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In Reply to: RE: Anybody heard these? posted by bondmanp on May 15, 2015 at 11:27:20
New England Audio Resource. Made some excellent speakers. Built upon and further developed Bozak's metal cone technology. I had a pair of their small bookshelf speakers, 10MIIs. I lusted after their flagship 50M floorstanders. Bogen bought them out and pretty much dumped the speaker lines.
Opus 33 1/3
Edits: 05/16/15 05/16/15Follow Ups:
I bought a pair of 50Ms back when they were new and really liked them. Very natural sounding and great bass. They ended up with the ex wife. I since moved on to some Vandersteen IIIs, which I've been listening to for 13 years. I'm still friends with the ex, and was at her house recently where I was playing Bill Evans Saturday at the Village Vanguard, and was captivated at how great they sounded and it was a CD on some mid-range gear (I got the Marantz 8Bs!). I couldn't believe they sounded so good that when a pair came up on ebay for $150 (!) I snagged them! Now I can't make up my mind what to keep--or at least keep with the main system!
I also listened 50meII and I am still sorry that I did not have the money to buy them. Either one was a bargain even for the MRSP, even more for the street price.
Bass was incredible to the size, deep, effortless. Midrange and top end clean, spacious. The only negative was slightly pronounced top end, but nicely balanced with a strong bass.
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"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."
I recall reviewing a pair of NEAR speakers for SoundStage! about a hundred years ago, and being fairly impressed with them for the price. I imagine I could dig it up with Google but I'd rather continue listening to "The Endless River" by Pink Floyd on vinyl and catching up on the forum here.
See ya. Dave
Opus 33 1/3
Here's the one I reviewed. 1997. 18 years ago. Wow.
See ya. Dave
Yes. I had their monitors in my house for an audition. Really quite good for the $400 price tag. But the one on the right w/ the woofer near the floor was outstanding. I think they were the first to use a woofer w/o the traditional dust cap where the spider for the voice coil was connected in the back of the cone.
I replaced my JSE Model 1's with NEAR 50M's years ago. The speaker never sounded coherent after a few months of operation. I requested a second pair from NEAR and after a few more months of tweaking, the issue still remained . Neither pair came close to my old JSE's. Maybe it was a system compatibility issue or QC issue on their end, but I was worn out by the experience and ended up selling them. Less than a year later the 50M's were panned by Dick Olsher in a Stereophile review. I believe one of his main complaints was that the 3 drivers stood out individually and never blended into one coherent source. The one hard lesson I learned from this experience was to NEVER sell the old component before you're 100% sure the new component is superior.
""The one hard lesson I learned from this experience was to NEVER sell the old component before you're 100% sure the new component is superior."""
WOWWWWWWWWWWWW did I sell off some great stuff for no apparent reason!!!!
charles
It came closer to what I heard in my brief audition of the 50Ms many moons ago. They were driven by Krell electronics if I recall correctly. sounded wonderful.
Opus 33 1/3
It was TAS review that got me fired up in the first place. The guy even was using a CJ amplifier for the review. I also had a CJ amp at the time, but an MV 50 , not the larger model he had. At 91 db efficiency, I thought I'd be good to go. Complete bust. I think the impedance curve may not have been that friendly for one thing. Certainly may have been better suited for solid state amplification. In the end, maybe just a system compatibility issue, but Olsher had no luck either. Can't remember what amps he was using though. Water over the dam now.
his reviews, like the Music Reference preamp, were spot on. Some others, not so much.
Opus 33 1/3
Yep. Had an RM 5 III back in the day as well. Very nice little pre-amp. Only 3 tubes to worry about and an adjustable gain feature. An excellent value.
Opus 33 1/3
Forgot to add that back then I put far too much weight in reviews/reviewers and was burnt more than once. Finally learned to trust my own ear.
It crossed over very low to the 4" Metal cone mid/woofer, the same one used in the 10MII, I believe. Yes, you are right about the dust cap and spiders. They had some problems with the spiders. I had one 10M II with an issue and they promptly sent me two new woofers. AFAIK, my oldest nephew is still using them as rear surrounds in his home theater setup. He bought them from me 14 years ago.
Opus 33 1/3
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