This review page is supported in part by the sponsors whose ad banners are displayed below

Listening to a stranger talk on a train, you learn a lot by what he decides to talk about. Politics? Family? Food? Health? Money? Sports? Love? Sex? The state of the world? But it's not only the what. How he talks demonstrates how his mind perceives the world. The same is true when listening with strangers. What qualities will they choose to comment on? How eloquent and specific are their observations? I'd thus asked Olivier what he thought about the sound of his speakers in my room. He remarked how well they soundstaged despite my wide spacing and how centrally locked the soloists appeared. Those qualities are the most primitive and basic any properly set-up speaker with equal path lengths for both channels will exhibit. Olivier had watched me use a laser finder to measure distance. No surprises there.


When he volunteered nothing else except 'good'—even off-axis I'd have a lot more to say—I kept quiet. There was the language barrier. Perhaps he was just being polite. But then I'd have expected requests to change placement. When asked how the MV One compares to other Davis models, Olivier mentioned a new 2-way ~€4.000/pr monitor. He and beta testers were already very happy with it - except that when compared to the MV One Olivier still hears the negative effects of a crossover. He finds the single driver to trump the 2-way on dynamics, directness, fine detail and freedom. That was pretty core again. Had I thus judged Olivier's listening skills solely on his English comments without knowing what he might do in his mother tongue, I'd have thought them shockingly basic. Time to get to work.


As a purely rectangular quite deep box with no attempts at more interesting lines or small details—a budget coffin set on end*—the look of the MV One is equally basic. What half the coin or less buys you from Sonus faber's also Sino-sourced Venere models shouts that out at high rave levels. With retail pricing for the raw 20De8 at €2.200/pr, shoppers keen on widebanders and hip to for example Rethm could stumble really badly over today's €6.500/pr. Would sonics transcend crass economics? Clearly not just in from out of the November cold of Olivier's Mercedes trunk and first impressions based thereon. This sound didn't project across space. Tone was lean. Whitish. Dominated by percussive edge. The lower bass exhibited obvious port-type bloat. The presence region had typical emphasis albeit milder than usual. With my power JFet monos I lacked for substance, body and fully fleshed-out tone colors. I thought bad electrostat.
_______________________________________________________________________________________

* Even the grills follow suit as blandly rectangular as it gets. They do however mount magnetically to eliminate unsightly receivers.


Before parting Olivier did mention that in his place a very affordable Chinese Opera tube amp works far better than his big expensive Plinius transistors. Having divested myself of all valve amps I didn't have that recourse. I'd have to get agreeable results with the SIT1, Crayon Audio CFA-1.2 or Bakoon AMP-12R. I could pretty much predict that the latter two very fast wide-bandwidth types with their very low Z-out would only exasperate the issue. Perhaps getting the Alnico motors and voice coils up to standard room temps would fundamentally change the game? I was rooting for my first Davis Acoustics encounter to be a good one.


All it required was an open mind. And trusting personal experience over protestations on paper. Though I had to admit that the intermediate solution did challenge personal ideas like a sucker punch.