Naim reveals flagship Ovator S-800 loudspeaker
Announced today is the Naim Ovator S-800, the flagship model in the company's speaker range.
It's being unveiled at the Hong Kong High-End Audio Visual Show by Naim MD Paul Stephenson, who will be demonstrating the speaker at the show in its active form, due on sale in December.
The £27,500/pr active version of the speaker requires a separate external crossover, which sits between the preamplifier and separate power amps for each drive unit.
A passive configuration with a crossover built into the speaker's aluminium plinth will follow in January 2013 at £30,000/pr, and buyers will be able to start with the passive version and upgrade to the active set-up later.
The S-800 is described as ' an imposing loudspeaker designed for the owner with a larger than average room and one who appreciates music played with a natural sense of scale and dynamics.'
It stands almost 1.4m tall, and uses the latest version of Naim's Balanced Mode Radiator driver (above), a single 8.2cm driver – mounted in its own isolating cylinder suspended on circular leaf strings at the front and rear – covering a frequency range from 380Hz to over 30kHz and offering wide dispersion across this range.
The driver, the result of five years' development by Naim, does away with the need for a crossover in the middle of the frequency range where hearing is most sensitive, and is underpinned by twin 28cm flat diaphragm bass units (below).
These use a diaphragm made from two 6mm panels sandwiching a honeycomb core, and are capable of a linear excursion of 20mm with low distortion, meaning they 'can deliver
thundering, extraordinarily clean, bass lines if required to do so.'
The entire 93.5kg speaker is decoupled from the floor using leaf springs, and the rigid, inert cabinet is finished in gloss rosewood.
Naim says of the speaker that its dynamic ability isn't all about playing music at high levels: 'it’s more about enjoying the natural sounding dynamic range of good music recordings without feeling the loudspeaker is holding things back.
But the company adds 'Of course if an owner wishes to play Wagner’s Ring at front row of the concert hall levels or ZZ Top at live rock levels, the S-800 will simply sing and deliver every nuance, every note, from the quietest to the loudest, without effort.'
Comments
If they are like my Naim SL2s the crossover for the passive version comes at an extra cost to the actual speakers. When you upgrade to the active version you remove the passive crossovers from the speakers themselves and replace them with active ones that sit with your pre and power amps. At that point you can sell the passive crossovers and buy more music.
According to the info on the Naim website, the 'active' version does not contain a crossover, nor any amplifiers built in to the cabinets. Presumably that is why it's cheaper.
They recommend using two or three external Naim amplifiers, driven by SuperCap power supplies, and fed from the specfied external active crossover, all at extra cost to the loudspeakers themselves.
It seems a clumsy, and pointlessly costly way to do things, which is probably avoided by better designs of active loudspeakers.
JC
Any word on how they perform in objective terms?
Hi Jimbo,
less deep bass, much lower power handling, probably a rather more coloured sound,
nice shiny box though if that's what you're into.
Tim
So if you upgrade from passive to active they'll give you £2,500 back?
To be fair, I guess VFM punters like me aren't the intended buyers.
By the time you've bought a DAC, preamp, xover. They're going to be about 10 times more than a pair of AVIs.
Comical.
Now that's what I call a competition prize!!!
These look absolutely superb, if it sounds as nice as it looks what a delight that would be.
One ill sadly never experience probably unless im lucky to find a seller demoing them that will actually allow me in the room.
I wonder how this will compare to the similarly priced PMC transmission line active speakers. PMC MB2S-A ACTIVE MONITORS
No, it's an in-house Naim design.
Is it just a badge-engineered Focal?
No, not a typo – the active version comes without a crossover, so needs to be used with an active crossover between the preamp and power amps.
So the passive version is more than the active version? Do you not actually get the crossover in the active one and have to buy it separately (only reason I can think of) ? Or is it just a typo?