For all those who, like me, have never seen a heavy-load stair lift in operation before.

When asked about what lets his loudspeaker stand out of the crowd, the developer proves to be surprisingly supportive: By copy and paste, I could enumerate the linear excursions of the individual drivers and the distortion values at certain levels – as well as provide the respective translation of this information, which I oddly received in English. However, in my opinion this all says little about the qualities of the loudspeaker. What I find much more exciting in this context is Michael Plessmann’s statement of having combined what he believes to be the best loudspeaker technologies for the three frequency ranges to create a full-range transducer that operates at a level of highest grade in the disciplines of dynamics, linearity, velocity, high efficiency, three-dimensional imaging, time coherence and low distortion. For him, these technologies comprise a horn-loaded tweeter, an open baffle in the midrange and a pulse-compensated, sealed woofer, combined with a crossover of first-order.

I have already mentioned that the Pirol offers a high degree of sensitivity. According to Michael Plessmann, it converts ten percent of electrical energy into acoustical energy, which is much more than most other loudspeakers are capable of. Conductive thoughts upon the subject of efficiency can be found in the respective article written by Jürgen Saile. Still the question remains as to what happens to the remaining 90 percent of the electrical energy generated within the Pirol. At Soundspace Systems they have intensively dealt with how to dissipate excess energy in a harmonic and trouble-free way, the developer remarks. The cabinet is manufactured from a rigid three-layer composite material with a core made from bamboo. The interior is a ceramic shell that ensures the elimination of unwanted resonances. The outer shell can be individually selected in piano black or other colours, as well as veneered or solid wood, which is referred to here as resonant wood. The shape of the cabinet is intended to prevent standing waves and strictly follows principles of Feng Shui and the golden ratio. The Pirol features three main and two supporting modules: the tweeter module with its Tractrix horn, the midrange module, which is executed as an opened baffle, the sealed woofer module, the passive crossover module and, finally, the bass management module, which accomodates for the DSP and the amplifier. All five modules are seamlessly integrated into the enclosure, but functionally autonomous.