What watchdog said
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Wat’s you saying and can I ever get there?
Chas
What @badbeef said
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
I feel fine.
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Ditto
Wut?
Take it with a grain of salt…Dr Pangloss
Lol. Very funny.
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I have just gone through this entire thread. I’ve been looking for info on this speaker on the forum several times before and couldn’t find any news due to the renaming.
I can provide some insights, as I have owned many speakers that are mentioned in this thread. So first things first:
I have to say this unfortunately but the new design is ugly. You Americans clearly need help and some aesthetic education. I cannot even believe what I’m seeing and am giggling due to that. It looks like an accident between art-deco and a peachtree device turned by 90 degrees.
I have owned three Piega speakers in my life. The first was the Coax 70 with the small Coax Ribbon driver. It was ok but the coherence between the Ribbon and the bass drivers didn’t work.
Then (after some others speakers, Jamo 909, Manger S1, Rowen) I had the Piega Master One. A design with the big Coax Ribbon driver in an open baffle and the bass drivers in a bass-reflex enclosure. Driven by a T+A 3000 HV amplifier and fed by a Directstream Sr., this was the best setup I’ve ever had in my life. Unbelievable coherence, bass, detail retrieval, plankton, inner note detail, transparency - just without comparison. I listened all day long and couldn’t stop listening. The only weakness in the sound was a lack of sound pressure in the mids/highs. The one coax driver in an open baffle does not have enough surface area. I sold the Master One. Why? Because I’m an idiot. They were super heavy, bulky, big, hard to transport and needed at least 4 feet of space from the back wall. WAF = 0.
After that experience, I was convinced that I wanted even more of the same. So more transparency, more PS Audio goodness etc. So I bought a pair of Quad ESL 2905s, a BHK Preamp and BHK 300s. That was a mistake. The Quads sound transparent and natural but have a WAF below 0, had an uncontrolled bass (boomy), way too much bass!! but no punch at the same time. Also they were very difficult to place. So I sold them and…
…bought the Piega 711s. The most beautiful speaker in the Piega range. What a disappointment! The big ribbon driver is not in an open baffle in this case, but in an enclosure. There are two normal bass drivers and two passive radiator bass drivers. The speaker has absolutely no dynamics. It sounds overdamped, dead and the enclosure keeps the Ribbon foil from playing out its strengths. The foil has to work against the air volume and cannot move freely. The Piega sounded like broken toy speakers next to the Quads (which I still had at the same time to A-B).
Also the PS Audio Chain did not work at all for me. So many devices chained together only resulted in very audible hiss and noise in my case (most of it coming from the DS). The whole chain sounded much too soft and all the transients were completely rounded. Paul was so kind to take the amps back. I sold the Directstream and replaced everything with a Devialet 440Pro which was much better in that chain.
Quite disappointed nonetheless with the Piega 711 (visually my dream speaker), I sold everything and bought a pair of Dutch&Dutch 8C. Quite an interesting speaker which sounds open and has very good headroom and cleanliness for its size. It was really quite good but the bass didn’t work for me, as my back wall isn’t straight and the bass sounded wooly. Also, I was so used to ribbons, electrostats etc. that the dynamic drivers just didn’t sound detailled enough for me.
So I sold the Dutch&Dutch 8C and bought a pair of Kii Threes. These have much more detail, the bass is tight and clean and they sound analogue for a digitally corrected speaker. But compared to the Dutch 8C, they sound less open and have less headroom. Also, they use only dynamic drivers and for some reason the detail is there but not intricate, meaning the inner note detail is not the same as with a foil driver. Both the Dutch and Kii (being fully digital speakers with built in DACs) sound so TYPICAL PCM, which is difficult to get reacustomed to if you’re used to either DSD from the DS or Ladder DAC sound. So I find myself listening very little to the Kii Threes and still miss the Piega Master One setup I once had.
My conclusions from all of this so far:
- I’m annoyed. It seems no matter how much you spend, it’s almost impossible to get the magic high-end sound I’m looking for.
- The upgrade neurosis can definitely lead to downgrades.
- Ribbons sound much better in open baffles and are wasted in an enclosure.
- Speakers with dynamic drivers can never deliver the inner note detail of a speakers with foil drivers. They sound stiffer and less musical and more strained.
- If you have a setup that is so good that you can’t stop listening, don’t change it - or only change tiny things.
- Some high-end goodness cannot be reconstructed. The Piega Master One speaker is not available anymore. The Piega Line Sources are beyond my budget.
- The big Piega Coax driver is unparalleled in an open baffle and preferable to an electrostat as the placement is much easier. It is the best driver I have ever heard.
- I believe that only an open baffle line source or open baffle coax speaker is able to meet my sound requirements in the mids-highs. I have tried everything else and it’s just not good enough. I also believe that the bass drivers should be in an open baffle, even if efficiency is lost and they need to be huge,many, servo controlled or all of this together.
- When putting together a chain with many boxes, noise becomes a very relevant issue.
- Cardioid speakers solve room problems and you hear less of the room and more of the speaker. But the brain can somehow substract the room from the speaker if it’s not a cardioid. If you hear a cardioid speaker with less room interference you will also hear quite clearly how its drivers sound like and their abvious shortcomings. In the Dutch 8C the tweeter crossover point is quite low. You can hear it and it’s an issue.
I’ve been doing this High-End stuff for 30 years so sorry if I seem too picky or snobby. I really hope PS Audio will make an open baffle line source with ribbons from floor to ceiling that will kick the s*** out of everything else, make it somehow affordable and find someone who has a little bit of taste when it comes to design. Currently there is not one speaker on the whole global audio market which I would buy, besides the Piega Master Line Source which is approx. 180K too expensive for me. I’m thinking about buying the Kii BXT extension but I reckon that it will not change the character, only open up the sound and give more headroom. It will still sound like dynamic drivers with PCM processing. Period.
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Great post, etchcube!
I do not have much exposure to the speakers you discuss but I fully understand what you are telling us. I agree the magic high-end sound is impossible or near impossible to attain. I have experienced this only when a particular recording happens to sync completely with a given system. Play a different recording and it is nice, but the magic is gone.
Wonderful! I giggled in response. 
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How did you like the Rowen speakers? Which ones did you own? I quite like the concept of Symphony line speaker with the Linear Motion Transformer which projects the complete vocal range and up.
I did listen to the 2&2 and 3&3 quite a while ago. Active amped. In Luzern at HiFi zur Mühle. I still remember, they left a very good impression, can be placed very close to the wall and show a great esthetic. Although our taste might differ as I quite like the FR30 design.
Check out and Google the development of the Maggie 30.7 s for condos. They are only in the prototype stage but I think they might satisfy your desires. Confident your wife will not like their other room divider models.
I truly envy your ability to own all these speakers and experience all the different systems and setups.
Having neither the time, money or space I “just” own this pair of ”dream speakers”. I’m stuck to optimizing their setup for over two years now in a suboptimal living room with limited treatment ability: A bit of more toe-in. Listening for three weeks. Pushing them five centimeters back. ten centimeters up. Some more weeks… Arrived at an extreme near-field listening setup for now. Fantastic sound stage, best even bass response so far. Looks completely silly for any outsider… Giving up on them is just no option. Maybe I should consider myself lucky…
I don’t have a high-end history/legacy/experience as you and a lot of the other fellow forum members. My 2cents so far: it’s all in my/your head.
Which clearly allocates the problem. We may need a different treatment, another system seems not to be the answer. Or, maybe it is about the dreaming. But then we have to (re)learn to enjoy that dream…
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I am having trouble reconciling these two observations. How did the DS go from being part of one of the best configurations ever to being a source of unacceptable, audible hiss and noise? Maybe I am simply not following along properly. If you meant that the amps and the preamp were too noisy for the DS and your speakers, that kind of makes sense to me, though.
In any event, based on your extensive experience and past successes (and misses/mistakes), are you going to start over with speakers and work your way back through the signal chain to try and recapture the magic or is the Devialet the cornerstone on which you are going to rebuild?
I wish you success on your quest.
So long story short, there is no perfect speaker. Yup.
Well, in all fairness to the Speaker Community, there is simply too many speaker options (thousands) making it IMPOSSIBLE for ANY of us to conclude there is no perfect speaker. Perfect to us as individuals, of course. Until there is a way to audition every single option, such a proclamation is emotional and not reality based.
@etchcube, I respect your experience. However, you must realize there are vastly more speakers you have not heard than you have heard - considering make/model/design. I am confident there is a “Perfect” speaker for you out there… you just need to find it. And it may be that it is not an open baffle.
It was a great read, your speaker journey.
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I don’t know about perfect, but I heard some damn fine speakers last year at AXPONA. A number of them would make me very happy for a long time.
Precisely. It is a matter of finding that right fit. Some of us will find it…some won’t, ever. I am fortunate to have found a loudspeaker that I have no interest in replacing. But, this is an ever evolving industry so with new products coming to market at a rapid rate, my desire to look no further could very well change.
Paul,
I don’t know if someone has asked this yet…but, is this new speaker design using ‘force cancelling’ woofers like the kef blades?
Cause that would be really cool if they did. I always thought that was a brilliant design feature.
Yes, too picky, too snobby, and yet a perfect post with great insight all at the same time, lol. 
I too am having issues finding that perfect balance, and I am almost there (or I have fooled myself into thinking I am almost there), but I am nowhere near the quality level of the systems you have been fortunate to experience. Yes, the Piega 711’s look frigging cool. I saw them at Axpona, but for the life of me I cannot remember what they sound like, or what other electronics accompanied them. Thanks for the post!