the Davis Courbet 8 is the latest addition to the Courbet collection. It’s a beautiful loudspeaker using three exceptional drivers, all three manufactured in the Davis Acoustics factory in Troyes, France. Polar parts, magnets, metal plates, assembly of the salad bowls on the magnetic motors, gluing of the membranes to the moving coils… Throughout the manufacturing process, Davis Acoustics proudly claims that its design and assembly are 100% made in France. Now that’s rare enough to be worth mentioning!
Like all its siblings, the Davis Courbet 8 has a slightly sloping profile, to ensure optimum phasing of the different loudspeakers. It is available in a satin white finish with an oak base, but also in a more classic all-black version, and in two new versions, a midnight blue to great effect, and a granite grey which is the subject of this test bench.
The bass-reflex load of the 21 cm woofer is tuned by a cylindrical front port. The formula ensures solid reproduction below 40 Hz. The woofer is fitted with a reinforced carbon fibre cone, whose favourable weight-to-rigidity ratio prevents distortion during long excursion. Carbon fibre has been used by Davis for over thirty years, and is an expensive material used by the competition on speakers that are often more expensive.
At the other end of the spectrum, for the high register, we find the new TW28CD with very low distortion and an extremely concentrated magnetic field. This innovative tweeter features a 28mm damping dome made from silk weave coated with a polymer compound. This solution makes it possible to postpone the intervention of the first fractional mode beyond 26 kHz. It is coupled to a copper and aluminium coil with very low inductance and very low mass, giving an excellent impulse response. The magnetic circuit has been optimised by the use of high quality, oversized neodymium, which improves sensitivity across the entire band. Specific pole pieces ensure perfectly parallel field lines across the entire height of the air gap, which significantly reduces distortion. The rear of the tweeter creates a double decompression chamber, one in the shape of a blind tube whose closed load volume dampens and tunes the decompression, and a second peripheral chamber that decompresses the dome suspension.
Finally, the centrepiece of the system, the midrange is no stranger, being the same model as the Olympia One Master we tested in our very first issue. The 13 KLV5 R, a driver that has made its reputation for almost thirty years and has undergone many changes along the way, is equipped with a Kevlar membrane and a latex surface treatment. This little woofer has a 25 mm voice coil and a 102 mm ferrite, a gargantuan amount for a driver measuring just 13 cm.
The crossover is wired entirely in the air, with a direct component-to-component link and no intermediate wiring or printed circuit. This old technique avoids any loss of insertion by adding an intermediate conductor. What’s more, this absence of a necessarily resistive and capacitive electrical connection (printed circuit) guarantees real cut-off slopes identical to those calculated and defined by Davis. The internal wiring and the link to the single terminal block at the rear of the loudspeaker are made from Teflon PTFE insulated cables from the HiFi Câbles et Cie catalogue.
The crossover of the Davis Courbet 8 is fairly simple for a three-way, and uses very high-end components such as Mundorf MCap Supreme capacitors in series for the tweeter, SCR capacitors in parallel and RAH chokes for the midrange. The technical trick that makes all the difference is the choke on the woofer. This is doubled (so there are two coils in parallel) to reduce the resistivity of the coil and reduce the loss of dynamics due to the crossover. Finally, the midrange is filtered at the top and bottom, so this is a true three-way speaker, not a two-and-a-half-way. The midrange is filtered at 6dB per octave in the low frequency range, a gentle slope, and at 12dB per octave in the high frequency range, at around 2,500Hz. The speaker terminals are magnificent NextGen WBTs.
The set up
Davis is constantly upgrading its flagship Courbet line. The new Davis Courbet 8 is an imposing floorstander whose slope gives it an obvious elegance. But make no mistake, it’s an illusion to think that you’ll be able to use these speakers in good conditions in a room of less than 25m². In fact, we’d recommend at least 30m². Below that, the Courbet n° 7 will be perfectly suitable. The same goes for amplification. We started out with a McIntosh MA352 amplifier which, in use, didn’t prove to be the right partner to make the latest Davis sing. It was finally thanks to the Audio
Analogue Puccini Anniversary that the Davis Courbet 8 really came into their own. So choose powerful electronics with a good power supply. We tend to repeat ourselves, but the power supply is a crucial part of the amplifier. Dynamic, modulated electronics will be appreciated. So, in a nice room, keep the No. 8s away from the corners, and keep them close to the rear wall, albeit carefully, but not more than thirty centimetres away. We carried out this test with the kind complicity of Thomas (Davis Acoustics) and Alain (Elecson). Our warmest thanks to them.
The sound
The Davis Courbet 8 are speakers that hide their game well. A number of observers tend to confine them to the category of excellent RQPs. In our opinion, this is a totally simplistic view of the Trojan brand. Of course, the Davis models offer excellent value for money. But they do much more than that; they deliver magnificent sonic sensations. So we didn’t have to wait long to realise that the new Davis Courbet 8 were genuine high-end floorstanders. They prove it first and foremost thanks to a broad spectrum worthy of what you’d expect from a loudspeaker of this price. When listening to a large symphony orchestra, the low octaves are reproduced with exceptional conviction and above all serenity. These speakers are always at ease. You can tell immediately that they don’t need to force their way through. If we dared to draw an analogy with the world of cars, we could say that they demonstrate astonishing torque. They are always serene, never overwhelmed by events, even when the sound message becomes extremely complex, both in terms of density and rhythmic follow-up. With the Davis Courbet 8, you can listen loudly in a vast room without any loss of comfort or hardening of the sound.
Here again, the choice of amplifier, source and cabling will be essential. But with the right environment, these beautiful columns do the job masterfully. Comfort means homogeneity of the bandwidth, which in turn means a power of resolution worthy of the name and an absence of distortion. On both counts, the No. 8s perform optimally. So we can enjoy an extremely varied selection of different musical styles at both low and high levels. And once the analysis of their qualities is complete, it remains to appreciate their personality. Davis, especially since it began developing its Courbet line, has confirmed that it places listening comfort at the top of its priorities. We’ve been able to confirm this for several years now.
The French manufacturer endeavours to reproduce timbres with an obvious neutrality that never loses its softness. Davis’ hallmark lies in this smoothness served by a wide sound amplitude. This is a manufacturer that thinks big, and has always produced generous columns since the beginning of the range. With its No. 8s, it has shown us that it knows perfectly well how to push back the boundaries and take a high-end approach with no limits.
Our conclusion
As time goes by, Davis is maturing its offer with a great understanding of the market. We’re very fond of the Courbet line, and we clearly fell in love with the Davis Courbet 8. Not only is this beautiful floorstanding speaker a great success, but it also confirms that the manufacturer from Troyes has what it takes to occupy the field when it comes to high-end loudspeakers. It has shown this on many occasions in the past with the Kristel and the Karla. Here, it manages to offer us a very fine sample of the qualities of a very ambitious loudspeaker at a price that is certainly high, but which remains accessible to the demanding audiophile.
Author: Laurent Thorin
Technical sheet: Davis Courbet 8
- Origin: France
- Price: €5,700
- Dimensions: 235 x 1125 x 301 mm
- Weight: 33 kg
- Rated power: 150 W
- Maximum power: 200 W
- Efficiency: 92.5 dB
- Bandwidth (+/-3 dB): 35-25,000 Hz
- Impedance: 4 to 8 ohms
Crossover frequency: 250-2,500 Hz
