Ribbons may sound superior, but they aren't perfect. Since they are extremely light and don't have a normal voice coil, their internal resistance is very low. This makes driving them difficult without a specially designed amplifier. Being so small, they can't move a lot of air either which means they are only effective at high frequencies. To compensate, a wider range woofer is required. All that being said, ribbon tweeters are a considerable upgrade. However, their high cost means they are only found on very expensive systems. Switching to pro mode and playing the movement through the exaSound DAC wrought a major improvement. The sound was less glary, and more transparent. The steely quality of the violins was tamed, and I heard more of the rosiny action of the bows on the strings. I hadn’t been aware of congestion with the digital connection in wireless mode; but in pro mode, the sound was noticeably more transparent, so I could hear more deeply into this dense score. Groups of instruments were even more precisely delineated on the soundstage. Whatever hardness remained seemed to be down to the composer, the conductor, and the Amsterdam players trying to frighten me to the core, rather than an artifact of the speakers.

Next up was Kandace Springs’s cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You” from The Women Who Raised Me (24/96 FLAC, Blue Note Records/Qobuz). Again, I started with the A300Pros in wireless mode and a digital connection, with the Bluesound Node connected to the primary speaker’s coaxial input. It is unlikely that in a healthy person, using an OPEP will “strengthen the lungs” unless the patient has a chronic illness such as COPD, asthma, cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, or other conditions. My usual scratch test was pretty pointless, as just holding one of the speakers in your hands you know it’s not going to get damaged or scuffed in normal use. I did it anyway. I grabbed a letter opener and ran it down the side of the speaker cabinet. And, as I imagined, there wasn’t any damage or light scratches at all.The patented Air-Blade tweeter, designed by Mr. PHIL JONES, features a far more smoother frequency response and can out-perform any normal dome tweeter. The form factor of the oval-shaped diaphragm brings in special acoustic character, which helps to disperse high frequencies more efficiently. One prominent feature the Air-Blade tweeters bring about is the minimum impact of speaker positioning. You can walk around while still experience the same sound effect, no need to seek the “Sweetspot”! Traditional speakers work by pulsing a cone in and out with electromagnets according to the music. Ribbon tweeters are different in almost every way. The sound is created by vibrating a piece of thin plastic film with a microscopic coating of aluminum vapor. These strips aren't physically held in place like dome tweeters which allows for a greater degree of movement. Instead, they are suspended within a magnetic field. They are also up to 10x lighter which means there is less resistance to motion when compared to a traditional tweeter. Continuing the success of the A200, the AirPulse is a pair of bigger active bookshelf speakers that we elaborately designed to meet the expectations from us for high quality sound reproduction.

From the front, the two speakers look identical, except for a small window at the bottom of the primary speaker that houses an IR receiver for the supplied remote control, and a monochrome OLED that displays source information, as well as numerical indicators for the volume, bass, and treble settings whenever these are adjusted with the remote. The remote only functions when the speakers are in wireless mode. Most loudspeakers use round copper wire in the voice coil but we use a far better single layer edge-wound copper clad aluminum ribbon. Ribbon voice-coil wire gives more electrical conductor in the magnet gap and increases efficiency, power handling and lowers distortion. It features with a under-hung motor structure, a high power neodymium motor to provide a high magnetic flux to cover the whole voice coil of the loudspeaker. This type of magnet structure completely energizes the whole voice coil with allowance for extreme cone excursion giving far better bass and considerably less inter-modulation distortion.The bottom of each speaker has 4 foam feet, they could have left these off to be honest because the A80’s do come with full size angled foam pads for you to stand them, which helps improve sound quality and sound position. The pads help angle the sound toward your ears and reduce the amount of sound absorption through whatever surface you’ve sat them on. It really does help improve the audio experience.