NaO Note preview

[gainphile]

As mentioned in the NaO Note II RS topic I have had a great opportunity to live with Nao Note (The original one with B&G Neo3) for a week. So I better revive this thread rather than polluting the above

My impression can be read here:
www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/221948-nao-note-ii-rs-22.html#post3283625

Here are some measurement of the Nao Note. These are indoor measurements so please take it with a grain of salt (I usually do outdoor measurement).

First, the frequency response at the design axis, which is between the top woofer and midrange. Excellent response except the last octave. It might have contributed the the "soft" impression of the sonics.



Could this be due to vertical dispersion? I am lucky that my ears are at the design axis. However I can observe that the tweeters are elevated quite high from there. So I am practially listening to them off axis vertically. Here I compare the above measurement with one at the Tweeter axis.




Second, the polar response. Again, this is indoor measurement so it is not ideal. Especially ignore anything lower than 1.5khz. But our interest here is the higher frequencies.



I do not know the xo frequency between the midrange and tweeter. It shows correct dipole response (-6db@60deg) but then the response narrows about 8-9khz. In Musicanddesign graph below it looks more around 6-8khz. There is also off-axis peak at 10khz which could be seen from both graph.


From: [IMG]www.musicanddesign.com/NaO_NoteDetails.html[/IMG]

It would be very interesting to see what the changes are with the new Nao II RS with dome tweeters replacing the planar.

These are excellent speakers which I would surely miss when the owner pick them up tomorrow.

[john k...]

Hi Gainphile, I appreciate you independent measurements. The anomalies you are seeing in the polar response are due to the behavior of the Neo3 which is why I when to the Vifa domes in the new version of the Note. I'm a little surprised at the drop off of the axial response in the first plot as my system is pretty flat out to 15k and then drops off fairly fast, to -10dB at 20k. It seems there may be some inconsistencies in the Neo3 tweeters.

[natehansen66]

Originally Posted by john k...

It seems there may be some inconsistencies in the Neo3 tweeters.

I agree, at least with the 2 I have. I used them in my last speakers and the top octave response was quite a bit different between the 2.

[craigj]

Gainphile,

That's an interesting frequency response. I made a Note clone that measured like this using the Neo3 pdrw;

[john k...]

Measurements will vary depending on method. This is my measurement of the panel bases on 1M, windows MSL combined with the dipole corrected near filed below 385 Hz. the neo3 rolls of at about 15k.

[gainphile]

Well, the Notes have left my living room.

We were curious about the discussion around variance of Neo3 so I proceeded to measure the right side. Comparing both they are exactly the same. So it could be down to possibly: batch difference, measurement environment/errors, or microphone inaccuracy.

Either way not a real issue at our ages !!

[john k...]

I measured my system yesterday. Flat to 15.5k, down 5dB at 20k.

[john k...]

Oops, I meant -10dB at 20K.

[john k...]

I want to point out that this thread is about the Original NaO Note introduce back in 2010.

if your are interested in the new version, which was introduced in October of this years please see this thread:

NaO Note II RS

[gainphile]

If you are interested with a youtube clip . Use good headphones !

Nao Note - YouTube