Penaudio Cenya Bookshelf speakers

All exterior planes of Cenya speaker system, except side ones, have beautiful microrelief with vertical striations. The matter is that the body is made by very unusual technology. The sheets of qualitative birch plywood first are picked up into package and glued together under pressure. Then one-piece "well" of body is cut out from this block by laser not along but across the layers and what we see - the ends of glued sheets. Due to this fact the number of joints reduces and the construction itself is more rigid, damps vibration well and looks originally. With thickness of walls from 16 to 22 mm the monitors seem to be disproportionally heavy for their sizes, and this is big plus for speaker system. If strict Scandinavian aesthetic is not for your taste, there are more usual variants of finish: black ash, oak, cherry, walnut and zebrano.

Now move to the most important component of "correct" system - drivers. The tweeter in Cenya is one of the best that you can buy for money - SEAS of 3/4 inches (20mm) caliber with cloth dome and liquid cooling of sound coil. Some audiophiles think that because of ferromagnetic fluid sound detailing worsens in the gap, but this was in earlier constructions, the problem has been solved now. But the dynamic characteristics are improved during cooling because of elimination of thermal compression. As you know, the resistance of coil increases when heating, and the current (and hence output power) falls at the same signal amplitude. Seems that turn the volume up but the sound pressure does not almost increase as if the level limiter turns on.

The midbass driver in Cenya is the same as in the flagship Sinfonia. This is a 6-inch SEAS head from Excel line with the diffuser made of magnesium alloy, powerful phase-equalizing "bullet" in the center and suspension designed for larger shifts. The bass-reflex is an aluminum tube with internal diameter of 45 mm opening on the back wall of the body.

Traditionally for Penaudio the crossover filters are optimized for specific heads with the use of polypropylene SCR capacitors and Graditech heads without steel cores. Bi-wiring is not welcome, there is only a pair of internal terminals and they are audiophile WBT Signature Platinum. Internal wiring is made of flat copper Jorma Design cable.

First impressions after preliminary warm-up are contradictory. The system demands a decent power from the amplifier and our 180-W Bryston B100 SST fit it, perhaps, with minimal reserve. Well, in pair with such partner Cenya is capable of much. Bass immediately attracts your attention - subjectively it sounds to be unreal deep for such modest volume of the body. And also you do not feel the lack of drive in rock music - howling electronics of Laibach and guitar riffs sound powerfully, energetically, literally attacking the audience.

The character of upper register of Cenya is very similar to the older Sara model. The same abundance of overtones, giving lightness and transparency to sound, the same emphasis on brass and cymbals, but the sound at the same time is perceived as more continuous and legible. Due to the same slight rotation of monitors you can choose an optimal feedback of the tweeter for specific conditions. In our slightly muted room we had to just a bit change the angle of radiation.

By the ability to build three-dimensional space Cenya will be ahead of more expensive competitors. The scale of sound picture, of course, corresponds to the sizes of monitors, but if you listen at the distance of 2-2.5 meters from the front line, it is quite impressive. The sound picture is detailed, rich, with clear localization of all, even the smallest virtual sources. This is, perhaps, the main difference of shelf system from floor, especially in a small room - they create albeit significantly reduced, but more perfect copy of the occasion, which happened in concert hall or studio. It's no coincidence by the way, that many directors prefer to work with monitors of near field.