Goal. High-sensitivity widebanders can seem a bit like e-stat or ribbon headfi. For all its amazing speed, immediacy and directness, that can feel a bit thin, sparse, tipped up and nervy. Overly crisp attacks and hyper-exact timing with exuberant dynamic spikiness can lack in follow-up body and mass. Whilst the designers of Nenuphar v2 deliberately 'detuned' this high-sensitivity effect, remnants of it remain. That's where Neptune's fluffier textures, sweeter more relaxed demeanour and richer colouration all dovetailed into an ideal antidote. With this speaker's micro dynamics liberated already, Neptune's focus on the macro meat balanced well. With Neptune's subdued brilliance region, the tonal centre of gravity shifted down to subvert any subliminal widebander tendencies of behaving top heavy. Neptune's more leisurely gait guaranteed that v2's twitchy reflexes didn't overshoot the mark. Lower amp resolution didn't telegraph much against the speaker's own magnification powers. Across the board then, mutual give 'n' take ended up like two hands praying. With all fingers interlocked, it's a strong connection without any gaps.
For some tracks from my local playlist, use the mouse-over loupe enlarger or right-click to open at full 6'262px width in a new window. I didn't really hear Neptune play favourites on genre, tempo or complexity though it should go without saying that a certain prettification factored. If you prefer hard-hitting tracks in all their gritty and gnarly cartilage glory, you'd likely not consider a SET in the first place. You'll want something from the odd-order harmonic and overdamped side of the fence.
Having confirmed for myself just why the Tektron/Cube combo is such a perennial show-demo pleaser, curiosity got the better of me. In the same 2.1 scheme to offload bass duties and sidestep sub 100Hz room issues, what would these 211 do for earlier Accuton ceramics? Those drivers always had a rep for a greyish harmonically monochrome tint. My Albedo Audio Aptica is a 5¼" transmission-line compact two-way tower with 1st-order filters. Low ~85dB efficiency didn't faze me a penny. My hardware chain plus Neptune packed gain to raise the dead.
How dead? With Neptune's attenuator bypassed, depending on median recorded level Aptica had me between 30dB and 40dB below my DAC's high 6Vrms output. If as a paper warrior you sternly wrote off 85dB and 19wpc as impossible, you'd now be profusely bleeding from paper cuts. Get out into reality more often. This quickly became my favourite combo. Because it could seem just a bit subversive, I decided to stick with it for the remainder of this review. It's a more interesting bit of news than rehashing well-known Tektron/Cube bliss. SET + widebanders or horns is an established recipe whose advocates tend to be very well informed already. SET + 'normal' speakers? Not so much. Making deposits into that mostly empty account felt like a good deed I should commit. And if I may say so myself, I thought it looked rather good to boot.
Affordable custom-silkscreened multi-button metal remote for Lifesaver's Gradient Box II. The same OEM vendor has a simple ± volume and mute version in silver or black.
Before we talk Accuton sonics, a quintet of likely factors why this combination may have worked so well. 1/ simple 1st-order 2-way crossover. 2/ small mid/woofer actively crossed out at 100Hz/4th-order. 3/ transmission-line loading on the small mid/woofer. 4/ high system gain to compensate the low speaker efficiency. The latter even had the fringe benefit of fully suppressing the amp's remaining self noise. 5/ hard well-damped cones. If I paraphrase the speaker's innate gestalt as perhaps Alberto Guerra-type GaNFet class D, we net a final pointer. In Rogue fashion where Mark O'Brien couples small-signal triodes to switching Hypex power modules, Neptune's harmonic injection and tubular textures turned Aptica's gestalt into a type of hybrid. To hifi Buddhists on the Middle Path, that's nearly the best of two worlds coming together. If I had any misgivings, it wasn't the end but means. Gazing at brightly emitting 211, I remained keenly aware of just how hot they run to stress their internal materials. I never have any such concerns spotting the mostly concealed Western Electric 300B in my Vinnie Rossi L2 Signature direct-coupled grounded-grid preamp. Again, anyone considering 845/211 kit is made of sterner stuff than worry about a high-voltage SET and the longevity of its glass. Here it's important to report that Neptune powered up and down without any fuss, crackling or disconcerting transients. From our earlier inside photos and the amp's unmistakably hulking size, we also appreciate that its circuit very strategically spreads out sideways for plenty of internal spacing and venting to run as cool as possible. It's the big glowing bits on top which radiate fiercely. To the right shoppers, that's a big attraction in fact. On that score and the ask, I'm simply the wrong punter. Having been through all manner of tube gear in years past, now I favour DHT in my preamplifier where they're barely taxed and need neither output transformer nor coupling capacitors to enjoy extra-wide bandwidth. But again, today isn't about my preferences but Neptune's performance in the listening seat, under what from my options felt like the optimal speaker. And there the shiny Sicilian chap with the invisible trident cut a really impressive figure.
