[Redheart]

I wanted to start a dedicated NX studio impression thread where all the owners could share their experiences with that speaker.

I will start off but please excuse the English as it's not my first language.

I just finished my pair yesterday and I have been playing them with a Aiyima A07 amp that is a small Classe D amp and braided 16 strand copper speaker cable from AliExpress.

At first at first i forgot to put the insulation fiberglass although I have bought it already, brand is Monacor polyfill.
But as everything was put together i fired them anyway.

For the resume of this first impressions i would say these are a perfect pair of speaker for nearfield studio monitoring and I guess Danny designed them in order to emphasize that very nature.

I noticed that the lower mids were slightly warm right away and my suspicions were confirmed that it was caused by the lack of polyfill inside the cabinet as per the design required, because when I opened them to insert the insulation, the sound got to transform quite frankly and cleanup that low mid area pretty much perfectly.

One thing that struck me is the outstanding imaging. When in the perfect center position and the head located at the tip of an equilateral triangle, the center point is rock solid and holographic. Every mixing panning details is clearly heard, the stability of the stereo imaging is something i have just never heard so stable and clear.

On top of that, the instrument separation is also out of this world, it must be due to the high quality crossover parts and design.
Together with the stereo imaging this is realizing an perfect mixing tool that just every mixing engineer would drool for.

Because of the lack of top case, this speaker has a very nice vertical axis spread, and music is enjoyable from a very broad vertical field.
I also noticed right away that a quality of this speaker is that the sweet spot is very broad. I heard a lot of boxed speaker designs and the slight misalignment from the center axis will destroy the imaging as only one speaker will dominate the hearing. Also I found that large panel speakers like Magnepan will have a blurry stereo imaging, meaning you couldn't pinpoint instruments anymore, but like the NX studios will benefit from a broad listening area. Well the NX studio benefit from the pinpoint imaging of narrow faced boxed designs and the large listening area of large panel electrostatic speakers. Pretty impressive when you think about it!

As for the voicing, i will say that although the frequency response is flat, there is a sense of sparklyness, that is subtil but there nonetheless, and it gives life and details for the cleanness of the instruments separation and it adds to the very lifelike presentation.

I would say that for studio work, one should listen on axis with the tweeter or on axis with the woofer. Both sounds equally good, with a slight advantage for the tweeter axis position for maximum detail yet preserving the flat response.
As soon as you rise above the level of the tweeter, the sound will become increasingly bright and sparkly, mad while it is enjoyable, it is not anymore the perfect lifelike presentation that the designer intended I presume .

Regarding the bass level, i was really wondering how that would translate in real like in situ . Well this topic is a little complicated.
If i would have to describe it roughly i would say that the bass is beautiful, detailed, deep and strong, but cannot keep up at high SPL. I found the bass level perfect for mixing in a nearfield studio environment. When I place them near the back wall, less than 20 cm, the bass boost in the 30hz region is astonishing. They really don't need a sub. But i must emphasize on the fact that the NX studios are not able to reproduce high level SPL when they have to reproduce the 20hz to 35hz region. They will produce distortion easily. So I think a high pass crossover is needed when used with a subwoofer in order to minimize distorsion.
As for my use of the NX, i don't need to filter them will happily use them full range because as though they will not stay clean at 115db/1m, i 2ill use them around 100db/105db and they are world class in this use case.

I hope Danny will produce world class 3 way mid field monitors one day with a dedicated paper mid large dome.

All in all, that is the only Achilles heel of the NX studio, they cannot play very strong when in full range.

To summarize, they are impressive, will beat every studio near field monitors out there at any price range, and need to be filtered and mated with a sub for world class unlimited loudness range.

Trying them is adopting them, and i feel i still am wondering how this could get better with burn in period passed!

Gonna post when I reach that period!

Peace

[mkrawcz]

FYI, the Studios change significantly over the course of 50-100hrs of play time.

[Hobbsmeerkat]

FYI, the Studios change significantly over the course of 50-100hrs of play time.

The soundstage really starts to slowly open up and relax once you get to the 200-400 hour mark.

[mick wolfe]

Yes, break-in is real, but not as painful as I thought it would be. Sound pretty sweet right now with slightly less than 100 hrs. of playing time. In regard to volume levels, I listen in the mid 80's with an occasional peak into the low 90's. FWIW, that's plenty loud for me and they do these levels effortlessly. Might have issues in a large room at higher vol. levels, but that's not their design intent. They do put a lot of energy into a small room, ( or maybe even a med, sized room) so I find myself adjusting my subs to a lower output and xover frequency as they're breaking in. In summary, a superb all around design.

[Hobbsmeerkat]

Some speakers are a bit more forgiving than others, the studios are one of the better ones. mWine were especially sweet out of the gate, but their soundstage was rather shallow for the first 200 hours. by the 400-500 hour mark they really opened up.

The fully upgraded X-Statiks are a very unforgiving speaker for their first 50-100 hours. They come into their own as they continue to burn in.

[Redheart]

I hear you, and i am breaking them in. 

Danny, now that you gave us the NX studio monitor, please give us now a 3-way mid field monitor !!! We want more of that NX goodness but with full range 3 drivers boxed speaker for studio use please!

About the bass distorsion I must say that because the NX studios are such a clear window on every mix, one is able to clearly identify the lack of distorsion to begin with, and that is why I was able identify the bass distorsion so effortlessly n certain passages and on very high level bass content. That is the physics of 6 inch woofers I guess. I would not even rant about bass distorsion on a bookshelf near field monitor that is so tainted and distorted across the whole frequency bandwidth to begin with.

That said I still believe that the bass level is just astonishing for the NX studios really a marvel of design! I enjoy it immensely!

A note on the bass stress test i used the latest modern mixed tracks that are the most demanding bass heavy content for speakers and headphones out there to reproduce cleanly, like Billy Eilish tracks.
Normally classic produced track won't suffer anywhere near the bass distorsion bottleneck as those modern Eilish tracks will put your woofer to the test!

But i was able to use a lot of classicly produced tracks that bottlenecked the NX studios deep bass cleanness with the likes of "Australia"s deep 20hz content from Orion's Philip Glass, or Uakti's Ravel Pavane rendition with deep percussions.
In those scenarios with high level, the bass cannot stay perfectly clean sadly.
I must precise that i listen at high volume but they are confortable volume for me. I don't think anyone wouldn't want to listen to those levels.

One point though, any near field monitor out there will struggle even more than the NX when reproducing deep low bass without resorting to DSP protection for most of them.

The NX bass is really astonishing for it's size! Don't let the specs fool you like it fooled me. They are full range speakers for the average Joe like me.