Below is the blow by blow of my original review of the nOrh prism 3.0's - the review actually takes place over a couple of days & I give my reactions to them over the initial break in period. . . .
They are a bit bright to start with. Also, they do much better in my room close to the wall - I originally just pulled my 9.0's off the subs & plopped the 3.0's down in the same spot & turned off the subs. Thin and bright. Ran them in for a couple of hours, brighness is toning down a bit. Moved them from 3 feet away from back wall to 6 inches away from back wall - much better, more balanced sound. They are sounding pretty good right now. The room I have them in right now is quite large and they are doing a decent job filling it without the subs. Impressive, considering the single woofer is so TINY. I'll keep running them in & report back later.
(time passes)
The 3.0's are still breaking in, but one area the 4.0's are pretty far ahead is volume capability - the 4.0's can play easily over 100db in my big room, but the 3.0's tap out at around 90db with bass heavy music, and about 96db w/ non-bassy music. Still, very impressive for a 3 inch driver. In a small room I think you could pair them with a small 8 inch sub & have very good full sound. Also, if you cross them at 80 or (preferably) 100hz they will play louder.
(more time passes)
Ok, ran them in all day today with loud bass heavy music (just put Madonna's Ray of Light CD on repeat while I went to work). Now, they are indeed sounding much smoother. Overall I have to say that they are true to the nOrh sound, and for using such a tiny driver they are able to put out a suprising ammount of bass and volume. The main differences between the 3.0 and marble/ceramic 4.0 is the bit of warmness in the mids that seems to be very common with wood enclosures, but the 3.0's seem to be less colored in this area than most speakers anywhere near their price. The main areas they lose out to the 4.0 is the bass is not as strong, they don't play as loud, they are more 2 dimensional in soundstage and presentation of individual instruments. Not so much in the mids, as mids are where the 3.0's really excel, but more in the bass and highs - highs are a bit directional and the bass tends to have the more 2 dimensional quality I mentioned. So, those are the (relative) weaknesses - what about their strengths? Well, if you keep it under 90db, they are amazingly linear. If you put them close to a rear wall & not too far apart you get actually very good imaging(an equilateral triangle setup works very well, while an obtuse triangle, very wide apart setup on the speakers really thins the sound). Set up as described, I could actually hear the fingers snapping moving from side to side as she swings her arm (Patricia Barber "She's a Lady" on Modern Cool). That was very cool indeed. Also, mids are just spot on, even if you get up and move around. Female vocals are beautiful (Pat Barber, Jewel, Holly Cole). Male vocals are also very good (Merle Haggard, Johnny Lang). But to me, the biggest suprise was how well they handled orchestral music, the Beethoven Violin concerto in particular. I figured this piece would really show the 3.0 with glaring weaknesses in 2 areas - reproducing the violin and scaling to produce a big sound for large orchestral music. But the violin was quite well produced - a little sweetened perhaps, but very enjoyable. And if the volume is kept to 85db or less, they actually we able to scale quite nicely on crescendo's. What was missing is the one area that the 3.0's are weak - mid and low bass. There is zero mid bass or lower. They do upper bass well, and don't attempt anything below that at all. Probably for the best, as I am sure they would not sound anywhere near as good trying to do much mid bass.
So, overall at this point I have to say that they are not quite as good as the 4.0, but on their own, the 3.0 is quite a nice little speaker. I really don't think it was designed to compete with the 4.0 in the loudness/dynamics/impact areas, as the 4.0 is a signifigantly larger speaker. The 3.0 is probably best used in a bedroom system, or an office system, or even as replacments for computer speakers. I think they are meant for the person either just getting in to high end sound that is severly space limited or has a very small budget. Or, as a speaker for office/bedroom/computer systems for people that are "spoiled" by the sound of their truly audiophile main system and want something that gives them a similar quality in these small systems.
The problem I see with most of the speakers in this price range are they are either too big for some people or applications (paradigm atom, Acoustic Energy Aegis 1, NHT SuperZero), or they sound like crap (Paradigm Micro, Energy Take 5, Gallo Acoustics Micro, B*se). If you want small and good sounding, the 3.0 is a great fit. Just don't expect it to fill huge rooms or have thunderous bass. . . .
Also, remeber that I am a bit of a bass head. For example the 7.0 and 9.0 did not produce quite enough bass to satisfy me, so I got the nOrh subs to add the extra depth and punch.
