The new Yello ‘Toy’ got the cones going making a creditable bass line with the threatening voice filling the room. It’s when we get to complex harmonic multi layering with big spatial effects – that’s when ears get pulled in by single point drivers.

These Pluvia 11 have the aerospace metal cone and so it does rasping brass very well, and it does piano well with hitting hammers, and drum skins scraped or thumped with nice cymbals attack and shimmering decays, and jazz saxes singly and en masse, and plucks of strings and Sitar!

‘Land of Gold’  by Anoushka Shankar and esteemed friends turned under the Hana SL coils and a heaven full of gorgeous complexity and miniscule details placed way way back in the depth of the mix to delight and beguile as the lack of comb effect  or phase or timing errors is obvious in its very absence.

This is its strength.

Susanne Vega breathes in audibly and offers poetic words wet with saliva on the close miked solo ’Toms Diner’.

If the ambience of the studio or concert room has been recorded influencing  the music then you will hear as on ’Live in Amsterdam‘ – whilst Beth’s sess’s are nicely controlled even when Bonamassa’s searing guitar soars shrieking over a slamming rhythm section at the same time.

The essence of music is mostly in the midrange so onto piano of course and Shostakovich’s concerto 1, a favourite test (vinyl/Alexeev/ECO 1983). Emotion and its expression is what we crave and applaud. These little drivers, overall 17cm, in biggish cabs gave their hearts to this demanding dynamic drama. The speakers became absent; the performance was the music not the kit. Yes I’ve heard more expensive reproduction of this but there is something intimate about single point source ‘full range ‘ cabs that makes for extended listening sessions, when that ‘put on another’ feeling outstrips that ‘pour another one’ thought.  So you reach for London Grammars ‘Hey Now’ to find that the heavy bass does not affect the voice clarity, indeed it’s rendered with new nuances of inflexion and to Transvision Vamp  ‘If Looks Could Kill’ for a successful 1990’s vibe. The pitter patter of rain from a Japanese test CD pulls you in fascinated then scares with its explosive lightning – very satisfactory.

Rob and Dave Stevenson