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Sony SS-NA5ES

Sony SS-NA5ES

Designer Yoshiuki Kaku’s speakers for Sony have won a place of honor in the high end, beginning with the introduction of the SS-AR1 model in 2008. Kaku’s avowed goal in speaker design is to make speakers that give listeners the same sense of anticipation and excitement they feel at live events, though he is quick to add that, of course, the beginning of this is correctness in basic technical behavior. But in addition to paying attention to smooth frequency response, low distortion, and other technical matters, he spends a great deal of time and effort investigating the micro-effects of materials and of resonance control on the sound, and on other matters of detail that are outside the scope of standard speaker measurements. All his designs involve a great deal of careful listening. They are also individual—one of the things corporations can do is to not act corporate when it seems appropriate, and Kaku’s designs are as much the work of an individual designer as those of a one-person company.

It is not a simple matter to evaluate a speaker in emotional terms—to say in any objective, transferable sense, whether the speaker generates anticipation and excitement or not. One might expect such things to vary from person to person. I do not review with “listening panels,” and my reviews tend to be my own view alone. But as it happens, I had the Sony SS-NA5ES speakers up during the holiday season, and a lot of people were coming by for one reason or another. Everyone who heard the speakers was in fact truly beguiled, ranging from people who would not dream of spending so much on speakers but after listening realized why one might do so, to sophisticated audiophiles who were equally enthusiastic. My own overall reaction was that, while I cannot justify a fifteenth set of serious speakers, if I had room for another pair, these would surely be strongly tempting. So perhaps Kaku’s goal is on the face of the evidence not so evanescent after all. I think he has actually succeeded in that elusive goal of making a speaker that has universal sonic appeal, to the extent I could evaluate this.

But for formal review purposes, I shall continue by describing the sound as such.

How the Speakers Perform in General Terms
The Sonys are relatively small and to get dynamic power and reasonable bass extension out of speakers this size is no easy task. The Sonys use an anodized-aluminum bass/mid driver which has a quite startling ability to handle power even at very low frequencies—the speakers have solid output down to 50Hz, with a fairly rapid roll-off below that. This gives them enough bass extension to cover both orchestral and rock music convincingly.

Sony offers a subwoofer (not available for review) intended for use with these main speakers for people who want to get down into the bottom octave, but the speakers alone are surprisingly convincing in the bass.

Sony SS-NA5ES

And they will play surprisingly loudly, too. We are not far beyond the territory of the mini-monitors of years past, which would bottom out and/or compress at the slightest hint of realistic dynamics for large-scale music, especially in the bass. One of the things that modern driver design has made possible is greater bass power and extension from small drivers, and here one hears this in action. The Sonys were undisturbed by the bass whomps at the opening of the Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances (in my usual version, Dallas/Mata on ProArte). Piano music too could be played at convincing levels without strain and without any sense of “shatter” on the hard attacks. There is a lot more to life than loud, but most music, including classical music, is loud sometimes, and the Sonys are far more ready for this than one might expect given their size. If the Sonys were potentially part of a home-theater system (and Sony has companion rear, center, and sub offerings to accompany the NA5ES), one can easily imagine them sailing through action films without problems.

Getting bass performance like this out of a smallish speaker has involved fairly low sensitivity (86dB), but the Sonys thrive on power up to quite a high point, and with a suitable amplifier really come to life dynamically. Undistorted levels in the mid-90dB range or even higher seemed not to be a problem. And the speakers did not change character as the sound got louder. Of course these are small speakers—and one cannot expect them to fill enormous rooms. But in my moderate-sized living room, I never felt dynamic constraints to be an issue. I was using a Sanders Magtech amplifier, which drove the (4-ohm) Sonys with complete aplomb, as indeed it will drive effectively anything at all, and with very satisfying sound all around. (Perhaps it is not entirely on point to this review, but I should mention that in fact the Sanders is one of the best amplifiers there is, and perhaps the best for odd loads, and is very reasonably priced. A great piece of work!)

The upper frequencies are handled by Sony’s innovative tweeter array, which involves a central dome tweeter with two smaller domes above and below, mounted on a metal plate that makes possible precise determination of the distances between the drivers. (According to Sony, the mounting of the drivers directly on the baffle would not give sufficient precision for the inter-driver distances.) The smaller tweeters are not “super-tweeters” as such. Rather they are intended to give a better radiation pattern than would a single dome of sufficient size to meet the bass/mid driver’s operating range. This is of course a perennial problem in two-way speakers—how to get the tweeter to go down far enough, which tends to require diameter, while still getting it to be not too beamy in the top.

 

In listening, Sony’s array works very well indeed. Cymbals and other high percussion have an unusual realism. Schedrin’s Carmen arrangement on Delos was positively stunning in its combination of delicacy and purity in the high percussion. The top notes of the piano have the glow of reality (cf. the Rachmaninoff on BIS already mentioned). And the treble altogether is very clean and clear. In fixed position measurements, there can be some small irregularities from the spaced multiple tweeters and a rise at the extreme top, but in listening, the irregularities are unobtrusive and the top integrates well, with no sense of separateness, just a little extra “air.” I count this tweeter array a major success in creating a convincing replication of the treble character of instruments with substantial content up top.

The Tonal Road Not Taken by Monitor Speakers
So far, the description outside of the tweeter array probably sounds just like what one would expect of a fairly small speaker using modern drivers. But there are aspects of this speaker that seem to me to enter another world entirely from the typical results seen by getting some good drivers, running a computer program to implement a crossover circuit, making a rigid cabinet, and then off to manufacturing. Thinking of this speaker in those terms would be a little like supposing that one could 3-D print a violin to good effect. For the Sonys partake of the character of a work of art, not just a work of technology.

Part of their unique sound is a contouring of frequency response. They are very smooth and flat up to around 1kHz. Then there is a slope down to a minimum around 3kHz, with a gradual return to level above that and finally quite high up, too high to affect tonal character as such, there is a rise above midrange level. The effect of all this is complex, especially as the combined upper-octave level fluctuates a bit from the spaced tweeters. The overall sound is somewhat subdued, decidedly non-aggressive. But as noted earlier, there is a lot of air in the upper octaves but no brightness in the region in between presence and real top. The effect on human speech is interesting. Voices are articulate but not especially present. And sometimes there is a little emphasis not on sibilance but on fricatives. This could be noted on a recording of the BBC Sherlock Holmes Boscombe Valley Mystery, for example. But the overall subdued sweetness, as I would call it, was evident too on all music material with any energy above the midrange.

The relationship of this to reality is not a simple matter. Everyone supposes that speakers that are exactly flat will reproduce recordings as accurately as possible. But this is only true in the sense of being true by definition. In actuality, the relationship between microphone pick-up and the real sound heard is made less than straightforward by the fact that microphone pickup typically detect diffuse field sound as well as direct arrival, but in playback the sound becomes direct arrival from the speakers with rather little diffuse field. Since the ear’s response to diffuse field and to frontal direct arrival are quite different, especially around 3kHz, to reproduce the natural, real sound via microphone into speakers involves, as it happens, pushing down 3kHz. Siegfried Linkwitz on his website suggests that as much as 4dB is appropriate. As I understand it, the Sonys were optimized for naturalness by listening, but as it happened listening produced a response dip around 3kHz to roughly the theoretical extent that the difference in diffuse field and direct arrival would give (which is roughly the same as Linkwitz’s figure as well).

Of course this is the kind of thing that makes people who approach audio in an ultra-conformist, almost fascist, spirit really livid. “Flat or else” is a motto that appeals to some people. I have to admit that I myself am rather partial to flat speakers in general and find that playing around with frequency response usually leads to colored sound that does not seem real. But the 3kHz issue is always to be dealt with. My own “reference” system is quite flat, with just a little warmth in the lower mids/upper bass, cf. the room response here http://www.regonaudio.com/Harbeth%20Monitor%2040.html, which has a little (but only a little) relaxation in the 3kHz area—not as much as the Sonys. But I found adjusting to the Sonys’ response was easy. Though I was always conscious of the contour—that sort of consciousness is part of the reviewer’s job—I was not disturbed by it.

In any case, compared to the average nominally techno-correct speaker, the Sonys are on the subdued side. Everything tends to sound a little more beautiful than one expects, would be one way of putting it. Or a little bit more like concert sound would be another way, this being effectively the same thing. (Concert hall sound really is beautiful—in a good concert hall, anyway.)

The overall effect can be and often is really marvelous. The slow movement of the Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata with Starker and Neriki (RCA) sounded as beautiful as I have ever heard, except for when I heard the duo perform it live. Their live performance, alas, will never happen again—Starker is deceased. But if you were so unfortunate as to have missed them live, this recording played back on the Sonys will give you a sound very close to the magical beauty of the real experience.

 

Space and Imaging
Imaging behavior is influenced by frequency response, and one effect of the contouring noted is that the images are backed up slightly. But there is another notable aspect of the Sony’s imaging, which does not seem to be related to frequency response in any obvious way. I can perhaps explain this best by talking first about those familiar test CD (or record) tracks that contrast the two channels in the same polarity with the two in opposite polarity. The difference is of course always clear. But with most speakers the out-of-polarity situation, while diffuse in the sense of not locating a central image, tends to seem as though it is trying to put the image somewhere, just not in the middle and not very stably. With the Sonys, an out-of-polarity signal sounds truly diffuse—it is like a curtain of sound in front of you, with the source not even trying to be anywhere. The in-polarity situation, of course, focuses the image in the center but does so in a way somewhat different from the usual sense of an artificial point, sensitive to an extreme to exactly equal distances from the speakers. The Sony version of this seems more stable but less exact. One might suppose that this has to do with the multiple tweeters, which set up an interference pattern different from the one arising from a single tweeter in each channel.

Is this “right?” Perhaps not in theory, but is it natural sounding? Absolutely, yes. As I suppose everyone knows, stereo is not a flawless medium as to imaging, especially as usually practiced by recording engineers. The Sony version seems to me to be very convincing on a wide variety of recordings.

The Sonys also present a sense of large space. On the Dorian Violin and Piano Music of Dvorák (Zenaty violin, Kubalek piano), the violin and piano are surrounded by a huge acoustic space. This recording was made, as were many Dorian recordings, in that acoustic marvel, the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, and the ambience of the place is remarkably in evidence on the Sonys. One hears the great hall on any system, but the Sonys seem to retrieve ambience unusually well. I am at a loss for a reason why except perhaps because of the speakers’ high resolution as a whole.

And high it is. In some online reviews of the “wrong but ready” type, comments have been made that the Sonys are not top-notch in resolution. In actuality, the resolution is excellent, but not generated by frequency-response effects, a distinction that RH emphasized in the January 2016 issue’s From the Editor. The dip around 3kHz refrains from flinging detail at the listener, but real detail is abundant—one has the sense of hearing all the way into the recording.

Indeed, this is one of the outstanding features of the Sonys. Listen, for example, to “Our Love is Here to Stay” on Doris Day’s Hooray for Hollywood. Without being aggressively presented at all in the tonal sense, the individual voices of the accompanying singers are completely delineated. So are the individual singers in the chorus on Reference Recordings’ John Rutter Requiem disc. The harpsichord part in the nineteenth variation of the Sitkovetsky arrangement of Bach’s Goldberg Variations on Nonesuch is there in all its microstructure, but without being in any sense shoved forward in the sonic picture. It is all there—just as it should be, but with natural-sounding balance, exactly the effect that would occur in live performance. (The above “wrong but ready” remark definitely does not apply to all the reviews that have come out before this one. In particular, the review in Sound and Vision by Mark Fleischmann is to my mind very perceptive and very accurate. Interestingly, we came to much the same conclusions even though we were mostly listening to quite different kinds of music.)

The resolution of the sonic picture and the sense of nothing added, no grunge in the background, are continuing sources of musical pleasure. One is listening only to the music, not to any artifacts from the speaker itself. Wonderful!

The Overall Picture
I was an admirer of the Sony designs by Kaku from the start. The SS-AR1 in particular seemed to me a speaker at the forefront of dynamic-driver floorstanders, at a price far lower than its ultra-high-end competition. I still find this to be true. But in the presently reviewed NA5ES, designer Kaku seems to have moved to an even higher level of excellence, almost completely defying the intrinsic limitations of smaller speakers. The NA5ES is something of a marvel—one of those speakers that seems possessed of almost magical properties. No, it is not a “monitor,” and to make it sound like a monitor, its frequency response would need to be moved around a little to make it more nearly flat. But in musical terms, the NA5ESes as they are do a superb job of bringing out the best in recordings. I really liked these speakers, just to be perfectly clear!

Incidentally, the best listening axis for these speakers is rather lower than normal ear height for a seated listener when one is at all close to the speakers. Try a low seat—or even sitting on the floor if you want to hear what they can do at their best. Or you could use high stands or tilt the speakers up. They sound agreeable when the listener is above the axis, but the real sonic glory is on the right axis.

The Sonys do not sound exactly like ordinary speakers. But I can promise you that if you grant the design the premise of its balance, you will find them hugely rewarding. With a subwoofer system added—either Sony’s dedicated one or some other that suits the speakers—you would have a full-range system that in a room of ordinary domestic size, is truly extraordinary at any price. To my mind, the word “masterpiece” applies.

SPECS & PRICING

Type: Two-way, four-driver stand-mount loudspeaker
Drivers: Two 5.25″ aluminum-cone woofers, two 0.75″ textile-dome tweeters, one 1″ textile-dome tweeter
Impedance: 4 ohms
Sensitivity: 86dB (2.83 V/1m)
Max. input power: 70 watts (instantaneous)
Dimensions: 8.13″ x 14″ x 12.88″
Weight: 22 lbs.
Price: $6000/pr.

SONY ELECTRONICS
(877) 865-SONY
sony.com

Robert E. Greene

By Robert E. Greene

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