Piega Coax 811 Gen2 loudspeaker

It’s funny how we discover some music in unexpected, twisting ways. A friend recently sent me the real estate listing for a beautiful home in Deer Isle, Maine, about an hour from where I live. I gawked at the pictures and calculated I’d need to work for Stereophile for another 127 years before I’d have enough dough to buy it. Then I noticed something unusual on one of the walls of the place: lots of gold records. Google helped me figure out that the house had belonged to the late singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. I knew the name but was unfamiliar with his music. Minutes later, I was playing the studio version of “Nether Lands,” seemingly named after my country of birth. A beautifully orchestrated piece with restrained woodwinds and soaring strings, it reminded me of the best of Van Dyke Parks and of some post–Pet Sounds Brian Wilson songs. I played it straight through three times.

Part of the reason I was so smitten with the recording lay in the engaging, naturalistic presentation it received from the handmade-in-Switzerland Piega Gen2 811 floorstanders ($30,000/pair) that had just made their way to my listening room.

Up-close and personal

The Piegas arrived double-boxed with four custom foam inserts per tower, two of which are circular and fit entirely around the speaker, life-preserver–style. The speakers were further protected by black drawstring bags made of soft cloth. My pair was finished in standard brushed aluminum, but the Gen2 811s are also available in white lacquer and a black anodized finish—plus in eight other colors that require a $2000 premium. Although the towers weigh 139lb each, it wasn’t terribly arduous to unpack them and move them into position.

Most speaker grilles have the consistency and strength of finely woven socks and don’t do much to protect the drivers if there’s an impact from a rowdy pet or an inquisitive child. The metal-edged Piega grilles are made of sturdier stuff. In fact, they feel so heavy and look so dense that I had concerns they might not be as acoustically transparent as I’d like. To stop worrying, I removed the grilles using the specially designed strong magnet Piega supplies for just this purpose. (It looks like an oversized chess pawn.) You have to place the magnet near the top, pull, work your fingers between the grille and the baffle, and gradually pry the grilles loose. In under a minute, I had both grilles detached and banished to a closet, as I suspect most will be (footnote 1).

Thus denuded, each tower seemed to sport four identical 8.7″ woofers, but two of those are in fact passive radiators, meaning that the 811 is sealed—no ports. Should you need a 10-second refresher course on the idea behind passive radiators, here it is: The sound pressure in the enclosure excites the radiators with a tuned resonance that makes it easier for the speaker to produce deep bass—down to 22Hz in the 811’s case. The force produced by the movement of the active drivers sets the passive radiator cones in motion. At the same time, that resonance reduces the needed excursion of the woofers, thus lessening distortion and maximizing amplifier power. Piega says that the 811 will work fine with as little as 20Wpc.

The speakers sit at the top of the 38-year-old company’s Coax range, so named because the ribbon tweeters are in the center of square midrange drivers (one per channel), which are also ribbons. The tweeter and midrange driver together essentially form a point source. The membranes are the thickness of a few hairs (0.02mm) and weigh only a fraction of a gram. These coax drivers—model C212+—take care of frequencies above 450Hz.

The 811’s stylish, just-over-4′-tall enclosure was designed by Stephan Hürlemann, a well-known independent Swiss architect and designer. Hürlemann gave the 811 a very slightly curved baffle and a tapering oval shape in the back. Dual binding posts allow for biamping or biwiring. (I did neither, leaving the factory jumpers in place.)

Because aluminum can ring—not a desirable characteristic in a speaker—Piega developed a clamping system featuring 10 internal vertical rails that are part of the extruded chassis (footnote 2). Those “spines” are pulled toward the column’s center by four thick, milled-aluminum, horizontally mounted plates. The plates are hand tightened during production, placing the cabinet under constant tension. Thanks to some deft engineering, the latest version of this Tension Improve Module—TIM2—both pulls and pushes on the interior walls. This approach increases the cabinets’ rigidity and quashes vibrations. Piega claims that viscoelastic damping foils inside the enclosures eliminate all remaining resonances. (I get into the technology a little deeper in a conversation with Piega’s head of development, Roger Kessler; see the sidebar “A Visit to Switzerland.”)

The speakers arrived without spikes. I placed them on Townshend Seismic Podiums and later also tried them with Piega’s X-shaped, spike-equipped outrigger plates that the team at MoFi, Piega’s US importer and distributor, offered to send. Those are an $1199 option, and I’d recommend them for their elegant, integrated look alone.

MoFi PR man Lionel Goodfield told me that the 811s “don’t sound like you think they will when you first see them.” I soon understood what he meant. Especially in brushed aluminum, the speakers look handsome but also a touch frosty, as if designed for a spartan modern interior of the kind favored by editors of architecture magazines. That quasi-sterile Gestalt suggests an icy sound signature, so I felt instant relief when I fired up the system and beheld a nonglassy sonic picture, neutral but bending toward smooth.

Not that it was time for serious listening yet. I was told that the speakers needed 50–100 hours of play before they’d perform at their peak, and that’s what they got.

Hear no evil

For most of their stay at my place, I had the Piegas hooked up to a Krell FPB 200c power amp that was fed (via AudioQuest balanced cables) by my Eversolo DMP-A8 streamer-preamp. At times, I also used a Balanced Audio Technology VK-90 tube preamplifier for a little added sweetness and my Aurender A20 digital transport, which subtly outshone the Eversolo in solidity and soundstage layering.

In my 21′ × 15′ listening room, I got optimal results when I placed the 811s 7’5″ apart measured from the centers of the drivers, while I listened from a distance of 9’4″ from the same center points to my pinnae. The speakers’ baffles were almost 6′ from the front wall. I toed in the Piegas so that imaginary lasers emanating from the woofers’ dust caps crossed about 5′ behind me.

I started the critical-listening phase with “Selecta” by Infected Mushroom (off Converting Vegetarians, 16/44.1 FLAC, HOMega Productions/Qobuz), a beautifully mixed, whimsical electronica piece that ends in a Dixieland pastiche. It appeared around me in a big, half-dome shape, with some sounds almost coming from my direct left and right. The 811s sometimes reminded me of the excellent Raidho TD3.8s in this respect.

Footnote 1: When the time came to return the 811s, it was much more difficult to put the grilles back on. I had to apply considerable force and managed to badly pinch my right hand, resulting in a blood blister. Mistakes were made. F-bombs were used. I’m doing better now, thanks.

Footnote 2: Dominik Züger, who works in Piega’s research and development department, explained that “Basically, one big aluminum block gets pushed through a tool. Almost like making pasta, just on a bigger scale!”

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Piega SA
Bahnhofstrasse 29
CH-8810 Horgen
Switzerland
[email protected]
+41 44725 9042
piega.ch

Page 1
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A Visit to Switzerland
Specifications
Associated Equipment
Measurements

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