Industry veteran John Meyer of Canada's NewForm Research is once again redefining his approach to ribbon-based loudspeakers. He has been a forefront advocate for the virtues of narrow-baffle loudspeaker designs as well as D Class amplifiers. His credits stretch from the early 1970s with the now long defunct Soma loudspeakers and their innovative flat aluminium honeycomb diaphragms to his current NewForm Research ribbons. The company has concentrated on Internet direct sales and consolidated into a flexible customizable operation run out of a home workspace in Midland Ontario, Canada. Lured by the sonic potential of panel technology, he has attempted to attack their weaknesses by re-imagining the concept from the ground up. Keep the lighting-fast responsiveness, improve SPL limits and dispersion. Make them reliable and practical.
He eschews the full-range approach to pursue the hybrid model instead. Since NewForm’s inception in the 1980s, he has introduced a number of different products in a variety of shapes and sizes. His ribbon line-source tweeter is a monopole to minimize front-wall interaction whilst maintaining excellent vertical dispersion. The bass is handled by a more conventional woofer array, tweeter atop in earlier models, with a coaxial adaptation for the latest upper-tier Line Source Monitors. Now trickle-down technology combined with some fresh design parameters have resulted in a bold new model that intends a healthy portion of top performance in a more user and room-friendly package. It also ups the ante by directly addressing the inherent challenges of a floorstander configuration: getting the cabinet off the floor. Say hello to Mr. Meyer’s new Super Module.
I took a brief drive to his facilities to check out some of his lineup. The current situation of sales outstripping production has made a review or even guaranteed product listen a hit 'n' miss affair. With that in mind, I took a chance and made my way up into the picturesque green countryside of Ontario‘s "near northern". In direct parallel to his design approach, his home/factory is literally on the road less traveled.
Mr. Meyer himself describes the listening area as "crude technophile" and although it lacks the "mystique" accoutrements that most audiophiles would expect, it proved quite serviceable in demonstrating some of the finer qualities of his flagship Triple Line Source Monitors combined with his quad subwoofer arrangement. As he predicted, they showed robust dynamics and high SPLs without distortion. No delicate shrinking violets here. The soundstage was incredibly wide and the line source maintained timbral integrity across the full frequency spectrum, side to side and seated or standing. My short exposure necessarily left open the questions of dynamic performance at low levels and also absolutes of imaging dimensionality and placement precision but that’s the purpose of any teaser: to whet the appetite. |
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