Tower Speaker Reviews

A Towering Achievement
Every time a new system is installed in my home theater, the usual skeptics and nonprofessional critics arrive for an audition. Sometimes they like what they hear, sometimes not. This time, the unanimous response was "This is easily the best system you've ever had here." Many of the verbatim responses were actually barnyard expressions inspired by the overwhelming size of the 3-dimensional aural picture and the airy, extended, detailed yet smooth, and oh, so palpable high-frequency response. Having big full-range speakers all around certainly helped, but more important was their sonic quality—and having a room full of those transparent, fast-sounding ribbon mids and tweeters was almost overwhelming.

Writing my "SACD/DVD-Audio" story for the January issue provided a great excuse to play a few dozen superbly recorded and transferred discs. The Grateful Dead's American Beauty, remixed for DVD-A by former Dead drummer Mickey Hart, sounded sweet and rich yet detailed and dynamic. The clarity and articulation of the acoustic guitars and mandolin made them sound about as close to real as recorded sound can get. The same with the cymbals, tom-toms, and snares, which had believable attack and decay, neither too soft nor too brittle.

Jerry Garcia's voice plus acoustic guitars and cymbals can add up to a clamor that generates harshness and glare through speakers that can't unravel so many musical strands concentrated in one band of the musical frequency range. But Piega's mid and tweeter ribbons did a superb job of presenting each instrument as a separate entity with individual tonal, textural, and transient characters. The fat-sounding kick drum on "Box of Rain" had just the right weight, air, and articulation. A few weeks of listening to music through this system and it was obvious that properly reproducing music was Piega's first order of business.

True 5.1-channel recordings, such as those made by AIX, which demonstrate how an enormous, coherent, and cohesive 3-dimensional soundfield can be generated, were made for systems like this. When I was properly positioned equidistant from the five main speakers, they flat-out disappeared, leaving just the airy space in which the recording was made, the instruments perfectly placed within. When I played the AIX discs, which are recorded live in some of the most acoustically superior halls in the world, the five woofers' bottom-end extension effectively re-created the volume of the hall, while the five tweeters' 50kHz response guaranteed the presence of all the air picked up by the microphones.

The Piega system was equally effective with movies. I watched scenes from Tron (I was there for the mix, so I know what's in it and how and where it's supposed to sound), as well as from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and a hi-def broadcast of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Not surprisingly, the system moved sound effects around the room with scary efficiency, transparency, and speed. I paid particular attention to pans across the front of the stage, since they have to work across the small P4 C Mk.II center-channel. They were seamless. Male and female voices were delivered naturally and transparently. I also watched many films that are not rich in sound effects, and the P4 C's transparency and lack of coloration let it simply get out of the way and not be heard.

Despite the delicacy and articulation of the Piega ribbon drivers, they weren't weak-kneed or polite when it came to dynamic, heavy-duty sound effects. This system did explosions, helicopters, and car crashes—especially in terms of suggesting size—as well as any I've reviewed, and it could play really loud without strain or compression. And the system's tonal and dynamic characters remained remarkably intact at late-night listening levels, as did its unerring transparency.

Beyond my enthusiasm for what it did correctly, I had no complaints about this expensive system, and I found no weaknesses. After taking into account the ribbon tweeters' probable limited vertical dispersion, I'd be surprised and embarrassed if the speakers didn't measure as well as they sounded. Anyway, I'm not sure measurements can do justice to such a system. You'll have to hear it for yourself.

Conclusion
Regardless of the name on the label, most speaker systems use the same few brands of dome tweeters. There's nothing wrong with that—only a few companies design and build their own drivers, and that in itself is no guaranty of quality.

But Piega SA has come up with an exceptional ribbon tweeter. It impressed me on my first short listen, and now, a few years later, after spending more months than I should have with a complete Piega system, it continues to impress, as does the company's ribbon midrange driver. I don't know of any reviewer or consumer who has heard these drivers and not been impressed.

But, more important, Piega has managed to integrate their mid- and high-frequency ribbons with traditional cone woofers in a truly exceptional-sounding speaker. At $9269/pair, the P5 LTD is not expensive by high-end audio standards, yet it possesses a formidable array of strengths, including subjectively flat frequency response with outstanding ribbon/cone-woofer integration, superb high-frequency extension, respect-able low-frequency response, and effective overall dynamic range and low-level dynamic scaling. Add very fine imaging and soundstaging, good depth development, and stunning transparency, and you have an exceptionally fine speaker for both music and films. You might find speakers with more meat, punch, and grip, but I doubt you'll find many with as beguiling an overall balance of strengths.

The compact, transparent, and effectively colorless P4 C Mk.II center-channel held up its end of the bargain, at least in my medium-sized space. I can only imagine how a larger version, with both ribbon tweeter and midrange units and a larger midbass driver, might sound.

The P Sub 1 subwoofer was a fine all-around performer, producing surprisingly deep, articulate bass from its small box. But if you're not short on space, you can probably get equally good if not better performance from other, less expensive subwoofers. You could also save money by using two P4 C Mk.IIs in the rear, or audition some of Piega's less expensive floorstanders, which make use of the same mid and HF drivers.

If you're ready and willing to spend $23,000 on a 5.1-channel surround system for a small- to medium-sized space, be sure to audition this one. I'm not sure if it was intended for large rooms, and I don't know its maximum SPL capabilities (which the company didn't specify). With the options I've mentioned, and by exploring the rest of Piega's extensive ribbon-driver line (not all Piega speakers have ribbons), you might be able to come close to the magnificent performance I heard for a great deal less money. In any event, don't pass up an opportunity to listen to this system—even if, like me, you can't afford it.