Edifier launches Airpulse A80V Hi-Fi speaker with reworked mid-bass driver

The Edifier Airpulse A80V speaker just launched in China and is built on the same bones as last year's A80. However, Edifier reworked the mid-bass driver, a change which the company says will give the speaker a fuller, rounder low end. Everything else that made the A80 what it was, including its ribbon tweeter and internal amplification, carries over largely intact.

That tweeter is a horn-loaded aluminum ribbon design, and it is one of the more distinctive parts of the speaker's engineering. Because the ribbon fuses the diaphragm and voice coil into a single piece rather than keeping them separate, the driver reacts faster to transients and introduces less phase distortion than a conventional dome tweeter, all while extending smoothly up to 40kHz. The redesigned mid-bass unit sits at 4.5 inches, built around an all-cast aluminum bracket, a hardened aluminum alloy diaphragm, and a 30mm voice coil.

Powering both drivers are two Texas Instruments TAS5754M Class D amplifiers, one assigned to each driver type, each capable of processing digital audio at sampling rates up to 192kHz. Edifier rates the output at 10W+10W to the tweeters and 40W+40W to the mid-bass drivers, figures the company says come with limited distortion at those levels.

The most visible change from the A80, beyond the driver rework, is on the input side. Edifier has added a 3.5mm AUX port to the A80V, giving it one more way to accept an analog source alongside its existing RCA line-in, both of which run through a Texas Instruments PCM1802 ADC rated for 96kHz/24-bit audio. Digital sources fare even better: a new Toslink optical connection and a USB-C input, the latter added via Savitech Hi-Fi decoding, both accept signals up to 216kHz sampling and 192kHz/24-bit resolution. For anyone listening wirelessly, Bluetooth 5.1 runs through a Qualcomm QCC3031 chip with aptX HD support.

The cabinet itself is built from 18mm MDF, lined internally with wave-shaped sound-absorbing cotton meant to tamp down resonance and standing waves inside the enclosure. A SUB OUT port is included for anyone looking to add a subwoofer in a larger room. Edifier rates the A80V's frequency response between 52Hz and 20kHz, with a signal-to-noise ratio of at least 90dB(A) on each channel. Each pair weighs 9.3kg, and the individual cabinets measure 140 x 255 x 238mm.

The Airpulse A80V is available now in China at 2,879 yuan, roughly $402. Edifier has not said whether, or when, the speaker will make it to markets outside China.