Matt Bonaccio and I opted for a top-down approach to the exhibits at the Radisson Blu Sobieski location at Audio Video Show 2024. So we climbed up the stairs to the seventh floor and walked to the far end of the corridor.
On my left in the first room we entered, I scoped out a very familiar speaker. It was a rectangular monitor—nothing earth-shattering—but the top half of the array was taken up with three tweeters in a unique waveguide. That array was just like the one in the Aurelia XO Cerica XL speakers I’ve owned since I reviewed them in late 2020. I swiveled my head to the right and locked eyes with Antti Louhivaara, the designer of my speakers. It was like a mapped-out scene from a movie.
A quick chat with Louhivaara confirmed that Audio Video Show 2024 marked the world premiere of the Audio Anatomy AA5 loudspeaker, which was being shown in Warsaw as a pre-production model.
The AA5, which will retail for €3000 per pair, is, as you can see, a fairly small standmount monitor, but it’s far from conventional. The most obvious feature is that waveguide, which serves two purposes. First off, it enables the three tweeters to operate as a line source, and second, the multiple tweeters don’t have to work as hard as a single driver. This allows for a low 1.5kHz crossover point, which provides several benefits, including reducing the propensity for the midrange-woofer to beam at the top of its range.
The result is performance that is so far beyond what should be possible from a speaker this size that it’s frankly ridiculous. Louhivaara wasn’t playing audiophile music—I heard techno and grunge while I sat typing this. After all the show music I had endured the previous day, this made me want to hug him. In the mids and highs, the AA5s did the same trick as my Cerica XLs, shooting out this hyper-realistic bubble of sound, placing rock-solid images in real soundstages. It’s a wonderful effect, and one that I never get tired of experiencing.
The single 6.5″ midrange-woofer put out far, far more bass than should be possible. Tight, deep bass, likely down to the high 30s, but so quick and well integrated with the midrange that it formed a coherent, near-perfect whole.
The AA5s were backed up by a simple but high-quality system. An Audia Flight FL Three S integrated amplifier provided the juice and was fed by an Audia Flight FL CD Three S CD player.
After Aurelia ceased operations in 2022, Louhivaara still had the speaker-design bug eating at him. As such, he partnered up with Andrzej Mackiewicz, the CEO of Audio Anatomy, the Polish distributor of many audio accessories, with the intent of manufacturing his speaker designs under that company’s name. The AA5 is the first model in what Louhivaara says will be a complete line.
I hereby declare the Audio Anatomy AA5 speakers to be the overall bargain of the show. The production models will be ready for High End 2025 in Munich, and you’re damn right I’ll be looking for them there.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
