y rewarding in the Divin Noblesse’s reproduction of the human voice. Vocals were projected into the listening room with palpability and presence. I was startled when I played the first track on Melody Gardot’s album Sunset in the Blue; her voice was projected between and in front of the speakers with vivid immediacy. Moreover, the Divin Noblesse revealed very fine nuances of expression, adding to the song’s impact. This track could serve as another example of the Divin Noblesse’s resolving power; the gently played acoustic guitar accompaniment in the background was portrayed with clarity in timbre, pitch, and dynamics on every note. Similarly, the speaker’s lively midrange rendered vocals more intelligible. This clearer articulation allowed me to hear nuances of vocal expression with newfound ease and clarity.
Before hearing the Divin Noblesse, I looked askance at the 8? midrange driver (most are 6? at most), particularly an 8? midrange coupled to an AMT tweeter. Nonetheless, after living with this speaker, I have no reservations about the design. In fact, I must conclude that the Divin Noblesse is, through the midrange and treble, the highest-resolution dynamic loudspeaker that I’ve heard in my listening room—its presentation of detail and palpability approach that of electrostats and Magneplanars.
That said, there’s a fine line between this presentation of rich musical detail and a bright, etched, and fatiguing sound. The Divin Noblesse walks right up to that line—but doesn’t cross it, in my judgment. This is a lively, exciting, upbeat—even thrilling—sounding speaker, but what kept the Divin Noblesse from veering into the realm of excessive brightness was the speaker’s purity, textural liquidity, lack of grain, and absence of metallic sheen (common to hard-dome tweeters). Significantly, the Divin Noblesse didn’t suffer from top-octave tizziness that emphasizes sibilance and imparts a synthetic sound to cymbals—a sound likened to that made by a spray can. The top-octave smoothness and liquidity (in addition to the finely filigreed resolution of detail) allowed the speaker’s midrange and lower treble to sound illuminated without the entire presentation deviating into excessive brightness. It’s a delicate balancing act, but one that the Divin Noblesse pulls off with almost miraculous ease. The 5.6? Mundorf Air Motion Transformer tweeter, here modified by Göbel and mounted in a custom waveguide machined from an aluminum block, is a spectacular transducer. It has tremendous life, air, light, extension, and speed, yet never sounds etched or fatiguing. Jonathan Valin’s evocative phrase, “illuminated from within,” which he first used to describe the sound of Audio Research electronics, came to mind.
These qualities rendered music with an upbeat sense of life and energy. When Joe Pass comes in for the last solo on the track “Contractor’s Blues” from the Count Basie LP 88 Basie Street (original Pablo LP), his hard-swinging entrance prompts the band to kick up their game to meet him. A few bars into the solo, the drummer emphasizes the rhythm with rim shots that lock in the groove, taking the energy to the next level. The Divin Noblesse reveals, with tremendous alacrity, these kinds of nuances of musical expression.
Another virtue of the Divin Noblesse’s lively upper midrange is its clarity of line and ability to resolve individual instruments and notes without smearing or congestion. The album Mirror Mirror by Brazilian pianist Elaine Elias is a series of piano duets alternating between her and one of her two musical idols, Chick Corea and Chucho Valdés (the album won the Grammy in 2021 in the Best Latin Jazz Album category). The at-times fiery interplay between the two musicians could sound confused or congested through a lesser speaker, and the energetic Latin rhythms diluted by less-than-precise articulation of each note. The Divin Noblesse beautifully portrayed the two 9? grand pianos as separate instruments, and in doing so, revealed the marvelously sympathetic interplay between Elias and Valdés or Corea. Each track was recorded live in the studio with the pianos facing each other; the Divin Noblesse wonderfully recreated the sense of spontaneous occasion of these remarkable performances.