Down to the Finest Detail

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The Driade Model 2S is a detailed speaker, but without being forced. Some speakers are tuned as if they are proudly saying to you ‘oh look at me bring out that tinkling triangle’. With the Driade, that is not the case at all. All the detail is there, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It is as if you have been to the doctor and had your ears sprayed out: suddenly you hear again the fine details you didn’t know you were missing, without having to make an effort.

Your own concert hall

With Prokofiev’s third symphony, even the most complex passages remain trackable. Your reviewer even heard details he never heard before. That is also because, with these speakers, you are instinctively sitting at a somewhat greater distance. It is as if you literally go back a few rows in the concert hall, giving you a better overview. For orchestral music, this is very pleasant.

In case of the strings of the Academy of St Martins in The Field with music by Vaughn Williams, it is indeed very balanced, but also somewhat distant. You really hear everything, the smallest nuances and details in the very soft passages. The sound of the violins is homogeneous, without it ever becoming sharp in the highs. But you are not carried away to higher realms on the ebb and flow movement in the music.

Good in the ear

The tuning of the Model 2S specifically takes into account how our hearing works, which is clearly the work of Arnold Heres. You notice it not only in the ease with which you perceive details, but also in the timbre and character of instruments which is as it would sound if someone were playing live in front of you. You do notice sometimes that the emphasis in the sound is different. For example in “Chaser” by Mammal Hands: the saxophone is more in the foreground, the repeating pattern played unison by the piano is more in the background, while they are usually on equal footing.

On a cinematic scale

The stereo image of the 2S is generous and large. In “A Caged Bird / Imitations of Life” by Cinematic Orchestra, this comes out: it is big, bigger, grand. A soundscape where you are immersed in the sound. But that only works if the production is good; Queen’s “Innuendo” falls through mercilessly.