This story begins on 9 December 2010 in Hamburg. Paolo Tezzon has travelled from Italy to oversee the installation of a dream loudspeaker at the Audio Reference showroom. Hours pass, and the squirrel struggles to find food. Over dinner together, the affable Italian recounts the story behind his creation and becomes noticeably quieter as the evening progresses. We think we detect tiredness – and we are completely wrong. At 11 pm, Tezzon explains that he wants to return to the listening room to carry out the final tuning. Professionalism, motivation and seemingly inexhaustible energy – these are not just for show, they are part of his character.
A change of scene. Fifteen years later, in the city of Brescia in the northern Italian region of Lombardy. The same man, in new company: Paolo Tezzon has taken up a position at the loudspeaker manufacturer Diapason, a company that has stood for a very specific sound philosophy for decades. Owner Alessandro Schiavi and Tezzon have known each other for a long time – but it was only the prospect of creating new products together that has now brought the two of them together as a team.
Alessandro Schiavi himself is a man who developed a passion for sound at a young age. As a teenager, he began recording concerts – an exercise that soon confronted him with a fundamental question: which loudspeaker is capable of truly bringing what has been captured back to life? The search for an answer remained fruitless for a long time. So Schiavi did what sound enthusiasts do: he built his own loudspeakers. And he did so using a method that still defines the core of the Diapason brand today. His early designs were created entirely on the basis of auditory perception – not according to measurements, not according to frequency response curves on graph paper. For him, the ear is the ultimate yardstick. That the Italian could not have been wrong in this decision was demonstrated to him by prospective buyers enquiring about his loudspeakers.
What emerged from these beginnings over the decades is today the core of the Diapason brand: loudspeakers that obey the ear rather than technical parameters. An approach that Paolo Tezzon has also taken to heart. He learnt his craft from Franco Serblin, undoubtedly one of the most significant figures on the global high-end scene. His apprenticeship with Serblin left its mark; Tezzon is able to view sound transducers from various perspectives, and serious engineering is naturally part of that.
The two Italians clearly had no intention of marking their joint debut with modesty. With the new Didascalia model, Diapason is aiming straight for the very top segment – the dream loudspeaker in the truest sense of the word. An instrument of this calibre is not something you can just whip up overnight. Behind the Didascalia lie years of development, precision craftsmanship and an uncompromising vision of how music should sound.
It was precisely this claim that i-fidelity.net wanted to get to the bottom of. The editorial team travelled to Brescia to gain a first-hand impression of the company’s production and philosophy – and subsequently, in conversation with Alessandro Schiavi and Paolo Tezzon, to discover not only what lies behind the Didascalia, where Diapason is heading, and why some loudspeakers evoke emotions whilst others merely transmit frequencies. But first, let’s take a look at the production process.
