find in the world based on 11 months of listening tests. For example, custom foil capacitors for the high and mid frequency circuits, copper foil for the high, and aluminium foil bypass capacitors for the mid. The result is very transparent sound—listen to music, not crossover artefacts. The crossover topology between the mid-bass and Dynamic Waveguide is quasi-transient perfect, meaning that phase is linear through the crossover region and the tweeter and mid-bass are perfectly time aligned, instead of the typical approach in which the midrange lags the tweeter in time. The subjective results of the time aligned Dynamic Waveguide and mid-bass are sharp, realistic transients which contribute to natural, engaging vocals and instruments.
- The button on the back provides a treble boost designed to benefit listeners with hearing loss, particularly age-related, at high frequencies.
- Matching speaker stands are available.
Technical Specifications
- Dimensions including the Dynamic Waveguide: 353 mm x 717 mm x 448 mm, WxHxD
- Weight: 46 kg each
- Impedance: nominal 4 ohms, minimum 3.7 ohms at 38 Hz
- Frequency range: 33 Hz (-3 dB) to 20 kHz
- Sensitivity: 86 dB (1 m, 2.83 V)
- Maximum power: 300 W peak, meaning very brief transients; equivalent to 35 V at 4 ohms. This results in a very high SPL, ~108 dB at 1 m from a single speaker, which is not recommended for the sake of your ears.
- Crossover points: 130 Hz and 1300 Hz
- Drivers: two 8-inch subwoofers; 7-inch mid-bass, graphene coated magnesium cone; 1-inch compression driver with oversized, 52 mm voice coil and mineral loaded ketone polymer diaphragm.
- Dual, gold-plated, solid-copper binding posts. The top pair drives the Dynamic Waveguide and mid-bass; the bottom pair drives the subwoofers. This can be changed on request so that the top pair only drives the Dynamic Waveguide.
- 2 x 9 V batteries are replaceable from the back of the speaker without tools. They require replacement at the end of the shelf-life of the batteries; 5 years for normal alkaline smoke detector batteries.
- Recommended amplifiers: >40 W tube; >70 W solid state class A or A/B. More power is better. For bi-amping, 20 W tube is sufficient for driving the Dynamic Waveguide alone and could possibly drive the mid-bass, also, depending on the amplifier. The minimum impedance of the Dynamic Waveguide + mid-bass is 4.4 ohm at 220 Hz. The minimum impedance of the Dynamic Waveguide by itself is 8 ohm.
Celata 88 Popular Range
We either have these in stock or can manufacture them to order at any time. Our most popular model is the natural finish.
$35k per pair, $1k for a pair of matching stands.
Celata 88 Limited Range
We make limited numbers of speakers based on the availability of special timber we find. We either have the speakers in stock or, if they are not in stock but are on the website, we have enough timber to make at least one more pair.
Currently, we have two limited range models:
• A black stained pair with diamond stitched leather and a Northern silky oak Dynamic Waveguide. The stain allows the grain to be visible and is overcoated with satin polyurethane.
$38k per pair, $1k for a pair of matching stands.
• A natural, clear satin polyurethane finished pair with highly-veined cherry leather and a red ironbark Dynamic Waveguide finished with hardwax oil. The red ironbark timber was salvaged from a former Royal Australian Air Force base in Dubbo, New South Wales, built during WWII.
$38k per pair, $1k for a pair of matching stands.
Celata 88 Custom Range
For our custom range we finish speakers according to designs developed in consultation with customers or their interior designers. Customisation options include different colours of stain for the cabinet and Dynamic Waveguide, painted finishes, and different leather or fabric panels (or no leather/fabric panels).
Pricing is quoted on a per-project basis with a $10k deposit prior to the beginning of fabrication.
The Celata 88 R&D story
Design goals
The Celata 88 was motivated by our frustration with existing HiFi speakers—their high mark-ups, dull sound, and mostly terrible looks. The design goals for the Celata 88 were dynamic, engaging, emotional sound from a gorgeous speaker that could complement anyone’s most loved spaces. We had no idea what the final design might look like, but it had to have a very high spouse acceptance factor. It had to be compact, a stand mount, and with a huge sound that competed with floor standers. And it had to look timeless.
Ultimately, the form was dictated by function. The only non-functional structural features of the Celata 88 are the two chamfers on the top edges—they just look better than sharp corners. Even so, the cabinet design is reminiscent of Onken speakers, a Japanese design from the 1960s and 70s, but with large front chamfers to reduce edge diffractions for the mid-bass, which produces cleaner sound and better imaging. The slots of the Celata subwoofer design, the bottom two slots and the top two front-facing bass reflex ports are, of course, functional, and allow the speakers to be placed directly against walls.
Dynamic Waveguide
The biradial approach to the Dynamic Waveguide was inspired by the horns of Japanese designer Yuichi Arai, but with profiles optimised by modern computer simulations, and with large roundovers to prevent edge diffraction. In what is probably a first for the industry, we combined two incompatible theories to design the waveguide profiles: traditional horn theory, which dates to the early 1900s if not the late 1800s; and modern waveguide theory, which was first published by Dr Earl Geddes in 1989 and has advanced considerably since.
The primary goal of a horn is to acoustically couple the driver with air, with directivity control a secondary consideration. Waveguides are the opposite and are made possible by more efficient drivers—they control directivity as their priority, minimising what Geddes called Higher Order Modes that contribute to the honky characteristic of horns. In early listening tests we liked the dynamics of horns, a result of good acoustic coupling with air, and the intimacy of vocals that direct radiating tweeters simply cannot match. But we also liked the transparency and constant directivity of waveguides based on Geddes’ oblate spheroid profile. So, we tried using a traditional hypex profile vertically with a horizontal oblate spheroid profile and they worked brilliantly together: the dynamics of a horn without the honk and the transparency and constant directivity of a waveguide horizontally where it matters most. The 90-degree constant directivity horizontally assures that reflections off walls have the same frequency distribution of direct radiating sound; the narrow vertical dispersion minimises floor and ceiling reflections. Both help the Celata 88s sound great even in highly resonant rooms without acoustic treatment.
For the compression driver on the Dynamic Waveguide we realised early on that we didn’t like titanium diaphragm drivers, including coated titanium, because of their fatiguing sound. We quite liked an aluminium diaphragm driver but one failed during testing. We landed on an oversized ketone polymer diaphragm driver because of its smooth yet detailed sound that is not at all fatiguing. Being oversized, the diaphragm has to travel less in the voice coil gap than typical 1-inch compression drivers and, as a result, intermodulation distortion is reduced. Further, it has a 110 dB per W efficiency with a maximum power handling rating of 140 W, which it will never see in the Celata 88 because it is highly attenuated to match up to the mid-bass. As a result, the diaphragm hardly has to move to produce very high sound levels and it has far more overhead than a direct radiating tweeter, many of which would show signs of power compression and distortion at the SPL the Celata 88 can produce.
Celata subwoofer configuration
The Celata subwoofer design was a result of trying many woofer configurations, including things like transmission lines, in listening tests. In those tests slot-loaded woofers sounded better than direct-radiating woofers, two woofers facing each other into a shared slot sounded better than a single woofer through a slot, and two woofers back-to-front sounded better than that. We didn’t invent the push-pull configuration, but it is unusual, possibly a first, to have both woofers front facing, which is what we did to fit them into a narrow, compact cabinet. The front woofer fires into a channel that loops back into the main cabinet. Structurally, the front facing design works well because it produces a very stiff cabinet without additional bracing, especially when made from 18 mm plywood and combined with the bass reflex ports above the subwoofers. Sonically, the benefit of push-pull subwoofers is that even order harmonic distortion cancels out, which is the commonly cited reason push-pull woofers sound good. However, we believe an additional reason for their superior sound compared to direct radiating woofers is that two cones working in opposition provide a sort of negative feedback that reduces overshoot and ringing. In other words, they produce crisp, clean bass that is well matched to the mid-bass.
Another benefit of the dual subwoofers in a chamber that fire through two ports is that they form a 6th order bandpass configuration, which is often used in pro audio, but not in HiFi. In pro audio 6th order bandpass subs are popular because they increase gain by a few dB. They’re not popular in HiFi because the higher of the two resonant frequencies, the frequency associated with the smaller chamber, introduces undesirable group delay. We circumvent that problem, but still benefit from ~2 dB gain, by crossing over the subwoofers to the mid-bass well below the resonant frequency of the subwoofer chamber. We begin the sharp low pass filter roll-off about two octaves below the resonant frequency, which is difficult to achieve in a passive crossover but worth it. Additionally, we notch filter the resonant frequency of the subwoofer chamber to prevent any chance of it interfering with the mid-bass.
Crossover
The crossover is the result of 11 months of listening tests to optimise component selection and filter topology. We even listened to the effects of different types of hookup wire and binding posts. During much of the Celata 88 development we used digital signal processing (DSP) to digitally create crossovers, so we had a good idea of what we wanted out of a crossover, but building a good passive crossover is much more complex than simply recreating DSP filters passively. Notably, in our experience, a relatively simple crossover that reproduced the DSP filters sounded worse than the DSP version. The challenge was to optimise the passive crossover so that it sounded better than DSP and, in fact, sounded like it wasn’t there at all.
The distinguishing features of the resulting crossover, which does sound better than DSP, are that its capacitors are all DC biased by 18 V and the topology of the 1300 Hz point is quasi-transient perfect. We didn’t invent either but came to use them through listening tests. JBL patented the DC bias approach (now out of patent) and still uses it in very high-end speakers. For the Celata 88, DC is provided by two 9 V batteries per speaker that are accessible on the back panel without tools. DC biasing capacitors draws virtually no current, so the batteries will not run out. They should be changed at the end of their shelf life, which is usually 5 years for alkaline batteries, 10 years for lithium batteries. We ship Celata 88s with alkaline batteries.
DC biasing the capacitors improves sound quality by effectively shifting the audio signal as it goes through capacitors so that, for most signals at reasonable listening levels, the capacitors never cross their 0 V point at which they are non-linear and distortion can occur. The downside to DC biasing is that it is done by doubling the number of capacitors and increasing their capacitance 2-fold because each pair is in series, both of which add complexity and expense, but it’s worth it. Additionally, we use bypass capacitors because they improved sound quality even in circuit positions where we didn’t think they would. As a result, there are 42 capacitors in the entire crossover per speaker.
All the capacitors for the Dynamic Waveguide are foil and film, including four custom made copper foil ones. The mid-bass capacitors are all metallised polypropylene (MKP) bypassed mostly with custom aluminium foil and film caps, including MKP capacitors of very high values because of the low 130 Hz crossover point with the subwoofers. The subwoofer capacitors are electrolytics bypassed with MKP caps. We used electrolytic capacitors with the subwoofers because, in total, the subwoofer capacitor requirement is over 3500 uF—MKP caps totalling 3500 uF simply wouldn’t fit inside the cabinet. The crossover, split over three boards, barely fits in the cabinet as is.
Swiss acoustic engineer Samuel Harsch first described his quasi-transient perfect topology in 2008. It time aligns the Dynamic Waveguide with the mid-bass by using asymmetric filters and by placing the acoustic centre of the Dynamic Waveguide ½ the wavelength at the crossover point, 1300 Hz, behind the acoustic centre of the mid-bass. The mid-bass is rolled off more steeply than the Dynamic Waveguide, which results in greater group delay than the Dynamic Waveguide filter (all filters add group delay). The ½ wavelength physical offset makes up the difference in group delay between the two asymmetric filters so that the Dynamic Waveguide and mid-bass are perfectly time aligned, as opposed to the vast majority of tweeter-mid-bass combinations in which the mid-bass lags the tweeter in time. The result is coherent sound through the crossover point, crisp transients, and true-to-life timbre, especially for percussion and plucked instruments. Surprisingly, even instruments that play fundamental notes many octaves below the 1300 Hz crossover point, such as kick drums and double bass, benefit from the time alignment because their harmonics extend into the range of the Dynamic Waveguide. Sonic coherence of the subwoofers, mid-bass, and Dynamic Waveguide is also aided by the rapid burst decay of each—each is down >30 dB by five cycles or less, which is a very fast and uniform burst decay across a 3-way speaker.
Materials and construction
We use only responsibly sourced Australian timber that is processed in Australia. Our cabinets are hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii), which is native to Queensland. The hoop pine we use is plantation grown in Queensland and is processed into plywood in Brisbane. Our Dynamic Waveguides are made from either laminated hoop pine plywood or specialty timber such as plantation grown Northern silky oak (Cardwellia sublimis) or salvaged timber such as the red ironbark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon) currently available in our Limited range.
Our cabinet panels and interior pieces are cut using CNC and assembled in Preston, Victoria, just outside Melbourne. Dynamic Waveguides are milled on a 7-axis CNC robot in Preston, also. Crossover and final assembly takes place in Inverleigh, Victoria.
Contact us to find out more
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