Stuart Smith of Hifi Pig first heard the Courbet N°8 at a hifi show in Paris, playing through French Jadis amplifiers, and called the pairing "one of the sonic highlights of the show." Look at any Davis speaker and you'll see a yellow cone in the middle of the front panel. It's the brand's signature, and the yellow circle in the company logo stands for it. Davis has made that cone from Kevlar since its first driver in 1986. Kevlar is a woven fiber that is light and very stiff, so the cone starts and stops quickly and holds its shape. In several Davis speakers that one driver covers the middle of the range, where, as Neven Kos of hifimedia notes, much of the music happens. Olivier Visan of Davis told 6moons that Kevlar gives "a lot of information, especially in the mid frequencies," and Kos found piano, vocals and strings "fantastic" on the Courbet N°7. Davis suits listeners who care most about voices and acoustic instruments.

Start with the Krypton 6, which Tomasz Karasiński of StereoLife called "the product that many, many music lovers need right now." It's a slim three-way floorstander for small and medium rooms. Its port faces forward, so it can stand fairly close to the wall behind it, and Karasiński says not to be surprised if the bass only starts to boom when the plinths are about 10 cm from the wall. It's efficient enough for tube amps, but he advises against saving on electronics and suggests an amplifier with a slightly warm, deep sound. For a bigger room, Kos recommends the Courbet N°7, and he got his best depth with it pulled well out from the back wall. If you want a stand-mount, the Courbet N°3 is easy to drive, and Valentin Lefort of Son-Vidéo.com says 20 watts is enough to make it sing. Whatever you choose, give it space. Smith set the N°8 at least a meter from the walls and found it came alive with a good amp and the volume up.

Michel Visan loved jazz, trained as an electromechanical engineer in the 1950s and began designing loudspeakers and drivers at the French company Vega in 1960. He founded Davis Acoustics in 1986, and it was among the first companies to make drivers from Kevlar, carbon and fiberglass. At first it sold only drivers and kits. The Kristel kit of 1991 is still on sale, Davis says, and the first finished speaker, the DK200, followed in 1993. Davis says Michel designed the 20DE8, a wideband driver with an alnico magnet, for the brand's 25th anniversary in 2011, and it calls the driver the culmination of his career. The 20DE8 is the single driver in the MV One. Olivier Visan has designed every Davis model since the Nikita of 2005, Davis says. The company also builds drivers for other speaker makers, and in 2019 Srajan Ebaen of 6moons counted a catalog of some 300, supplied to brands including Goldmund, Jadis and MBL.