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Residing in Southern France between Bordeaux, Biarritz and Toulouse, the latter peopled with AirBus contractors and thus a great resource for high-quality custom parts, the cultural appreciation for the aromas of edibles naturally impacts a company like Ocellia whose very roots end in grapes.

Whether it's castles, motes, cobble-stone alleys, the estate of Napoleon's wife converted into a spa, first-class restaurants occupying stone mansions with adjacent herb gardens - this locale breathes history and appreciation for it.

While the above images seemingly have nothing to do with audio, they relate most directly to the sound of Ocellia and where it is created. Or as Bernard Salabert put it, "we French can spend an entire hour discussing a recipe, whether to put the salt in before the water boils, while it boils or when it cools down". Details that matter are agonized over in a most artful way. What matters is decided by love and obsession.


In this case, it's a return to organic ingredients just like food. Eliminate all synthetics. Keep it simple. Overbuild the power supplies. Go for the very best parts. Stick to silver. Tune the output transformers to your own speakers. 16 ohms out, 16 ohms in. Since the speakers are tuned open baffles (though there is a back panel, the speakers are open at the bottom and the big dual-concentric has a rear hatch to add ventilation), the cabinet itself has to invert the phase of the rear wave to avoid cancellations. Naturally, that's not fully possible. Still, endless tweaking can maximize the effect. Salabert's wall is the golden rule by which Samual Furon measures his progress.

Because Samuel runs his own electronics and cables -- the only exception is his Garrard 301 in a custom plinth with PHY arm and Ortofon cartridge -- my in situ audition couldn't determine how much of the final sound benefitted from the purported elimination of MDI. Put differently, how would the speakers sound with regular cables and electronics? For that, a formal review in my own four walls is planned.

My visit to Panjas was simply to - ahem, determine the review worthiness of Ocellia's goods. For a small maker like Samuel Furon, arbitrarily dispatching review loaners which are based on design principles so contrary to the norm is nothing but a fool's errand. He hasn't been at a trade show with a complete Ocellia system reflecting the current status. Hence he was perfectly willing to arrange for my visit. He wanted to let me decide whether, based on what I heard, I wished to proceed further. Try first, commit later. Good thinking. And entirely unnecessary as it turned out.

The sound at Samuel's was stupendous. Based on my current listening room which is rather smaller than his, the big dual-concentric would seem overkill however. Using four of my own compilation CDs, Samuel's silver 8-incher with optional tweeter (mandatory to my ears) will be the one to be reviewed. It has more speed, detail and resolution though a bit less of that mysterious ease and humanity on voices the pater familias of the line espouses.

Though plenty loud in Samuel's capacious room, his single-ended amp was ultimately a tad too relaxed and limpid for my type of fare. It excelled on Baroque and vocals in general but softened the kind of drive and rhythmic tension I crave. For that, the push/pull monos were the ticket, driven from his prototype preamp in passive or active form. The former proved ultimately superior by putting a mere resistor in hand-built stepped mono attenuators in the signal path.


Between what I heard at Ocellia and PHY, I'm supremely comfortable to pronounce already that absent of ultimate bass extension and heft below about 35Hz, the Sound From Panjas was the most refined, non-mechanical, liquid, organic and resolved sound I've experienced yet. It was as though an entire system had been Indra-fied. That refers to the subtractive effect of Serguei Timachev's Stealth Indra amorphous metal interconnect. They remove common reminders of artifice you only recognize in their removal. Alas, there's only so much one or two interconnects in a system can accomplish. At Ocellia, this effect was multiplied logarithmically. Aural health food?

Neither was my wife immune to these charms, on music she too knew very well from home. Things were huge, juicy, immediate, palpable and micro resolution in the tone domain was plain intense. Whatever reviewer words du jour you'd like to throw at the experience, do. Having romanced various wideband drivers, these PHYs to me seem to operate in a different league than any Lowther, Fostex, Supravox, Eminence or Jordan I've heard thus far. Naturally, folks familiar with Western Electrics or Altecs will have a more suitable context. As Salabert put it: "Once a year [or every ten, I forgot this salient bit - Ed.], there's a demonstration in Paris where completely stock, unmodified vintage WE speakers and movie-house amps get played for a modern audience. Invariably, they're aghast. They've never heard anything like it. They had no idea hifi could sound that good."


If all this phase inversion of "Back To The Future" to "Forward Into The Past" has you leery and suspicious, return to your favorite high-power amp and multi-way speaker in the happy knowledge that you're with them times. If, however, you sense a strange premonition coming on, a visit to Panjas could be your future. Samuel Furon routinely has prospective buyers visit for degustation. Tasting, not testing. At what truly are modest prices for what you're getting once you see how persnickety involved this stuff is fabricated, this approach to business is best in many ways. It too is a return to a slower age when people interviewed boot makers and tested composers before they commissioning goods they intended to take to their graves to pass to their descendents.
Ocellia legacy models

Credit for the Ocellia electronics goes to Samuel's partner Jean-Pierre whom I didn't meet. His day job sees him in industrial radar electronics and his standards for what constitutes proper (military) fabrication methods are necessarily informed. After a visit to a famous transformer supplier had Samuel end up with humming transformers and no final satisfaction, Jean-Pierre got his wish. He now winds his own. As I can attest, this gargantuan iron is whisper quiet as it should be and runs cool to boot. Will these electronics be mandatory to recreate the intense Panjas aroma in Cyprus? To find out, I'll kick off my MDI investigations with a complete set of Ocellia cables. Having now enjoyed a few extended meals Southern France style -- leisurely over two hours -- I've learned that certain things are best approached relaxedly. I'm in no hurry in this case. From my own gut instinct and my darling wife's suggestive looks, the check book too might need a season or two to get stuffed if you catch zee drift. As I overheard Samuel's mother gush excitedly over dinner describing the edibles on display at the Barcelona outdoor market, this thing here isn't très chic. Leave that to Paris. It's super beau. That's all she said which I could follow. Thus, it shall also be enough for today. Except this teaser. The Ocellia sound -- front to back -- is very much like munching on some sun-ripened veggies and hand-made cheese from a crusty old farmer. The flavors are pure, earthy, deep and rich. And they go great with some Armagnac or pastis. Chin chin!
Ocellia website