French manufacturer Davis Acoustics has been developing and manufacturing loudspeakers for 36 years. In 1990, Davis presented Kristel, the kit that really launched the brand. In 2002, it was with César, the first loudspeaker equipped with a 31 cm woofer, that the manufacturer from Troy set itself apart from the competition. After further milestones, in 2022, the brand launched the Davis Stellar, its new flagship, designed ‘from scratch’ using the company’s philosophy and expertise, with drivers that were 100% made in Troyes!
I wouldn’t take too many risks in declaring that the Stellar is the most accomplished loudspeaker ever developed by Olivier Visan, the boss of Davis Acoustics. It incorporates some unique technological advances, but above all it stands out for its very special design. Artistically leaning backwards, it is nevertheless absolutely stable. Firmly anchored to the floor by a cast aluminium base weighing just 20 kg, the Stellar seems to float in mid-air. This column is fitted with height-adjustable machined decoupling cones.
It arrives at your home protected in its flight case on wheels. Its original livery is lacquered black, but you can choose any finish you like for an extra €5,000 and three weeks’ lead time. That said, I’m sure you’ll be able to customise your speaker to your heart’s content. Davis offers a rich range of colours and textures: granite, glitter, acid, metallic, anything is possible!
On the rear panel, two substantial WBT NextGen screw terminals allow connection to your amplifier. Just above, you can see the decompression ports of the bass-reflex load in the low register. But it’s at the front that the show is complete.
The Stellar is a three-way loudspeaker equipped with three particularly well developed and totally proprietary drivers. Continuing on its technical path, Davis has opted for the latest generation of its cone tweeter.
In the 1970s, Davis founder Michel Visan, then technical director at Siare, designed the TWZ. This tweeter used not a traditional dome, but a cone made of cellulose pulp, then aramid fibre – a woven material, like the membranes of other ‘in-house’ loudspeakers.
It wasn’t long before Davis created the TW26K. This was followed by a double-ferrite version, found on the Kristel range, and a cellulose pulp model, the TW26G. In 2009, the new TW20K2FR was launched on the Karla. A model with a smaller diameter coil, capable of higher frequencies.
The Stellar’s tweeter is the latest version of a renowned transducer. To increase its transparency, a great deal of work has gone into the bonding between the diaphragm and the voice coil. The result is near-perfect linearity between 2,500 and 25,000 Hz.
What’s more, as the geometry of this tweeter resembles that of the midrange, it is easier to merge the midrange and treble registers.
The midrange frequencies are entrusted to a 17 cm diameter Kevlar™ cone driver with a decompressed aluminium chassis. This is an improved version of the excellent 16 GKLV6M. This time it has a super-powerful TiCoNAl magnet, which generates ultra-fast diaphragm acceleration, enabling transparent sound. The voice coil is mounted on a kapton support.
For bass, Olivier Visan opted for a 25 cm driver, ideal for this type of register. Its membrane is large enough to displace a lot of air, but light enough to withstand high accelerations. To achieve this, the membrane is made of carbon fibre. It was Michel Visan who first worked with this material to produce a hyper-rigid cone.
For this made-to-measure model, Davis had 10 mm thick field plates machined to a hundredth of a mm. The long winding ensures perfect control of the movement of the moving part, even during long excursions. The centring and return elements (small pleat and spider suspensions) have stiffness constants that are ideal for lowering the frequency, but also for containing its displacements.
To harmonise the operation of these excellent transducers, we obviously needed a crossover to match. And while designing and building your own loudspeakers naturally simplifies the task, the fact remains that the crossover for a three-way loudspeaker remains a challenge in terms of development.
In fact, during our visit to the factory, we were able to photograph a table covered with prototypes of the various stages in the development of Stellar crossovers. It’s quite impressive! Several dozen filters were made from some of the most transparent components on the market. Numerous in-depth listening sessions followed, leading to the creation of an appropriate filter. The midrange works over a wide range of frequencies (150 to 2,800 Hz). Each of the loudspeakers is used in its initial frequency range. It has little or no effect on the other transducers, because Olivier Visan has used steep filtering of up to 24 dB/octave. This means that there are very few overlap zones between each loudspeaker. The levels are designed to give a linear frequency response curve.
To optimise the loudspeakers and filtering, the internal cabling uses different sections of Van Den Hul conductors.
The set up
Although we first listened to the Stellars at the Munich high-end trade fair last May, it was in the Davis Acoustics auditorium in Troyes that we were able to sample them at length and in the best possible conditions. They were powered by the excellent Gryphon Essence power amplifier, to which was connected an Atoll ST300 Signature and Meitner MA3 DAC/network player/preamplifier. Cabling was handled by Esprit’s Eureka series. At Davis, the listening room is vast, comfortable and neutral, allowing the speakers to express themselves at very high volume without the slightest acoustic ripple. As a result, we were able to enjoy a very fine session in which a wide variety of musical styles followed one another with delight.
The sound of the DAVIS Stellar
After several minutes of uninterrupted listening to Stellar, the first notion that immediately springs to mind is ‘ease’. You listen to one track after another, and everything comes through with disconcerting ease. That’s it: Stellar speakers are easy, even facilitating. It’s an unusual compliment, but one we value highly. Nothing is more difficult than reproducing recorded music so that it flows naturally, as pleasantly as possible. There are a multitude of criteria involved. All the components have to be at their best for the reproduction to be at its best. Nothing could be more complicated! And yet, with Stellar, the notion of naturalness takes on its full meaning. Whether you’re listening to a complex work or a very simple one, at a totally unbridled sound level or virtually muted, you’ll be able to enjoy a result that’s as elegant as it is realistic. Listening to the wonderful Hadouk Trio disc recorded live at FIP, we are treated to a surprisingly clear, light and airy sound spectacle. The sound perfectly fills the listening room, which in this case is very large, without ever straining. ‘Effortless, easy, always easy’, as one of our listening companions said to us in Munich… And we understand! The percussion, the plucked and scraped strings, the perception of metal, the impact on the membranes, nothing escapes our ears. On our favourite Radiohead track, In Rainbows, the base is highly detoured, the voice powerful, modulated and soft. It’s all the more astonishing because we’re listening at a particularly indecent noise level. The drums hit us in the plexus, the physical sensations are Dantesque.
All this with a very nice stereophonic effect. On ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ from Massive Attack’s first album, the differentiation of planes in the sense of depth is very precise. You could almost count the layers of sound. Yet you can sense that the Stellars are asking for more. So the organiser of our listening session decided to connect an even more powerful converter, in this case a Meitner MA3. As a result, the Gryphon Essence amp seems to let itself go and delivers a muscular modulation controlled to the millimetre. The immediate lesson of this anecdote is that the Stellars deserve the best at every level, from the source to the amplification. Duly noted. There’s an obvious improvement in the way the notes are held, with considerably improved legato and a delightful sense of modulation. On the Police’s ‘Roxanne’, the rhythmic tracking is simply extraordinary, with an energetic strike and a lively chanted melody. On the inimitable ‘Walking On The Moon’, we’re treated to great depth, with a deep, nervous bass, a clear voice totally devoid of any extra thickness, and always a beautiful spatialization.
Our conclusion
‘What is well conceived is clearly stated, and the words to say it come easily’. Nicolas Boileau’s maxim sums up the Davis Stellar’s admirable behaviour in all circumstances.
As we said, these speakers are easy. And it’s very difficult to make sound reproducers that make listening to your favourite records so easy. It took an enormous amount of work by Olivier Visan and the team at Davis Acoustics to achieve this. A multitude of filtering, transducer and acoustic load tests were necessary to achieve such a natural balance. Because if there’s one quality that these speakers embody more than any other, it’s naturalness, and you can say what you like, but it’s the cardinal virtue of any good hi-fi system. Add to that the fact that the Stellars provide a hyper-wide sound spectrum without any compression, and that we’re dealing with a 100% French product, and we’re not far from the perfect equation. We loved these new Davis Acoustics speakers. They embody a kind of sonic perfection and prove that the manufacturer from Troyes can match the most ambitious designs. Highly recommended!
Author: Laurent Thorin
Technical sheet: DAVIS Stellar
- Origin: France
- Price : €35,000
- Dimensions : 330 x 1350 x 600 mm
- Weight : 100 kg
- Rated power : 20 W
- Maximum power: 300 W
- Efficiency: 91 dB
- Bandwidth (+/- 3 dB): 30-30,000 Hz
- Impedance: 8 ohms (5 mini)
- Filtering (cut-off): 300 Hz and 3,000 Hz
