Neolith debuts at Munich High End

BlueNote56, thanks for the candid impressions.

I do think they were indeed playing it too loud for the room. Even with a few treatments, those big panels, and what seems like a powerful bass section, are able to overload the room.

Even in my highly treated and optimized room, I can play loud enough to cause some ringing, and from your description, that's probably what you noticed most.
Played at a level appropriate for the room, then it is likely you would have thought better of the speaker.

BTW- A "Full Range" ESL is a Unicorn. The laws of physics prevent it from ever occurring. Much better to have a quartet of judiciously placed and tuned subs and an appropriately sized panel chosen to match the room dimensions.
IMHO the Monolith/Neolith panel is as big as one needs in home audio, the challenge is to get the mid-bass / bass right, that's hard and very room specific.

More pics and comments on the Neolith at Soundstage!: http://www.soundstageglobal.com/ind.../507-high-end-2014-product-coverage-gallery-3

The answer to bass integration

Utilizing cone woofers with electrostatics will never integrate, louder but just not
the way to go. My answer is to combine Magneplanar Tympani IV bass panels
with the electrostatics, which integrate extremely well. The Tympani bass panels
when modified and have a amplifier with lots of current capability, can be very powerful,
transients that are awesome, depth of field that is huge, and when combined with a
rotary subwoofer, can handle anything from pipe organs to the sound of thunder!
This combination can put to shame all those mega loudspeakers provided that
one has the proper acoustics and a large enough room.
Electrostatics for low bass is not the answer, but Magneplanar Tympani bass is.

rasmaudio said:

...
Electrostatics for low bass is not the answer, but Magneplanar Tympani bass is.

Click to expand...

Hi Rasmaudio, cool setup, and I'd love to hear those Tympani + Rotary.

But there is one configuration where an electrostatic bass would be a great answer, but it requires committing to creating a dividing wall within the listening room and creating an infinite baffle alignment. Put a pair of CLX's into that wall isolating the rear wave totally and I bet the bass performance down to 80Hz would be spectacular. Couple that to an IB sub and I believe it would be SOTA.

Just spent some more time with Neolith.

Sat all over the place, stood up, moved around with the camera etc. Music was played loud. I liked that - it tells you a lot more about the speaker.

I maintain the Moon gear just wasn't the best match. This is definitely a high end speaker and IT WILL respond to its input.

Hearing some Moon gear via headphones wasn't great. I just plain don't really like it much.

Bass levels on Angel by Massive Attack was less than I expected but that is irrelevant. Just mess around with the controls.

If you heard sharpness and dryness then I know full well it is just those Moon electronics and relatively new panel.

ML is NOT going in a new direction. This is just a large clearspar panel mated to some high quality woofers. It is NOT rocket science.

Was it the best speaker there? No. More on that later.

Sharp dry Sauvignon

User211 said:

If you heard sharpness and dryness then I know full well it is just those Moon electronics and relatively new panel.

Click to expand...

Can't equate your attribution of these problems with my long term experience of Moon electronics,Justin... sharp.... no..... dry .... No.
Obviously tastes differ ... tubes!! Sauvignon or Chardonnay. But there may have been other factors. The speakers! The room. As you say could be panel not run in also Moon products do require run in and distributor might unwisely have brought a new pair of 880Ms.

Yours biased, but experienced!!!

bluenote56 said:

I must admit, that my impressions were slightly different depending on listening position. I've managed to move from the last rows to the first row, center seat. There, it was much better imaging, because this particular chair obviously hit the sweet spot pretty well. But even there, bass repsonse was not good. I also think, the've played much too loud. The ran at exraordinary levels. If I would force my speakers that way, imaging collapses totally. Ok, this panel may tolerate some db's more, but overall it sounded somewhat stressed.

Click to expand...

I too am a Summit X owner and for me what's sets this speaker apart from some recent state of the art offerings is that it doesn't have that hyper detailed, almost pushy character while lording it over most cone speakers in the crucial midband. Are you now saying that ML has voiced the Neolith to join the trend towards this more analytical but IMO less musical character?

User211 said:

Just spent some more time with Neolith.

Sat all over the place, stood up, moved around with the camera etc. Music was played loud. I liked that - it tells you a lot more about the speaker.

I maintain the Moon gear just wasn't the best match. This is definitely a high end speaker and IT WILL respond to its input.

Hearing some Moon gear via headphones wasn't great. I just plain don't really like it much.
ML is NOT going in a new direction. This is just a large clearspar panel mated to some high quality woofers. It is NOT rocket science.

Was it the best speaker there? No. More on that later.

Click to expand...

Bingo! And you do have to give them a bit of a pass on any early criticism, accounting for the hazards of showing off a prototype model in an international show, potential panel/woofer break-in issues, perhaps a poor match of associated electronics, tough room acoustics, and who knows what else? We'll see what happens when people start getting these into dedicated rooms with a variety of high-quality associated components. I'll be interested in hearing those listening impressions.

:music:

Doug, blue note etc.

We all hear the different things and come to different conclusions.

Slap an AR preamp in front of the Moon power amps and the soundstage will be much more dimensional than you heard and it will leave the plain of the speakers easily. It did anyway yesteday and today with the right material TBH.

Dougster - don't know what to say really. If you don't find it to be the case with your Moon kit then great. These are almost certainly not the ones you own though, I'd bet.

I can't empathise with someone thinking a Summit is better than these but that is irrelevant too. If you like them more you like them more

JonFo, the bass would be definitely better, but in my opinion, low frequency spatial and depth reproduction
would suffer. A large room with the speakers placed well away from the front and side walls (10 feet
behind my Magneplanar Tympani's and 9 feet from side walls) provides that great feeling of a large space.
This is what dipoles do best when in the right environment.
There are always tradeoffs.
Are you planning on trying this method with the CLX's, if so, I hope it works out well.
Thanks, Rasmaudio

The presenter made the comment that the official statement from Martin Logan is that these will be between 50k to 100k. Not sure.

These are like bigger summits with bigger soundstage and better bass integration. Are they more special than that, I don't think so. But then Munich had a problem with rooms and all speakers were compromised. As we know, the ML needs to be set up properly else can sound average. I want bowled over, but might be in a proper set up. But then don't think they should be anywhere north of 50k. Then they are competing in good horn territory and horns have a much better midrange than panels and at that price a great bass integration.

User211 said:

Just spent some more time with Neolith.

Sat all over the place, stood up, moved around with the camera etc. Music was played loud. I liked that - it tells you a lot more about the speaker.

I maintain the Moon gear just wasn't the best match. This is definitely a high end speaker and IT WILL respond to its input.

Hearing some Moon gear via headphones wasn't great. I just plain don't really like it much.

Bass levels on Angel by Massive Attack was less than I expected but that is irrelevant. Just mess around with the controls.

If you heard sharpness and dryness then I know full well it is just those Moon electronics and relatively new panel.

ML is NOT going in a new direction. This is just a large clearspar panel mated to some high quality woofers. It is NOT rocket science.

Was it the best speaker there? No. More on that later.

Click to expand...

It's a shame about the Moon kit, because I'm sure ML didn't make that choice lightly, but as others have said - we all have different preferences.

dafos said:

I too am a Summit X owner and for me what's sets this speaker apart from some recent state of the art offerings is that it doesn't have that hyper detailed, almost pushy character while lording it over most cone speakers in the crucial midband. Are you now saying that ML has voiced the Neolith to join the trend towards this more analytical but IMO less musical character?

Click to expand...

Hmm. Not really sure about ML intentions with this speaker. For my feelings the performacne was not optimal, so its hard to judge. Everything was huge. Stage, instruments, voices. Some notes and details definitely came directly from the speakers and not from some location in the virtual soundstage. Overall I missed that "holographic" image I get in my listening room with my comparable tiny summits. Obviously because of the extremely high levels the ESLs were pushed to their limits. Details were hidden or lost. I would expect more detail from a panel of this size. So, "analytic" would be not the correct term to use. I rather think ML targets those customers that love the characteristics of large horns and tries to give them the planar advantages on top. As I stated, not my cup of tea..

Johann

Johann you're talking absolute rubbish.

It is very unusual for me to attack someone on this forum but you really are talking shit.

In my opinion, that is.

I agree Justin.

How anyone can pass judgement on a new proto type product that's probably not broken in and given the inherent difficulties of demoing a product under show conditions, is beyond me.

Seems to me that anything ML tries to do, regardless of what it is, will be attacked by someone in one form or another.

What a shame.

GG

Hey guys. I just ran across something which I didn't see mentioned in these threads. It has a user selectable/adjustable crossover. The pic shows multiple slots that you put the bar/pins in and it also appears to have an adjustable knob on top of that. Anyone know anymore about this?

bluenote56 said:

Obviously because of the extremely high levels the ESLs were pushed to their limits.

Click to expand...

Johann, did they also do a demo at reasonable levels? I'm not a fan of anything demoed at extremely high levels; it makes me think they're trying to numb you into submission, or trying to hide something. Besides, I value my hearing.

It seems to me that the ML guys could take a lesson from MBL's North American distributor. At two Montreal shows, when asked to play a CD I took, he checked with me as to whether the level was OK.

Hi Bernard, many at Munich did the same. I was able to pay my reference CDs on most systems including western electric and adjust the volume as I wanted

timm said:

Hey guys. I just ran across something which I didn't see mentioned in these threads. It has a user selectable/adjustable crossover. The pic shows multiple slots that you put the bar/pins in and it also appears to have an adjustable knob on top of that. Anyone know anymore about this?

Click to expand...

Timm, most of his introduction to the speaker was in German, so if he mentioned that I missed it

User211 said:

Johann you're talking absolute rubbish.

It is very unusual for me to attack someone on this forum but you really are talking shit.

In my opinion, that is.

Click to expand...

So, I'm talking shit. Why? I did report what I experienced. Not to blame ML, just a report.
Have you been at munich, too? Whats your impression? Did you like it?

Johann