The Celata 88 was motivated by our frustration with existing HiFi speakers—their high mark-ups, dull sound, and often 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.

The Dynamic Waveguide was born from countless hours of listening, testing, and rethinking what a high-frequency system should be—not just on paper, but in the real world, in real rooms, where music is actually lived with. Its biradial form, inspired by the elegant horns of Yuichi Arai, was optimised through modern simulation and crafted with large roundovers to minimise diffraction and preserve the integrity of the soundstage.

In what might be an industry first, we combined two historically opposed acoustic theories: traditional horn theory, which dates back over a century and excels at coupling air for unmatched dynamics, and modern waveguide theory, as introduced by Dr Earl Geddes, which prioritises constant directivity and suppresses coloration caused by higher-order modes. We applied a vertical hypex horn curve for dynamic energy, and a horizontal oblate spheroid waveguide for smooth, even dispersion—delivering the power and presence of a horn, with the clarity and openness of a waveguide.

The result is a listening experience that feels immersive and natural, with clear imaging, no sign of the typical ‘horn honk’ colouration of pure horns, and consistent tone throughout the room—even in acoustically challenging spaces. Music doesn’t beam or shout. It simply fills the space with ease, making the speakers disappear into the room and into the moment.

For the compression driver, we chose an oversized ketone polymer diaphragm chosen for how it feels to live with. This material delivered the perfect balance: smooth, detailed, and effortless, even at high volume. Its high efficiency and minimal excursion mean it can produce vivid, lifelike sound with virtually no distortion or strain—well beyond the reach of conventional dome tweeters.

The Celata subwoofer system was developed through extensive listening tests of various bass drivers and alignments. We found that slot-loaded woofers outperformed direct-radiating designs; dual woofers in a shared slot sounded better than one; and a push-pull configuration—with woofers mounted front to back—sounded best. Uniquely, we mounted both woofers front-facing to fit within a narrow cabinet. The front driver fires into an internal channel that loops back into the main enclosure.

This layout also adds structural stiffness, eliminating the need for extra bracing—especially when combined with the front-mounted bass reflex ports. Sonically, push-pull alignments cancels even-order harmonic distortion, but we believe another benefit is the mutual cone control, which reduces overshoot and ringing—resulting in tight, clean bass that integrates naturally with the mid-bass.

The subwoofers operate as a 6th order bandpass system, common in pro audio but rare in HiFi. These designs offer a few dB of extra gain but can suffer from group delay at higher tuning frequencies. We avoid that by crossing over well below the resonant frequency, with a steep filter starting two octaves down. We also apply a notch filter at the chamber’s resonance to eliminate any interference, maintaining a seamless transition to the midrange.

The graphene-coated magnesium mid-bass in the Celata 88 was chosen after nine months of listening tests across ~20 drivers. Its powerful motor with copper shorting rings reduces intermodulation distortion to near theoretical limits set by the Doppler effect. Though capable of deeper bass, we restrict its low-frequency range to keep excursion minimal, further improving clarity. A copper phase plug and titanium voice coil former ensure excellent thermal handling, allowing clean, sustained output without power compression.

We found paper cones added unwanted vocal colouration at high levels, and polymers lacked impact. Magnesium proved ideal—light, rigid, and self-damping, with pistonic motion throughout its range in the Celata 88. The graphene coating, while not tested independently for sonic impact, is an excellent anti-corrosion layer for the magnesium cone.

The mid-bass sits in its own critically damped sealed chamber (Q = 0.5), densely packed with fibreglass and recycled fabric. This prevents internal reflections from reaching the listener and eliminates overshoot or ringing after transients. In listening tests, this approach produced a clean, open, and transparent sound, similar to open baffle designs—yielding lifelike instruments and intimate, engaging vocals.

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.

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.