In season 3, episode 9 of The Bear, pastry-chef Marcus is watching the documentary Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay. It’s of course about magic tricks. “You tell them you’re going to deceive them before you deceive them,” Jay explains. “In some way that makes it more difficult.”

This strikes me as a perfect metaphor for the audio arts. When we sit down in front of our stereos, we know perfectly well that we’re not in our local jazz venue hearing Cécile McLorin Salvant weave her own kind of magic or at the Berlin Philharmonie waiting for Kirill Petrenko to signal the downbeat. Nor do we expect the ghost of Jascha Heifetz suddenly to come to life, playing his fiddle before us, or that of Leonard Cohen, down on one knee, fedora outstretched. Hallelujah!

But in a way that’s just what we’re seeking. The suspension of disbelief. Those rare bewitching moments when, if we close our eyes, we might be fooled just enough to feel as if we’re conjuring our favorite musicians into our listening rooms.

Naturally, it’s an impossibly tall order and one of the reasons why we as audiophiles (as well as the designers of high-end components) are such an ever-restless bunch, questing for and pushing boundaries along the road to musical magic.

This helps explain why I’ve been a Maggie guy for most of my adult life, which frankly is currently much more adult than I could have ever imagined some 50 years ago when I first encountered a tri-paneled pair of Magneplanar Tympani 1Us.

As imperfect as the early Maggies were, the sound from those six-foot tall by three-foot wide folding screens was for me—and plenty of others like my colleague and friend Jon Valin—a greater facsimile of the real thing than I’d ever before experienced.

And while it’s obvious to state that a tremendous amount has changed in loudspeaker design over the ensuing half-century, especially in the realm of enclosed cone-driven designs, there is still a certain magic to Magnepans—those early models as well as the latest—that for me remains elusive in all but a handful of other contenders.

As such, when the chance to review Piega’s Coax Gen2 611 presented itself, I didn’t hesitate. Because, although they’re very different creatures, the heart of Piega’s technologies shares similarities to those found in Magnepans. (And though I’d never actually heard a Piega design, I recalled being intrigued by Robert Harley’s enthusiastic review of the company’s Coax 711 in this magazine’s November 2018 issue.)

Founded in 1986 by Kurt Scheuch and Leo Greiner, Piega literally started off as a garage operation. But that’s hardly the case today as Piega’s state-of-the-art facility offers a stunning view from the shores of Lake Geneva. (Check out the factory visit made by Messrs. Harley and Valin at theabsolutesound.com/articles/swiss-jewel/. And after 32 years at the helm, Scheuch and Greiner have passed the wheel to the second generation, Leo’s sons Manuel and Alexander Greiner.)

To offer a refresher, Piega means “fold” in Italian. The fold that inspired the company’s name is Piega’s proprietary and unique pleated ribbon driver. In addition to separate tweeter and midrange units, Piega invented the rather brilliant planar-magnetic coax driver found in the model reviewed here: An 8″ x 6.5″ transducer with the 1″ x 2″ tweeter situated in the center of the midrange driver.

As per Harley’s factory report, it takes roughly eight man-hours to hand-make each-and-every one of these coax drivers, a task performed by a small team of highly skilled laborers utilizing the techniques and jigs formulated by co-founder Scheuch, who designed the ribbons. (I again point you to the same article for greater technical detail as well as photographs of the assembly process.)

The coax ribbon used in the model 611 is the recently advanced design C112+, which sports additional neodymium magnets to increase sensitivity, as well as a special coating on the foil that “linearizes the frequency response in the lower transmission range, facilitating a lower transition to the bass.” Moreover, this latest edition coax driver now spans a greater frequency range, from 450Hz to the stated 50kHz outer limits.

As Robert reported, Piega’s coaxial ribbons are not only incredibly low mass but also “achieve perfect coincidence between the midrange and the tweeter in the X, Y, and Z (depth) axis.” While this remarkable driver handles most of the frequency spectrum, it also ensures absolute alignment across its bandwidth regardless of where a listener is seated or standing in a room.

This largely explains why I found the 611 so exceptionally coherent from bottom to top, as well as utterly captivating in the realms of soundstaging and imaging.

Another Piega signature lies in the company’s pioneering use of extruded aluminum cabinetry. Although aluminum enclosures are employed by many manufacturers these days, Piega was surely among the first to make it a key part of its technology some 28 years ago.

Designed by Stephan Hürlemann, the 611’s teardrop-shaped cabinet measures a lithe 8.27″ x 46.06″ x 12.2″. “Wow, these are sexy looking” were my wife’s words as we installed the Piegas in our listening room. (My review samples are brushed aluminum, with black anodized and white lacquer offered as options.)

In addition to the inherent stiffness of the enclosure’s shell, the 611 uses Piega’s proprietary TIM2 internal bracing modules, which “apply tensile strength to the cabinet’s inner walls, significantly increasing the construction’s rigidity.” Picture the flying buttresses supporting the outer walls of Notre Dame to get the idea.

Rounding out the driver complement are a pair of 6.29″ UHQD (Ultra High Quality Definition) woofers and three 6.29″ UHQD passive radiators, which in the Gen2 series have been given additional space within the enclosures, which was designed to enhance the power, clarity, and texture of low-frequency performance.

At $19,995 the pair, the Coax Gen2 611 replaces the earlier model Coax 511.

Listening

As with all components, the 611s need a fair amount of playing time to really show what they’re made of—to open up from their initial relatively muted state to the brilliance they’re capable of.

Once they’re fully strutting their stuff, the tonal balance of the 611s is notably neutral in a way that’s also highly revealing, as they clearly show the inherent differences from recording to recording—though somewhat to my surprise and pleasure the balance veers toward the warmer side of the spectrum. I say “surprise” because the coax ribbon is so exceptionally pristine, detailed, open, and precisely focused that one might assume a clinical presentation; yet the transition from the midband to the mid- and lower-bass frequencies is quite seamless and where the warmth seems to blossom from.

Listen, for example, to Cécile McLorin Salvant’s marvelous-sounding live set, Dreams and Daggers. On “Mad About the Boy,” her smoked-smudged voice is warm as straight whiskey in the lower registers yet lifts and brightens as if poured over the rocks as her voice rises and shines. As stated above, it’s an effortless transition. (As I’ve attended many of her concerts, it’s also much as I recall her voice in a good room with a fine sound system, like the one we have at SF Jazz.) The coax driver also reveals her special way of articulating vocal lines, from teasing whisper-purr to lilting trill to challengingly sassy clipped phrases.

While we’re in a jazz mood, let’s take the Joe Harley produced/Kevin Gray engineered and mastered latest from Anthony Wilson, Hackensack West, for a spin. This beautiful and beautiful sounding “all-valve from microphones to cutterhead” recording features Wilson’s guitar weaving poetry with a trio of his favorite collaborators. Laid out on an intimate stage—it was recorded in Gray’s Cohearent Recording studio (aka “Hackensack West,” in a nod to Rudy Van Gelder)—Wilson’s hollow-bodied electric displays its sweet, natural warmth, drummer Jeff Hamilton’s kit providing a Zen-like grounding to the solidly wooden weight of John Clayton’s bass, while the piano of his son Gerald Clayton provides something of a musical buoy. Here the Piega’s were a fine substitute for a seat at these sessions. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to ask for a more natural-sounding presentation, tonally, texturally, dynamically, in body and sheer sense of “thereness.”

Among the best-sounding but more musically obscure titles on TAS’ Super LP List is English composer Robert Gerhard’s Astrological Series: Libra, Gemini, Leo.

The opener, Gemini, is largely a conversation between individual instruments—guitar, piano, clarinet, violin, flute, piccolo, and a battery of percussion. In this exquisite Decca recording, they’re fittingly arrayed like so many individual stars glittering against a seemingly infinite night’s sky. With beautiful staging both laterally as well as in depth, the 611s brought remarkably pinpoint focus to each player, surrounded by halos of air and the decay of notes lingering in the hall, overlapping from phrase to phrase. The Piega’s were dynamically precise, as well, from the subtlest bowing or strumming effects to sudden thwacks and other striking percussive punctuation. Talk about a magic show.

I’ve always loved the bass reproduction of Magnepans. Not because they reach the depths you’ll hear with the lowest-reaching cone systems or because they’ll flap your trouser legs (they won’t), but for their notable nimbleness of detail as well as their naturalness of tonal and textural qualities that make them so satisfying in the low end despite their inherent limitations.

In this regard I’d say the Piega’s array of two 6.29″ active woofers and trio of the same-sized passive radiators offer a speed that, if not quite in my Maggie’s league, comes damn close, while offering a much greater scoop downward in frequency response as well as much more percussive impact.

Listen to Wilco’s remastered 20^th anniversary release of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

On “Heavy Metal Drummer” not only will you hear much greater fatness and foundational weight to John Stiratt’s chugging bass strings but also a larger, more impressively defined sense of snap, crackle, and wallop from Glenn Kotche’s kit. Meanwhile, the synths, like some musical fracking machine, churn depths I’m simply not used to, while still retaining fine reproduction of clarity, detail, and texture.

And for a truly complete portrait, listen to a large orchestral piece of your liking. In this case, the classic Klemperer EMI vinyl of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2. From the take-no-prisoners announcement of the double basses at the start, though all manner of percussive taps and whispering rolls, to heaven-sent brass choirs, to chirping piccolo, and every range of string and wind in between. From the whisper-soft chamber-like moments to hall-busting climaxes, a work like this will push your system to the limits of, well, everything. Oh, let’s not forget both the mezzo and soprano soloists as well as the full female and male chorus ending with a tsunami-like pipe organ as the proverbial cherry on top. The 611s did it all, pulling off remarkable sleight of hand.

Conclusion

All components are of course imperfect and as such bring their own trade-offs. While my Maggie 1.7i’s may throw an even larger soundstage and are by nature even a bit more coherent, the Piega 611 offers much wider frequency and dynamic ranges, play louder with less effort, and are even more revealing of inner detail, as well as showing starker differences between recordings. In addition, they’re beautiful pieces of industrial design and are far easier to drive, place, and optimally set up in one’s room.

Also consider this: In an era when $20k for a pair of world-class speakers is a relatively moderate outlay, the Piega Coax Gen2 611 is a true high-end contender of exceptional design and pedigree. Sure, if you stepped up within Peiga’s range or that of another company, it’s possible that the magic tricks might be even more convincing. But my bet is that owners of the 611 won’t be thinking about that—they’ll be too immersed in the music to care.