March 2014
World Premiere!
NOLA Micro Grand Reference Gold Loudspeaker
Amazingly deep and realistic stereo image with top to bottom coherence.
Review By Ron Nagle
If you are an
Audiophile you must have heard the name Carl Marchisotto. He is one of the
building blocks that have established Hi-End audio in America. If you are of a
certain age you may also recall John Dahlquist and his innovative Dahlquist
DQ-10 speaker from the nineteen seventies. (The
DQ-10 was $395 in 1975) Given these facts you may have unknowingly
seen/heard some of Carl Marchisotto's handiwork.
Biography
In 1976 Carl Marchisotto went to work for
Saul Marantz and John Dahlquist as their Chief Designer and eventually
he became Vice President of Engineering. During his fifteen year
tenure he developed the DQ-8, DQ-12 and the flagship DQ-20
loudspeakers as well as the LP-1 variable low pass filter. Nola once
was called Alón, with events far too long to tell Alón
is now Nola. In 1991 Carl and Marilyn Marchisotto founded Acarian
Systems, Ltd. It was under that banner that they produced the
Alón line of loudspeakers. In 2004 Carl and Marilyn reorganized
the corporate structure. And today they work under the banner of
Accent Speaker Technology and subsequently they renamed their line of
speakers, Nola. Accent Speaker Technology, Ltd. is now the mother ship
hovering over a gathering of twelve distinctive Nola speaker
models. At the top of the line is the four tower Nola Grand Reference
VI. Gold At $298,000 you get four seven foot tall speakers. The main
midrange and tweeter tower has twenty three drivers and the separate
bass cabinet contains four 12" bass drivers each one flanked by a 3"
flared port. What is important to know is that all of the Nola Gold
series Speakers benefit by technology derived from the top of the line
four piece 700 pounds per side Grand Reference Gold VI.
Etiology
Last October while attending the Denver 2013
Rocky Mountain Audio Fest I interviewed Carl Marchisotto. At that time
he spoke to me about his new speaker, he referred to it as the
Nola Micro Grand Reference Gold. This
speaker now occupies a place in a line of Nola speakers suitable for
use in smaller sized rooms. My apartment living room will fit that
description perfectly. Subsequently he very kindly offered to send me
a sample of his new creation for Enjoy the Music.com. And as it happened
between two holidays, Christmas and New Year's Eve I was graced by a
visit of the three Marchisotto musketeers, Carl, wife Marilyn and
daughter Kristen. Carl ever the scientist surprised me by only using
his ears a tape measure and some music CDs to set up the speakers in
my apartment.
Carl's Setup
Note: Since the designer carefully placed the
speakers in my 12' by 19' foot room I did not move them. After trying
several different locations, the speakers' position remained 7' from
the short back wall and 31" inches from the side walls. The center
space between speakers measured 56.25". In this set up we have an
approximation of the acoustic "Rule Of Thirds". This means that the
speakers are one third of the long dimension from the rear wall with
approximately two thirds of the room in front of the speakers. Another
way to phrase this is to say: The remaining two thirds represents the
distance from the speaker's position to the wall behind the listening
position. Mr. Marchisotto connected the Micro Gold speakers to the 8
Ohm posts of my Prima Luna integrated amplifier. He brought along a
14.5' pair of ($24,000) Nordost Valhalla speaker cables. Nola speaker
demonstration rooms are usually set up using Audio Research
electronics and everything is connected with a complete set of Nordost
cables.
Object D' Article
The Micro Grand Reference Gold Speakers may
be referred to as the Micro or Micro Gold speakers. These speakers
share the trickle down design concepts of the larger Gold series
speakers. The most notable design implementation is the way the
tweeter and midrange drivers are mounted as an "Open Baffle Dipole
Array". To accomplish this, the top one third of the Micro speaker's
enclosure is open on three sides. The dipole ribbon tweeter and the
110 mm dipole midrange drivers are positioned on the front panel in a
left and right mirror image. The tweeters are positioned off center
closer to the inside edges of the speakers front panel. In opposition
the midrange drivers are offset toward the outside edge of the front
panel. If you look into the open top section of the enclosure at the
Ribbon tweeter there is a printed label that reads: Advanced Loudspeakers custom made for
Nola. The tweeters are matched in pairs to each speaker in
that they have consecutive Serial numbers 1019 and 1020.
The bottom two thirds of the speaker is
a closed bass reflex ported enclosure that holds two 120 mm magnesium
coned woofers. The literature states, in part that, "The twin 120 mm
woofers are driven by massive Alnico ring magnets for increased
definition". (But I can recall a
time when the manufacture of Alnico magnets was banned in the United
States!) These relatively small 120 mm drivers have Gold
plated solid cooper phase plugs at the center of each magnesium
cone. The literature further states that, "the solid cooper phase
plugs are Gold Plated to provide damping by the soft gold layer". I
guess that it takes no large stretch of the imagination to deduce
that's where the word 'Gold' in the name comes from. All four drivers
are driven by a 3.5-way crossover. Every driver is wired with Nordost
silver Teflon wire. At one point I E-mailed the designer and asked
about the drivers he used in the Micro Grand speakers. His reply was
that "they are not available commercially".
The stand mounted Micro's are scaled
down to "apartment size" and the price is also scaled down to
$21,000. My samples are finished in gloss black and measure 24" high x
9.5" wide x 9.5" deep. Each speaker sports consecutive serial numbers,
they are #175 and #176 and each weighs 40 pounds. Departing from
conventional mass loaded speaker stands the Micro's are allowed to
move freely upon a captured roller bearing top plate. These two piano
black purpose built speaker stands were designed by Kristen
Marchisotto and are separately priced at $1,200. With utmost
confidence the Micro literature states that "the bases use "custom
ball bearing isolators that will further reduce coloration due to
floor born vibrations". Apparently the speaker's construction is so
carefully thought out that they do not need to be anchored to a heavy
and inert mass.
Listening
At the risk of repetition I will refer to
two oft sighted CD's in my collection. The first is my bass voicing
reference, Gary Karr and Harmon Lewis, performing "Adagio d' Albinoni"
This was originally on a Japanese Firebird label but it might be
available via the Cisco Music catalog [GCD8003]. The bass test is not
to see how deep the bass panels can go. But far more importantly can
they reproduce the overtones echoing from the venues stone walls in
concert with the wooden body of Gary Karr's century's old Amati bass
fiddle. It is my conviction that it is not the low bass specification
that is important but rather the accuracy of the harmonic structure of
any bass frequency. The Adagio is a Musical dirge performed in a huge
reverberant stone cathedral. It is a perfect low frequency resolution
test. This Japanese cathedral voices a large sonorous pipe organ. At
the same time you must clearly delineate the vibrating overtones of
the wooden body of the Amati bass. Also the return echo of the low
register organ pipes will scale the volume of the cathedral. There are
moments when the organ produces a deep rhythmic pulse that sounds like
a living heartbeat. The composition includes sustained bass pedal
notes that holds the woofers for quite some time at a deep rumble. The
resinous bowing sounds of the bass reverberations sighs a breathy
mournful moan that tugs at your heart. The Nola Micro Gold projects a
huge image that takes you to this stone vault and for a moment it
sounds like flesh and blood crying out to you.
My mid-treble test disc is Basia
(Trzetrzelewska)
Time and Tide [Epic-EK
40767]. I use this disc to assess tweeter resolution in a similar way
I used the Adagio d' Albinoni to test bass resolution. The first track
is titled Promises, if
your speakers have sufficient hi-frequency resolution the first line
will appear deep in the center between the speakers. The track opens
with the line, "Promises we forget
about our promises" Like a telephoto lens the microphone
pickup appears to zoom in on the center stage. Now Basia appears dead
center at a very precise location behind the plane of the
speakers. The words promises contain a pronounced double sibilance,
something that sounds like, "miss-sez".
The entire first track composition is rife with sibilant consonants. I
have encountered many speakers that are poorly designed, not
sufficiently controlled and smear the Ess sounds into a hissing
noise. But the Micro Grand has exceptional hi-frequency resolving
power making it very easy to hear the teeth and palate micro overtones
that tell you this is of human origin. The Micro Grand mid and tweeter
separates every tiny nuance in the phrasing to an extent I have not
often experienced before. Each sibilant fragment is delineated with
precision.
In addition the Basia disc contains
high frequency studio reverberation that opens up a broad stage. This
is one of the finer attributes of the Micro Gold speakers. This is
very good; it is room filling good. The sound stage is much larger
than you might expect judging by the size of the speakers. This wide
staging was not expected because the ribbon tweeters and the midrange
drivers are mounted on and firing from a flat front panel. But it is
possible because they are placed in that "dipole array". The
unexpected result is dimensional sound that is out of the box even
with both speakers pointing straight ahead. Interestingly standing
just behind the speakers the open top portion of the cabinet acts
mimics a resonant cavity. The wide stereo image between the two
speakers is totally continuous. The speaker position does not have a
large physical separation but to get similar imaging in my room I
invariably have to toe in stand mounted speakers. For a large
symphonic performance this is a perfect fit. My eclectic listening
included music from classic symphonies to classic Do-Wop (including
the fabulous Nutmegs and the Dubs). Some of the older recordings seem
to gain new life with infused with the same clarity that emerged while
listening to my reference CDs
Addendum
During this evaluation I used three
different amplifiers. The first was my Prima Luna Prologue integrated
that uses KT88 tubes and pumps out 36 Watts per channel. The second
amplifier was my Audio Research Classic 60 (Pentodes wired to run as
Triodes) this is obviously rated at 60 Watts per channel. The last is
my Sanders Bi-Polar 360 Watt muscle amp designed to power
electrostatic panels at 1 Ohm. (I call it my utility amplifier) The
Micro speakers have an 86db sensitivity rating and the Prima Luna
amplifier drove them with the utmost ease. Most of my listening was
done with the volume control below the nine o'clock position. At the
request of the designer I swapped the Prima Luna for my ARC Classic 60
amplifier and up front I used my rebuilt ARC SP 9 Preamplifier. And at
the very last I hooked up the Sanders solid state Amplifier and
swapped out the Nordost speaker cables for a ten foot pair of Kimber
12TC. I can completely understand why the designer preferred my AR
classic 60 pseudo triode amplifier. It has a nice warming effect at
the treble end of the speakers' voice. But just like most things in
audio there is a trade off, and that is less bass control.
Blame some of it on my room, the bass
frequencies at around 50 or 60 Hz energize the room as the volume goes
up. Unlikely but true the Sanders (Utility amplifier) was the one I
preferred. Easy to understand because the tweeters can reach 100
kHz. Subjectively there seems to be more clarity driving the treble
frequencies. The benefit is the sound stage seems larger with added
detail. The overall balance shifts upward and the bass is better
controlled. The only minor nit-pick I found is a slight tonal shift if
you stand up from your seated listening position.
Wrapping Up
Spanning the weeks the Micro
Grand Reference Gold dominated my listening I found both the voice of
the speakers and the designer. From the very first, what impacted my
pinna was the amazingly deep and realistic stereo image the Micro Gold
speakers portray. They serve to defy the boundaries of my small room
and transport me to symphony halls or into the recording studio where
I can reside quite contented. Additionally I found a very fine mix of
the highest quality parts and construction. In less competent hands
they might go wrong, but in this case they all make great music. The
speakers have a top to bottom coherence that reminds me of my old Quad
63 Electrostatic speakers.
The sound belies in every way their
compact size. There is nothing Micro about these speakers. Every type
of music acquired greater meaning and for lack of a better word,
presence. My suspicion is that the Micro Gold may be used for all
types of music, but I believe that the designer had a symphony in
mind. In all ways this is one of the most well-conceived and executed
speakers I have experienced and they just might be the very last
speakers you will own. And to Carl the docent of speaker design,
congratulations on a tour d' force performance. Remember to Enjoy the
music and from me Semper Hi-Fi .
Reference System
Input: Marantz DV8400 Universal CD player, Music Hall
Upsampling DAC 25.3 Magnum Dynalab FT101 tuner and Dynalab Signal Sleuth.
Amplifiers: ARC Classic 60, PrimaLuna Prologue 2.
Sanders ESL.
In-house Speakers: Aurum Cantus SES 2, Onyx
Rocket Strata Mini 4-way.
Review Components: Nola Micro Grand Reference
Gold Loudspeakers
Nordost Valhalla speaker cables, 14.5 feet
System Connections:
Three meter Kimber speaker Cable 12TC, 3 meter, RCA, Wire World Eclipse-2, RCA,
1 meter Chord Silver Siren, 1 meter Audio Sensibility Statement interconnects,
Audio Sensibility Impact SE 5ft. power cable and Kaplan Cable 6ft. 10 gauge IEC
Power Cord.
Power Conditioning:
Richard Gray 20 ampere Substation, Islatrol Industrial 20 Ampere AC line
conditioner, Alpha Core Balanced Transformer Power Supply, Audio Power PE-1
power enhancer, Triad 2-Ampere isolation transformer
.
Accessories:
VPI
Magic bricks, Argent Room Lens, Room Tunes Panels, a comfortable chair.
Specifications
Type: Special 3.5-way floorstanding speaker design
Tweeter: Ribbon
Midrange: 110mm tri-laminate dipole midrange with Alnico magnet
Woofers: Two 120mm gold magnesium cone woofers with Alnico ring magnets
Frequency Response: 34 Hz to 100 kHz
Sensitivity: 86dB/W/m
Impedance: 8 Ohm nominal / 4 ohm minimum
Dimensions: 24" x 9.5" x 9.5" (HxWxD)
Stands: 2" x 11.5" x 11.5" (HxWxD)
Recommended stand height: 17 to 18 inches
Weight: 40 lbs per side
Serial Numbers: 175 & 176
Finish Options: True Piano Rosewood with True Piano Black bases is standard. Piano Black and other finishes available by special order.
Price: $21,000 per pair, Nola Stand per pair are $1200
Company Information
Accent Speaker Technology, Ltd.
1511 Lincoln Avenue
Holbrook, NY 11741
Voice: (631) 738-2540
Fax: (631) 738-2542
E-mail: info@NolaSpeakers.com
Website: www.NolaSpeakers.com
Read the full review here