Hi,
With due apologies to the real reviewers out there, I would like to post some remarks on what is in almost all respects the best speaker I have ever had the pleasure of owning. I received the NuForce S-9 standmounts just over a month ago, and although a quarter of it was spent burning in new parts -- plus I haven’t been able to give the S-9s nearly as much attention as I would like, due to work – I felt I couldn’t keep quiet about them. So here are some initial impressions, if you will.
My speaker history: I purchased a pair of Magnepan MG1.6 planar speakers about two years ago, and although they were far from perfect I kept holding on to them. A litany of dynamic speakers have also passed through my system over the years -- Dynaudio Audience 52, Quad 21L floorstanders, ACI Sapphire XL, Spendor S3/5se, Triangle and Paradigm standmounts, etc. – but in every case some inconsistency would spoil the mood. To take some of the above speakers as examples: the Dynaudio standmounts were too forward in the upper-midrange, the Quad 21L too bright in the mid-to-upper treble, the ACI standmount by contrast too subdued in top octave, and the Spendors a bit bumped in the low-treble. It wasn't just the frequency aberration that bothered me: there was also something "out-of-character" about the aberration itself. I liken it to an over-enthusiastic child singing carols with adults -- and vice versa -- or when one instrument in a string quartet is strung with metal strings when the rest are using gut. I despaired of ever finding a dynamic speaker that had the same consistency of character throughout the frequency range that Magnepans are spectacularly and naturally endowed with.
At the same time, the Magnepan MG1.6s are by no means free of blame. Their main claim to notoriety is brightness in the low-to-mid treble, coupled with a slight shyness in the top octave (the Maggies have other faults as well, but the treble infractions are the most audible). The *character* of Maggie treble is the same as the rest of the speaker, there's just too much of it. If I tried to bring down the overall treble level using an attenuating resistor, the sound became too dull. If I tried to bring the upper treble back with a bypassing capacitor, I started noticing the combined sound of the resistor+capacitor, even when I used very high-quality parts (like heat-sinked Caddock resistors). In any case, I could never get the compensation curve exactly right. It wasn't until I started dipping my toes into the waters of digital loudspeaker/room correction did I finally understand the extent of the problem. I will come back to this in Part 2 below.
So I found myself stuck with Maggies – no great burden, but still – and less-than-enamoured by any dynamic speakers I could lay my hands on. That's where things stood for awhile, until a few months ago when I walked into NuForce's offices in Milpitas, California to see two unusual and attractive standmounts in the listening room. They were the oval-ish prototypes of the S-9 speakers, but even then the sound was simply spectacular. When I subsequently found out that the fundamental design was due to Bob Smith (of SP Tech) I stated categorically to Jason and Casey that I would purchase these speakers as soon as I could afford them. Luckily, a couple months later an S-9 demo that had been making the rounds in Hong Kong became available. They were shipped back to Kingsbury, Indiana for Bob to bring up to production-level specs -- in particular a new tweeter was installed and the XO modified to compensate -- and I received the finished speakers a couple weeks ago. They've been playing 24/7 since then, although to my ears the speakers were fully burned-in at around 250 hours. By this time I had also moved to Boston and my listening room increased in size from a piddling 10w x 12l x 7h to a rather larger 14w x 17.5l x 9h. In Part 2 I allude to how this changed the relative strengths and weaknesses of the speakers I had on hand.
Sound Quality
The S-9s are supreme speakers: in most ways they are laughably better than anything I've tried before and easily comparable to any speaker I've heard, anywhere. They just sound right from the get-go, almost anywhere in the room. Because they sound so realistic and true to the music, it almost seems a crime to break down the S-9s' performance. Where to start? Well, from the midrange up, they display three concurrent traits: outstanding detail, sublimely-balanced frequency response, and a complete lack of fatigue. The first -- detail -- is marvelously independent of the S-9s' ability to sound musical. In my experience, the best speakers don't sound overtly musical or detailed: they just sound realistic. This is the case with the S-9. Somehow these speakers reproduce all the emotion in the music yet play the detail game with the best analytical systems. When I first listened to them casually, all I heard was music, real instruments, frighteningly-alive voices, etc. I would have been happy with just that, yet when I later sat down and listened more carefully I was caught off-guard by all the additional information the speakers were reproducing. You can definitely hear the studio monitor heritage of these speakers, in the best sense possible.
This happy marriage of musicality and detail was just the first of several new experiences for me. The S-9's neutrality and coherency was the second. In a sense, listening to the S-9 was an educational experience. I don't think I've ever heard a truly flat speaker, and to be honest it was a bit underwhelming at first. I live in an apartment and out of a sense of social responsibility I very rarely listen to my music at realistic volumes. At the very low volumes I listen to normally, the S-9s can sound a little boring. After all, Fletcher-Munson curves exist for a good reason. On the other hand, while the Maggies sound more lively at these volumes -- probably due to their brightness – the planars get a bit prickly as you turn up the wick. Heck, they sound a little tense even when played quietly! By comparison, the S-9 really come into their own when the volume goes up, and more importantly, they get loud seemingly without limits. You just want to keep cranking it higher and higher, and all the S-9s do is become bigger-sounding. They don't suddenly start turning hard or brittle, or get brighter, honkier, or boomier: they simply never lose composure. Those of you who own high-quality headphones will understand what I mean when I say that headphones spoil you for volume: you can keep the turning up the music louder and louder and the sound never gets harsh or distorted, just more magnificent. That's why headphones can be dangerous for your hearing: you don't have the usual driver break-up cues to tell you that you might be pushing things too far. The S-9s are uncannily like headphones in this respect, and will likely satisfy the demands of those who like to finish listening sessions with the sweet aftertaste of tinnitus. More to the point, I’m 100% confident that the S-9 will produce all the symphony-level dynamics that some crave, assuming they have the amplification to support those volumes.
I mention headphones: the S-9s are the first speakers by a country mile that have equaled my headphone setup in the ability to sound realistic. It is simply amazing to have neutrality and transparency in three drivers to match that of a single driver, extremely low-distortion device such as the Sennheiser HD600 or Etymotic ER-4S. Furthermore, I would've thought my Magnepans would have trumped the S-9 in speed: not a chance! The Magnepan's may have the theoretical advantage in the lightness of their drivers, but what speed they may have now seem hidden by their frequency deviations. What sounds fast -- due to brightness, for example -- doesn't translate to actual detail. Furthermore, there is a simplicity to the sound and a touch of grain with the Magnepans that become obvious when compared to the ultra-detailed and sophisticated S-9s.
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