The Solo is a tall three-way floorstanding loudspeaker from Davone of Denmark, drawn by Paul Schenkel and recognisable by its slender teardrop cabinet with complex curves, carried on an oval floor stand intended to keep cabinet resonance down. Ten years after its introduction Davone updated it as the Solo-R, which keeps the driver sizes and cabinet layout of the original Solo but fits new drive units taken from the company's Reference line. Davone does not publish official European pricing, and the standard Solo has been priced at USD 9,000 per pair in the US.
Key specs that matter
The current Solo-R combines an 8 inch woofer, a 4 inch midrange and a 25 mm tweeter, split at 240 Hz and 2.6 kHz. The rated response runs from 30 Hz to 30,000 Hz. The speaker is a 4 ohm design that drops to a 2.5 ohm minimum at 450 Hz, with 89 dB sensitivity at 2.83 V and 1 m and a recommended amplifier power of 100 to 200 W. Each cabinet is 109 cm tall, 38 cm wide and 38 cm deep and weighs 30 kg. Walnut and teak veneers have been offered.
Engineering and use context
Davone builds the ported cabinet from ten layers of form-pressed beech veneer, with multiple stiffeners inside. For the Solo-R update the woofer received a geometrically reinforced aluminium cone, the midrange a membrane woven from Kevlar and carbon fibre, and the tweeter a variable-thickness dome of aluminium-magnesium alloy borrowed from the Reference models. Earlier Solo pairs were also offered for use with the Davone wireless module, which adds its own digital sound processing to a passive speaker, so the model can move between a conventional amplifier system and an active setup.
Pairing
The impedance dip in the lower midrange is what matters most when choosing electronics. A solid-state stereo or power amplifier able to deliver steady current into low impedance is the logical match, and Davone's power bracket sets the output target. The low minimum together with the power recommendation rules out small low-powered valve designs.
Alternatives
Another Davone three-way floorstander is the Reference One, a 42 kg three-way with a 10 inch paper-cone woofer, a 4.5 inch Textreme midrange and a beryllium tweeter.