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It’s plausible that the Ovator was actually closer to reality here. Envision this. You’re in a mid-size club ca. 5 to 6 meters from the drum set. The percussionist works over his metal stack. You wonder how your playback system would handle it. You spring for a band CD at the entrance and go home only to realize that your 19mm tweeter’s silkiness makes a bad joke of cymbal dynamics. This difference can be quite shocking. I’m convinced of the relationship between displacement surface and immediacy of reproduction even in the treble. Panel tweeters and horn-loaded tweeters—occasionally even midranges active to 4kHz or so—capture percussion with more vigour and incision. And Naim’s BMR veers in that direction. That’s why I suspected a presence lift at first. Closer investigation with peaky female vocals and screaming e-guitars eliminated it when those refused to become more forward, shrill, sharp or hashy. Transients simply gained in dynamic envelope.
To wrap up tonal balance, the Ovator completed its ascendant into super-tweeter territory stubbornly and without exhaustion. While some audiophile sophisticates might wish for more airiness, silken textures, halos and other esoterica, illumination and power were clearly present.
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Pep & the Peppers: Amongst the Ovator’s other differences I’d single out soundstaging. Should your ideal be the famous window on the music through which you view a kind of sonic hologram with sculpted sound bodies engulfed by space and air and persnickety sorting across width and particularly depth… you might have troubles. Instead of an acoustic still life, the Orator erects the proverbial wall of sound crackling with energy. The music takes a step forward and the sounds arrange themselves into an organic whole. While instruments and voices remain differentiated of course, clear checkerboard assignments with cubits of intermediate space aren’t on the menu. I actually had the impression that the Brits regard depth layering as sorry hifi artifice. How else to explain the clear limits in the depth domain? The Ovator’s idea of dimensionality is to turn on, involve and rush away the listener. Whether the first violinist in the fourth row plays from the left or the third in the second from the right isn’t the kind of detail this box bothers with much.
The upshot is a speaker with a particular house sound. It’s vital to know one’s own sonic and presentational proclivities and areas of lesser importance. For tracks where Circe trills upfront while a piano trickles in the rear, you need not manoeuvre 120 kilos of Naim speakers into your digs. For audiophile string quartets too, other speakers will suffice just fine. Once its about rhythmically challenging fare with drive and fire however; seemingly unlimited levels and macrodynamic nonchalance – that’s when the Ovator hits its stride and you pay dirt. Spin the Red Hot Chili Peppers to really understand what this California combo’s music is all about.
Here everything clicked. Beats came across so on the money that it remained virtually impossible to sit still. One has to dance. I’ve rarely heard it this dry and direct. Electric bass was blessed not merely by Flea being player but the Ovator’s brilliance. It was so obvious that on tempo, attack and zero overshoot this speaker is really endowed with sufficient surface area. There’s a big gap between what’s usually accepted as played-back E-bass realism and what one really hears in a club (with a proper prior sound check). What’s accurate, chiseled and potent live often turns soft and weak at home while our version of precision becomes a euphemism for asceticism. Ha. Naim’s Ovator would be very happy on stage indeed. Get-up grunt and hard-as-nails toughness in the lower registers were all in her back pocket.
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When aggressive attacks are called for, you get them uncut. It simply refuses to get aggressive with artificial etch and shrillness. It’s aggressive merely because that’s how John Frusicante wanted it. What compelled me with guitars was the particular combination of earthy fatness, solid extension and dry dominance. It sounded plain raw and unfiltered.
Other special virtues? The type of staging. This might surprise given the above. It was all relative. With the Peppers, it fit. Who’d want holographic sculpting and depth layering to the nth degree with them? I want a tautly stretched violently active wall of sound as I know it from rock concerts. Naim’s speaker is the loaded needle for that need. That’s a rare thing. The only prior encounter of the sort would have been Zu’s Presence. While the Ovator’s special talents did send me on a musical journey back in time to what I listened to 15 to 20 years ago, I would not want to paint her exclusively as an Indie-Rock icon. Penning these last lines of my report, I actually listened to Joanna Newson – Circe without the piano but a harp. Her strings seemed more tautly sprung, the attacks drier. Ultimately resolved and decayed it arguably wasn’t but the innately peaky urchin voice did gain in sonority. Even fragile Indie-Folk worked just fine, albeit differently than usual…
Conclusion: Since Naim’s first small integrated amp made waves in the early 80s, this firm has time and again confirmed their own notions on what’s essential to playback and what’s merely nice but who cares. This becomes a polarizing act of course but Naim does enjoy a strong and fully committed following. Topping their hit list is PRaT followed by a more fulsome earthy balance over anything bright, lean or wispy.
The Ovator explores some new ground with its flex-panel BMR, then follows established company tradition with sealed enclosures and a systematic mechanical decoupling, the latter admittedly more extreme than prior models saw it. Important to prospective owners is that in matters of house sound, nothing has changed.
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Naim’s Ovator S-600 is a rhythm machine with impressive pressurization chops. Rarely before have I hosted speakers which nailed PRaT to this degree and even managed to tease out rhythmic subtext in apparently lame numbers. Granted, this speaker is an individualist on tonal balance and how it stages. Those aspects simply refuse to compromise liveliness and tension. Rather, they play supporting cast. Whether this type of presentation is your poison only a personal audition can tell. Make a date.
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The sonic profile is characterized by:
- Bass is well extended but relative to speaker size and cost, some would expect more.
- From the upper bass into the upper bottom octave, the Ovator is very potent. Surprising with this contouring is that the midrange isn’t hooded—it remains transparent—while bass quality is exceptionally fast, taut and tensioned. Strong bass routinely dulls timing to incur a certain portliness. With the Ovator, the opposite occurs. This voicing serves rhythmic accentuation.
- The ranges covered by the BMR unit—roughly 400Hz to the upper limit—is balanced and neutral. The midband is earthy and fulsome yet simultaneously crisp, transparent, direct and without hardness.
- The treble integrateds seamlessly and sheen, energy and dynamics are fully present. Cymbal attacks for example express uncommon realism. Ultimate airiness isn’t on the books however.
- The Ovator stages broadly and tall but depth perspective is patently limited. The stage is peopled densely by underplaying intermediate spaces. This speaker prefers a holistic rendition over peeling out individuals in a virtual holograph. Rather than inviting a tour through the venue, the listener is faced with an involving, dynamically charged performance.
- The Ovator is highly dynamic particularly in the macro domain where limitations seem absent. PRaT and impulse response are core competency and this speaker plays juicier and grippier than most in its class. SPL stability is a given.
- The Ovator S-600 needs room to breathe. Less than 25m² threaten to overload.
Facts:
- Concept: Sealed two-way tower with flat-membrane widebander
- Dimensions & weight: 116 x 30 x 40cm (HxWxD), 60kg/ea.
- Sensitivity: 88 dB/W/m
- Nominal impedance: 4 ohms
- Other: Active drive optional
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readaktion @ fairaudio.de
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