Great to see a review of these. I'm not too surprised at how good they sound. When I moved to Nanjing, China in 2004, I spent several evenings and and weekends looking for audio gear. It was a daunting task, as most of the locally made stuff was absolutely awful, although the speakers at least looked nice even though they sounded horrible. The electronics were a nightmare. ChiFi had most definitely not arrived in Nanjing at the time. There were a couple of stores selling imported speakers--I remember Bose and Bowers & Wilkins in particular, but at huge markups. Then I came across HiVi/Swans/Diva, courtesy of a life size poster of Frank Hale on the door of the shop. (it really was not clear from their English language material exactly what was the brand name, what was the model, etc., and some of the speakers in the same set had one name and some another.) I knew almost immediately that I had found my answer. I bought
this set, or one that looked just like it from memory and what I can see in my photos. I bought a Yamaha 5.1 receiver from a different dealer. It was their bottom of the line model, but it was the best thing he had and it sounded far far better than any of the Chinese amps. I paid somewhere around $600 for the speaker set, and that was only a 5% discount off full retail. Prices have apparently gone way up since then, or maybe it is the cost of shipping and additional people in the distribution chain. I happily listened to them for the 2 1/2 years I lived in Nanjing--usually just in 2 channel mode. That was the single best audio bargain I have ever encountered.