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First Listen: Nola Boxer Loudspeaker

First Listen: Nola Boxer Loudspeaker

Contrary to urban-audiophile legend, I don’t get to keep every component that strikes my fancy. Manufacturers and distributors keep close tabs on their precious gems and tend to come a-calling rather quickly (sometimes too quickly) after the review is published. Fair enough–business is business. This is all a way of saying that the superb Magico V2 loudspeaker has shipped out. However there is no better cure for taking one’s mind off a loss of this scope than the appearance of an exciting new speaker.  First things first. The Nola Boxer is no $18k floorstanding Magico V2, nor was it meant to be. It’s a modest, blue collar two-way compact, roughly fifteen inches tall in a bass reflex enclosure with a rear firing port. Totally non-descript visually. It incorporates a low-mass 6½-inch bass/midrange driver with a laminated pulp cone. The high frequency driver is a high-resolution silk dome tweeter. Sensitivity is 90dB and its nominal impedance is 8 ohms. First Listen: Nola Boxer Loudspeaker

But my oh my does this Boxer play music. Bass is solid and tight and surprisingly extended in my room. Enough to convey orchestral-style weight, soundstage cues and immersion. It’s also notable for what it doesn’t do–first and foremost it doesn’t “come at you” like some mad Chuckie-style mini-monitors of the past. It has a forward, midrange weighted sound with lively presence but it doesn’t veer treble-ward toward the agressively dry, thin or etchy. But the key thus far to what makes the Boxer so special at this early moment in my evaluations is the extent to which Nola president and chief designer Carl Marchisotto  has transposed the qualities of his flagship dipole designs (like the four tower 1200 lb total Grand Reference IV.1) into such a petite box enclosure.  Given Marchisotto’s track record designing iconic dipole speakers for Dahlquist and Alon I probably shouldn’t have been surprised but I was. It ‘s not just the Boxer’s even balance, it’s the sense of spaciousness and ease in the way it reproduces acoustic space and dimension. The sound is open as if it had a backless cabinet. I still have a few more rounds to go with this Boxer and it might yet reveal a couple weaknesses– but so far it’s a knockout. nolaspeakers.com $1500.First Listen: Nola Boxer Loudspeaker

Neil Gader

By Neil Gader

My love of music largely predates my enthusiasm for audio. I grew up Los Angeles in a house where music was constantly playing on the stereo (Altecs, if you’re interested). It ranged from my mom listening to hit Broadway musicals to my sister’s early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, and Stones LPs, and dad’s constant companions, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. With the British Invasion, I immediately picked up a guitar and took piano lessons and have been playing ever since. Following graduation from UCLA I became a writing member of the Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshops in New York–working in advertising to pay the bills. I’ve co-written bunches of songs, some published, some recorded. In 1995 I co-produced an award-winning short fiction movie that did well on the international film-festival circuit. I was introduced to Harry Pearson in the early 70s by a mutual friend. At that time Harry was still working full-time for Long Island’s Newsday even as he was writing Issue 1 of TAS during his off hours. We struck up a decades-long friendship that ultimately turned into a writing gig that has proved both stimulating and rewarding. In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Currently I split my time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Studio City, California with my wife Judi Dickerson, an acting, voice, and dialect coach, along with border collies Ivy and Alfie.

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