SOUND ALL AROUND

Moss Audio Piccadilly

“Cute and fun” might be one way to describe Moss Audio’s first line of speakers, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate, as the Moss Piccadilly speakers represent a shift away from today’s convention of assembly-line production for quick, reproducible results back to the painstaking hand-craft methods of old.

You see, every speaker is precision cut from a single block of solid resin (consisting of acrylic mixed with natural mineral powder), and then handpolished for the final gloss finish. The choice of using an acrylic composite material contributes largely to the quality of the sound the speaker produces, as it is both stiff and well damped, meaning you won’t get additional noises from the vibration of the speaker walls, and the speaker walls won’t flex easily making it solid enough for transport.

Because the speaker is circular in shape and faces upwards, the sound goes out fairly evenly in all directions, but you probably won’t want to be sitting too far away from it. We’d say it’s perfect for intimate listening sessions around a dining table, but not so much for a party situation where you’re trying to fill a room with sound.

In our testing, we found that the Piccadilly performed best with pieces that involved vocals, as the speakers display good warmth and clarity, with a sweet spot in the midrange. For example, on unplugged version of Hotel California by The Eagles, the vocals of Don Henley stand out with great presence and clarity, while there was good separation between the multiple backing instruments and the vocals.

The speaker manages to recreate the live atmosphere fairly well, but lacks just that little bit extra on both ends of the spectrum. Guitar notes lack that final bit of ring you get from a hammer-on or a pull-off, and the bass notes lack that last bit of thump that lend to the fullness of a bass note. It’s like a slightly mellow audio profile that stays firmly in the middle ground so that neither extreme troubles the speaker.

That’s an approach that lends itself well to general listening at all volume levels, and we certainly didn’t experience any distortion even at close to maximum levels. Critical listeners may begrudge the fact that some songs miss that extra bit of sparkle, but that’s perhaps asking too much of a single unit speaker this small and this portable.

TESTED & RATED

8.0

/10