Piega Coax Gen2 611 loudspeakers

Whilst Swiss brand Piega is a name familiar to a number of audiophiles in the UK, comparatively few have heard a pair of their speakers. This is not to say they are not impressive sounding devices; it is merely that until now, they have not had the distribution and dealer network in the UK they deserve. Thankfully for both Piega and UK music lovers, that situation changed last September, following their partnership with distributors Henley Audio. I lost count of the number of visitors at this year’s UK Audio Show in Daventry who listed the larger of the two rooms from Henley Audio, whose system included these very speakers among their top three favourites. Therefore, it was not a hard decision when Simon Wilce asked me to review these speakers as my first piece for this site.

Piega has been making loudspeakers since 1986. It was founded by Kurt Scheuch and Leo Geiner, who continued to run the company until 2018 when Leo’s sons Manuel and Alexander took over. The company’s speakers are designed and built in-house at its impressive facility in Horgen, which overlooks Lake Zurich.

The Piega Coax Gen2 611 differs from most competitors in that it has an aluminium cabinet. As a cyclist, I can confirm that this material is lighter than most metals, but it is certainly more costly to manipulate than wood. This helps explain the cost of £14900, which brings certain performance expectations. My samples included the outrigger feet, which, at £450 per speaker, took me a little by surprise as, for me, they are essential to the speaker’s stability for these tall and slim models. Having said that, at least buyers who plan on using something like Townshend Podium bases as an alternative will have the option to save funds by not ordering the outrigger supports. Being a sealed rather than ported speaker combined with the cabinet’s inherent low colouration does mean the Coax 611 can be used closer to the rear wall than is the case with many speakers.

The standard colours are the raw aluminium you can see here, black or white. Eight custom colours are also available, including funky hues such as Bordeaux Red and Desert Gold.

Build And Design

Aluminium may be lighter than steel, but this does not mean that the Piega Coax Gen2 611s are lightweight speakers. At 45kg each, they were not the easiest to unpack and locate, but thankfully, their shape and hardiness compared to the polished wooden speakers I often handle did not prove to be quite the chore that I feared. The metal grills helped here as I did not need to be as careful as usual of where I placed my fingers.

Once in position, I was impressed at how they integrated into my living room. I am taller than most listeners, so the 611’s height of 117cm proved ideal. At just 21cm wide and not unduly deep at 31cm, these proved less obtrusive than many speakers that I have hosted recently. I fitted the supplied footer bases but decided not to use the supplied spikes, which most now accept couple speakers to the floor, rather than isolate. The Piega Coax Gen2 611 is rated as a 4-ohm load with a 90dB 1w/1m sensitivity. The frequency response is quoted as 32hz to 50Khz. Whilst I have no method of measuring the latter, listening results suggested that the former figure is correct.

Viewing the photos, you could be forgiven for thinking these Piega speakers have five bass units—well, they do and don’t. The top two 160mm UHQD woofer drivers from SEAS are active, whereas the lower three of each speaker are passive radiators. What sets the Coax Gen2 611s and the rest of the range apart is the Coaxial Ribbon C112+ driver. As suggested by the name, this unit covers two functions – both high and mid-frequencies. The C112+ is a ribbon design, which has a wide dispersion and covers an impressive range of frequencies from 400Hz up to 50kHz. Piega describes this unit as a point source, and as you will read later, their abilities in areas such as imaging and timing appear to back up these claims.

I touched on the metal grills earlier, and they are a real novelty. A magnetic tool is provided to help remove and replace them. Whilst I was wary of damaging the grills by bending them whilst doing this, the technique recommended in the accompanying booklet worked well, and I appear to have been successful. Removing them proved beneficial to performance, but leaving them in place could prove a godsend to those with young kids or pets.

To the rear of these teardrop-shaped speakers is a pair of bi-wire terminals. Thankfully, they were supplied with high-quality wire links rather than the performance-limiting metal links I often see, so kudos to whoever is responsible.

The cabinets feel impressively dead and pass the knuckle wrap test with aplomb. Piega is proud of its method of cabinet bracing, which it calls TIM2 (Tension Improve Module 2+). This system involves tensioning the cabinet walls to reduce resonance, which my subjective experience suggests is highly effective.

Performance

…. I was hearing details I had never heard before through these speakers

Fortunately, I had the Audia Flight FLS1 and FLS4 pre-/power amplifiers on loan while the Piaga Coax Gen2 611s were with me. At 380wpc into 4 Ohms, power was not an issue, and they controlled the bass of these speakers with ease. My listening source was a Melco N1-S38 server paired with a Moon 780D DAC. The digital cable was from Network Acoustics, the analogue was from Townshend Audio, and the mains was from Titan Audio.

From the outset, these speakers sounded very clean, had precise imaging qualities, and proved unfatiguing. At first, I felt they were holding back a little, but after a few days, they loosened up and proved to be incredibly fast, open and well-resolved. Despite the obvious speed of this speaker, the music is not thrown at you in a forward manner, with the balance providing close to neutral, with just a touch of warmth. Driver integration is superb; these Piega’s proved both temporally and tonally coherent across a wide range of music. The low frequencies not only impress with their speed; the bass is full, deep and well-controlled.

The 611s make for easy partners for long listening sessions. The key to this is their resolving powers, which give you the detail and the information behind it, as opposed to simply highlighting the leading edge as many competitors do, which can initially prove exciting but ultimately prove tiring. There are not too many systems on which you can enjoy Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti without focusing on its shortcomings, but this system, based around the Piaga 611s, managed to. Whilst they told me of the recording’s limited bandwidth and coarseness, they clearly reproduced the band’s virtuoso playing and telepathic interplay. Cymbal strikes on the track In My Time Of Dying, which can often sound splashy and edgy, were well resolved, and these speakers told me how hard John Bonham was hitting them. The coherence of the musical picture was superb, allowing me to follow each instrument and overdub during Trampled Underfoot. Here, the 611s revealed the mastery of John Paul-Jones’ keyboard playing, which remained clearly defined even during the densest part of the mix.

Moving on from this often-difficult Led Zepplin recording to my sublime MoFi SACD rip of Dead Can Dance’s Into The Labyrinth gave me the finest rendition of this album I have heard to date. Naturally, the soundstage was huge in all dimensions, but it was the texture, inner detail and sublime timing displayed by these speakers that proved so compelling that I had no choice but to play the whole album through in one sitting. Most systems can reveal enough ambient information during tracks such as The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Emmeleia to inform that this album was recorded in a chapel. Such is their resolving power; the Piaga Coax Gen2 611s made this clear during the busier tracks as well.

Idris Muhammad’s Power of Soul (CD rip) is an album that I have been listening to a lot this year. My favourite track on this album is the final one, Loran’s Dance, which was a good choice to help demonstrate the talents of these speakers from Piega. The sense of interplay revealed by these speakers was off the scale, as was their impeccable timing. Grover Washington Jr’s saxophone can often sound somewhat piercing during the track’s busier passages, but not here, where it was exceptionally well resolved.

My favourite King Crimson album often changes, but their 1973 offering, Larks’ Tongue In Aspic, is right up there. I have various masters of this album, but I tend to listen to my DVD-A rip of the 40th Anniversary edition the most. This album taxes a system to its limit; it requires speed and timing accuracy, a powerful rendition of dynamics and transients, a powerful and clean bass, along with a clean and well-resolved top-end, all of which the Piega Coax Gen2 611s took in their stride, and some. Despite having listened to this album through many systems I was hearing details I had never heard before through these speakers.

I have been a fan of PJ Harvey since I was a teenager, although, unfortunately, I have only seen her play live twice; the last time was back in 1995 at the Glastonbury Festival. Her album White Chalk is probably the album I listen to the most. It should sound ethereal and atmospheric, but many systems make it sound a little too thin and bleached, destroying its beauty. These speakers from Piega proved the perfect foil for this album. The Piega Coax Gen2 611’s ability to flesh out each thread within a recording was key here. Naturally, the rest of the system did its part, but the 611s revealed it.

Conclusions

… the Piega Coax Gen2 611 is an end-game speaker that I find hard to criticise

Speakers, more than any other component in a system, tend to have strengths and weaknesses, but I am struggling to find any of the latter, at least not in my room and system. Their combination of speed, accurate timing, finesse, and superlative imaging is hard to find elsewhere. I have hosted speakers that produce deeper and fuller bass, but the Piega’s low-frequency performance is so fast and in tune with the rest of the frequency spectrum, so detailed yet powerful when required, that I must declare it perfectly judged. For those with larger listing rooms, there is the larger Piega Coax Gen2 811, which retails for £26400 and shares many of the features of the 611 but has a larger cabinet and bass drivers. For the average UK listening space, the Piega Coax Gen2 611 is an end-game speaker that I find hard to criticise. I will certainly miss having these speakers around when the time comes to return them. I suggest putting the Piega Coax Gen2 611 at the top of your shortlist if you are searching for a speaker in this market area.

Specification and Distribution

The full specification for the Piega Coax Gen2 611 is here.  Henley Audio is the UK Distributor here.