Truthful to the Music - Piega SA

juice up apparent detail, and very fewaudiophiles complain about too muchbass. The Piega, on the other hand,bucked this trend and offered almost nopersonality of its own. First impressionwas of a seamless presentation. Inparticular, the midrange-presenceregionboundary, a troublesome spotfor conventional tweeters crossed overaround 3kHz, blended beautifully. Themusic’s character remained unchangedover the bandwidth of the coaxialdriver, with never a hint of brightnessor dissonance despite its extended treblerange. Soprano upper registers and violinovertones soared naturally and delicately,unencumbered by distortion products orresonances. As you can imagine, heavilyprocessed multitrack recordings greatlybenefited from the Piega’s squeaky-cleancharacter. The ability to negotiate poorrecordings gracefully is a major bonus forall of us whose record collections spanmuch more than a sanitized subset ofaudiophile recordings.The core of the midrange was renderedwith crystalline clarity, allowing tonecolors, textures, and low-level detail tobe resolved with disarming naturalness.Complex passages were readily clarifiedand with a masterful sense of speedand transient control that—well, I haveto agree with the advertising copy—iselectrostatic in character. Dynamicswere closely tied to the choice ofamplification.The Piegadisappeared betterthan any conventionaltwo-wayAround 100Wpc seemed to producethe most convincing reproduction of anorchestral crescendo. James Bongiorno’saffordable Son of Ampzilla 200 did aparticularly noteworthy job partneringthe Piega, the combination being smooth,sweet, and dynamic. This is not to saythat more expensive amplifiers were alost cause with the Piega. Au contraire,the ultra-high-end Silicon Arts DesignZL-120 was clearly higher in resolutionthrough the lower midrange.I’ve left the best for last. Forget Britishmini-monitors—this is the new champwhen it comes to pinpoint imagingprecision and stability. I’m sure that itssuperb driver integration and coherencethrough the critical mids and upperoctaves play a major role in its imagingprowess. Wide, spacious, and slightly laidback,the soundstage was populated withimages etched with laser-like precision.Massed voices were readily resolvedand the impression of an organic space,completely independent of the speakers,was remarkably strong. And, yes, the Piegaperformed the proverbial disappearingact better than any conventional two-waymini-monitor I’ve auditioned to date, andlet’s not forget that this is a three-wayspeaker. Bravo!Detailed, yet relaxed, the Piega is ableto caress musical lines with speed, finesse,and no artificial aftertaste. A hard dayin the office? Park yourself in front ofthe Piega, kick off your shoes, and pouryourself a glass of wine. The Piega TC10 X loudspeaker represents the perfecttransportation to a higher dimension ofmusical enjoyment. TASThe Absolute Sound November 2007 81