Ok, I guess it's review time.
I listened to them via my tube gear and as my home theater mains (w/ servo sub!) and in both set-ups they were a noticeable improvement over my Ninja'd AV123 X-series speakers. It seemed like a small improvement at first but the more time I spent listening to them the better they sounded.
The main difference between the N1X's and my AV123 speakers are the tweeters. The Neo tweeters are very nice sounding. They throw a very wide and detailed (but not hyper-detailed) soundstage with good depth. No sibilence issues. Just very smooth, clean and open.
I pulled one of the woofers (very carefully) just to confirm the crossover parts and I saw regular Sonicaps with Gen 2 bypasses, Mills resistors and Alpha-Core inductors. No Platinum bypasses which really surprised me as the N1X's sounded better than my platinum bypassed X-series speakers! I've always thought those Encore tweeters sounded their best with platinum bypasses but the Neos really are superior. I can't imagine how much better they would get
with platinums.
The other night I was flipping channels and came across some random weather channel on cable. It just had some instrumental music playing in stereo with the weather reports. I was about to change it when I recognized the beginning of the Peanuts theme music. I was dumbstruck by it because even though I've heard that music probably hundreds of times, I'd never heard it sound like a real performance before. All previous occasions made it sound canned like what most low-fi gear does to music. Now the instruments were beautifully separated and distinct and the pacing seemed more live. The bass really stood out and sounded like a stand-up bass! Awesome stuff indeed!
The final clincher on these involved my home theater set-up and an issue I've been having on rare occasions. My servo-sub amp sometimes emits a buzzing sound which seems to come from the transformer. It happens maybe once every 6 months. I usually just unplug it leave it for a day or so and when I plug it back in its fine again.
Anyway, it happend last week and I unplugged it as usual. Now I usually listen at low to moderate volumes and maybe once a month crank things up for a movie. Didn't crank it this past weekend but watched shows and played my xbox as usual and completely forgot the sub was off. My Outlaw receiver is set with the mains at 80Hz, the Voce center is full range and my X-LS surrounds are cut off at 60Hz. Maybe that says more for the Voce but the whole weekend I didn't miss my sub! It all sounded dynamic and detailed and just seamless. I just couldn't believe I had forgotten to plug the sub back in!
So after all that I'm a big fan of these speakers! I can only imagine what the OB-5/7's sound like! Or the O-3's!
As great as the N1X's are I'm already sold on the V1's. I'll be working on those over the next several months. I've got some ideas on how to finish the cabinets and make them truly unique!
Although I have to admit...
Those N3S' look really good too!
