Actually, invoking Ikea was a bit backwards of me. I got carried away a bit. The Eames lounger at left would have been more like. The only thing backward about the Twist is its rearfiring port. That gives the 7" fiber-blend mid/woofer added support down low to properly counterbalance the reach of the 1" anodized aluminium tweeter at the high end. By going with a steep 4th-order 24dB/oct. filter, designer Paul Schenkel meant to drive down the crossover point "which gives a very clear and open upper midrange without ever becoming aggressive". And as a two-way, the all-important midrange suffers no second filter as our average 3-way does. That must separate its central driver from the dedicated bass unit with a so-called high-pass. Most agree that fewer filters are better.


If you've been hip to the stylish Davone catalogue already, you'll want to know that this new model replaces the older Riva. If you hadn't heard of Davone before—they've been making speakers since 2007 and I reviewed their maiden Rithm in April 2009—that'll tell you nothing. So let's move right along. Davone boss Paul Schenkel is "an aeronautical engineer with a masters degree in physics, a background in acoustics and a deep passion for great industrial design". Better than anything else, the mere mention of these four disciplines explains all the important design influences which pooled into the Twist. For the rest, we must lend our ears. As Davone promise, their speakers sound as good as they look. Where old-timey audiophiles reading small-format paper magazines claimed immunity to looks which landed them in the basement man cave and turned audio into a lone-wolf pursuit, to modern buyers appearance is part of the performance equation. If it looks bad, that's a discipline where it doesn't perform. Why settle for half-assed if other options give you the complete package? To get twisty will likely mean that you've outgrown the Ikea phase and are prepared to allocate greater funds to individual purchases.