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Neat Acoustics Ekstra floorstanding loudspeakers

Neat Acoustics Ekstra floorstanding loudspeakers

There is a lot of discussion about ‘price creep’ in audio. A lot of it is extremely understandable and, to no small amount, justified. Granted some of that comes from taking long hiatuses in audio (if you last bought a pair of loudspeakers in 1989, 30 years of inflation might come as a bit of a shock), but that doesn’t explain the whole situation. The Neat Acoustics Ekstra wasn’t necessarily created to address this problem – Neat designer Bob Surgeoner simply wanted to build a damn good loudspeaker that fitted between two ranges – but in the process built a loudspeaker that pulls much from the company’s top models, and the resultant design is very much a ‘punches above its weight’ model. 

Neat makes some extremely good high-end loudspeakers in its Ultimatum range (although even here, high-end is a relative term… high-end by UK standards not the ‘help yourself to my bank balance’ high five, six, or even seven-figure sums we sometimes see). It also makes several ranges that bring the price of admission down to the distinctly attainable or – in the case of the Iota series – affordable. They all share Neat’s distinctive take on product design. The Ekstra simply takes much of the design criteria found in models like the Ultimatum XL6 loudspeaker, puts it in a smaller, slimmer box (making it ideal for smaller rooms), and undercuts itself by several grand! OK, if only things were that simple, but that’s the core of the idea behind Ekstra. 

In a way, the popular Iota range was born out of the same mindset, making the company’s Motive sound more widely available. Ekstra does the same to Momentum and Ultimatum. The new design uses the same configuration first used by Neat in the Ultimatum XL6. The top section is sealed off from the lower, and incorporates two sealed chambers, operating as a two-way infinite baffle loudspeaker. A 50mm ribbon-type tweeter and 134mm bass/midrange unit (that has been used in both Motive and Iota Alpha designs) are both mounted on a specially profiled sub-baffle, attached to the main cabinet via a de-coupling polyethylene membrane.

, Neat Acoustics Ekstra floorstanding loudspeakers

Meanwhile, the lower, ported, section of the Ekstra houses two more of those 134mm bass drive units. One unit is located on the bottom panel, facing the floor, while the second is located internally, directly above the first, in a sealed isobaric arrangement, handling only low frequencies and acting as an integral subwoofer system. The low-Q port is specially tuned to enable close to wall placement of the speaker in most rooms.

The chambered design is relatively simple – at least compared to labyrinths used by companies like PMC – but very effective, as it essentially means the loudspeaker is a two-way stand-mount sitting on a subwoofer with minimal interaction between the two. 

This system also helps make the Ekstra a relatively benign load. An eight-ohm load with minimum impedance dipping to around five ohms and a realistic sensitivity of 88dB/w adds up to make a loudspeaker that could be run by the humblest of electronics. However, with a loudspeaker of the Ekstra’s calibre, it’s more about quality than quantity, and a good amplifier like the Hegel H390 and the Primare I25 both worked perfectly with the Ekstra.

 

Installation is easy, as the speaker is relatively unfussy about placement. Precise positioning nets the best sound, but ‘sub-milimetre precise’ isn’t necessary. More important, however, is the nature of the floor beneath the speaker. As there is a down-firing bass unit, which is the outer driver of an isobaric chamber, surrounding it in thick shag-pile carpet from the 1970s is unwise. OK, so that’s ‘unwise’ in terms of undermining sound quality (and taste… who has these kinds of things today?) rather than a potential fire hazard. But if your living room looks like it was used in some low grade porno movies from the mid-1970s, you might be advised to look elsewhere. 

Usually, the way of reviews typically goes good points, bad points. Occasionally it’s a sandwich of good-bad-good or bad-good-bad. This time, in honour of Neat’s convention-breaking design protocol, we’ll break with convention and get the bad out of the way first. There seem to be two results from listening to a Neat loudspeaker; either an almost immediate bonding to the way it sounds, or a tepid ‘hmm’. Occasionally, those who weren’t initially impressed warm to the sound of the Neat as they shake off years of listening to what ultimately was the wrong product for them. Many will never make that flip and come to consider Neat loudspeakers as little more than a brand to cross off the short-list. In the UK, such things are given the term ‘Marmite’ after the dark yeast spread that is either a salty-umami jar of heavenly deliciousness, or some form of food-grade rust protection you might use on the underside of a car. You can’t know your feelings about Marmite until you try it, and very few people are so-so about the stuff; it’s either ‘love it’ or ‘make it stop!’ Neat is a ‘Marmite’ loudspeaker and the Ekstra is perhaps the most Marmite-y of the lot.

OK, so in the pantheon of ‘different’ sounding loudspeakers, Neat is relatively mild next to things like the late ‘lamented’ Rehdeko designs or really quacky early Klipshorns (both of which have their followers, even today). However, in a world of increasing convergence of sound (due in part to everyone using the same group of measurements, often on the same suite of measuring instruments), the Neat does stand somewhat apart. That will mean some will listen and say ‘thanks, but no thanks’, usually recognising the good points of the design, but realising those good points do not apply to them. Others will be able to do that without even going within 10 miles of a pair of loudspeakers, because they define their musical options at one remove and rely on measurement to define one of the least measurement-defined parts of audio design.

To get an idea of what Neat is all about, let’s put a scenario together. You go to a small music venue, a folk singer turns up and plugs into a small, well-tuned PA system and sings a small set. He’s no Bob Dylan, but he’s very good, and backed by a small semi-acoustic band. If that is your idea of Hell (because it’s not bangin’ Techno played at eye-popping levels, or it isn’t a piece of classical music played without amplification in a natural acoustic), then the chances of you finding the charms of the Ekstra reaching you are remote at best. On the other hand, if the only thing missing from this scenario to make it perfect is ‘a pint and few mates’, this might well be your next loudspeaker. That may sound flippant, but the more you listen to the Ekstras, the more you realise that’s exactly what it does so well.

This means that what you get is a bass performance that defies all logic of loudspeakers of this size. It’s not overblown at all; if anything, the bass is taut to the point of dryness, but there’s a lot of bass energy in reserve. This makes for a very tidy and tuneful presentation and is particularly good at reproducing the sound of a bass guitar. As ever in such cases, Jaco is called for, and Pastorius’s fretless bass voice sings clear here, to the point where Jaco Pastorius [Epic] got played in its entirety and led to Joni Mitchell’s Hejira [Asylum]. That too spun on for the whole album, and led (through slightly less obvious steps) to listening to all of the eponymous Silly Sisters album [Chrysalis], then to Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight [Island], then to Richard Thompson’s solo career, then to other guitarists, and on, and on.

A pattern emerged here. You put on an album and you listen to the album, not a few tracks. However, that ‘on to other guitarists’ showed it’s not just a folk-lover’s loudspeaker, and not just a walk down memory lane (to the pub serving foaming pints of Scrummock’s Aulde Fetlock). Out came Vök and Little Simz and Stormzy (‘cos I is street) and it all worked. I didn’t find pen hitting paper too often though, because my attention was focused on the music rather than the sound it makes. A good thing for a listener, not so good for someone with pages to fill!

Strangely though, this lack of description of the sound a speaker makes is what the Neat is all about. You listen to music, then listen to more music, and never once give a damn about the performance of the loudspeaker. To discuss it in audiophile terms seems to be like dragging the conversation back to the prosaic, or worse, back to an entirely different conversation in which you have become thoroughly uninterested.

Nevertheless, a job is a job. The Ekstra is a very fast sounding loudspeaker with outstanding bass in terms of both depth and speed. It is exceptionally good at the presentation of musical coherence, and when listening to a piece of music (such as ‘Love in Vain’ by The Rolling Stones from the Stripped CD [Polydor]) the sense of interplay between musicians in this live cut from the rehearsal room really puts you in there with the Glimmer Twins.

Detail is good but only slightly above average in its class. That being said, upper register detail is very good, and free from aggression or brashness. Staying with the Stripped album, the live arena tracks are some of the least listenable tracks I own, even down to an occasional sense of the band ‘phoning it in’. Any hint of top end emphasis on tracks like ‘Street Fighting Man’ make the album descend into thin, nasty brightness, and the Ekstra managed to keep that top end in check while opening out the top end sound.

Ekstra is also a relatively forgiving loudspeaker, twice over. It needs a good, but not brute-force, amplifier, but more importantly it’s very forgiving on less than wonderful pieces of music that are swathed in compression. Muse’s ‘Invincible’ from Black Holes and Revelations [Helium-3] is an anthemic piece almost ruined by compression. While the Ekstra cannot undo the damage made by such compression, it can – and does – make it seem less bothersome.

, Neat Acoustics Ekstra floorstanding loudspeakers

You’ll notice that most of my recording callouts here have not gone too far down the classical rabbit hole. I noticed this several hours into the listening session. It’s an odd sensation; it’s not that the loudspeakers were bad on classical music – in fact, they played classical music pretty well on balance – but I found myself playing other music each time I thought about playing classical pieces. In later introspection, I can’t quite tell whether that was down to the loudspeaker gently moving me away from music it cannot do to the same degree of justice, or it exposes my own musical predilections to be less catholic than I would like them to be. In other words, it might have been ‘me’ rather than ‘it’ opting for the non-classical music. To date, I’m still not sure on this and where I run with it. Playing them to a true classical-loving friend (who also ‘got’ the speaker) they played a lot of Bach through them and were surprised by that (“I didn’t realise how much I like Bach” was the reply). I’ve come to the conclusion that the Ekstra isn’t a musical filter, but it engages with your own musical filters with a high degree of accuracy.

What I also found myself not putting down on page too often was imaging. This time, it was more a function of the loudspeaker than me. Imaging here is good, but very much not a priority. So that holographic soundstaging and the kind of presentation that makes a loudspeaker really attractive to some people is a little bit less obvious. It’s more a bolus of sound between the loudspeakers than a three-dimensional presentation of sounds around the room. In fairness to Neat, most concerts I’ve been to have a similar ‘soundstage’ to the Neats and no one has ever walked away from a concert saying ‘what great imaging!’ Nevertheless, if you define your musical presentation by a walk-in soundstage, the Neat may struggle to meet those demands as well as some other designs.

A lot of the rest of the performance is marked out by a very high degree of effortlessness in all things. Take its dynamic range, for example. This is not the kind of loudspeaker that presents a powerful dynamic range up front, but the more you listen to it, the more you realise it’s incredibly dynamic… it just hides that dynamic range in a kind of British sense of understatement. The same applies to its ability to portray the light and shade of microdynamics; there is no immediate sense of a microdynamic superstar, but all those subtle shades and textures are there in full effect.

 

Finally in the assessment phase, comes the pace, and it’s here that the Ekstra ekcells. It’s a beat-hound; put on a piece of music with even the merest sense of a beat and the Ekstra will sniff it out and play it for you. Not push it upfront or force you into a beat when listening to talk radio, but when you find yourself listening to the meter of the speaker instead of thinking about hand grenades when listening to one of the more pompous orators on Radio 4, you know there’s something special in the beat-reproduction of the Ekstra. It makes news sound like poetry, it makes a click track sound like Buddy Rich, and so it goes on. It’s an exceptionally good rhythmic performer, one of the best I’ve heard in a long time. Perhaps more so because its rhythmic properties fall under that whole ‘effortless’ part of the performance. Not only was it great at keeping a beat – even those crazy beats like Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’ or Dave Brubeck’s ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ – but because it does it without any kind of effort or difficulty.

In truth, I struggled with not struggling with the Neat Acoustics Ekstra. I felt the review process shouldn’t be this easy, and in truth I laboured over the writing more than normal, trying to find what it did so well. Then the speakers went away and then it hit me. I’d imprinted on them like a duckling to its mother. There was something so musically adept and enjoyable about the Ekstra that it made the playing of music a vital thing. That is the most obvious thing when you hear them and the sappiest thing you can write.

Attributed to everyone from Elvis Costello to Frank Zappa, the quote “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” holds a lot of truth here. The loudspeaker is not one that opens itself to critical inspection, even though it passes muster in almost all aspects for many. It’s a loudspeaker that you either ‘get’ or ‘don’t’ and if you get it all those details about imaging, dynamics, rhythm, timing, and so on are all academic. It’s just a bloody good loudspeaker and all the other considerations melt away. It’s little wonder that I got the downsides out of the way first; if you really let the Ekstra get under your skin, it’s like insulting a family member.

The interesting thing with this is the last time a loudspeaker and I bonded in the same way, that was a Neat loudspeaker too. That time it was one of the most expensive ones in the group. This time it’s way more affordable. There’s clearly a lot of commonalities shared here between the Ekstra and the Ultimatum, and the difference in price and performance might be marked, but they have more in common than you might expect for the price.

Neat Acoustics Ekstra’s tagline is ‘Thinking Inside The Box’ and while that is absolutely correct, it’s so much more than that. Ekstra is a loudspeaker that does manage to squeeze a quart into a pint pot and does it perfectly. You need to be fairly well in lockstep with the sound of Neat (put another way, the sound Bob from Neat likes), but if that is the case, the Ekstra will melt your heart, extra fast. 

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

System: 2.5-way isobaric bass reflex, incorporating integral isobaric subwoofer

Drive units: 1× 134mm LF/Midrange unit; 1× Ribbon HF unit; 2× 134mm LF units

Impedance: 8 Ohms (minimum 5 Ohms)

Sensitivity: 88dB/1 watt

Finish: American walnut, black oak, satin white

Size (H×W×D): 110 × 17 × 25cm

Weight: 18Kg each

Price: £2,999 per pair

Manufactured by: Neat Acoustics

Tel: +44(0)1833 631021

URK: neatacoustics.com

Tags: FEATURED

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