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Older news - October, 2002

The SE 9 continues to receive praise from owners.  Please make sure you don't get left out if you want to receive a SE 9 this Christmas.  Because so many customers have asked us to put on our thinking caps to create a loudspeaker that is well suited for low powered amplifiers.  The resulting loudspeaker is the Pyramid. The Pyramid is rated at 94 dB so it will work very well with SE tube amps, low powered A/V receivers and smaller integrated amplifiers. However, the Pyramid also works quite well with more robust amplifiers such as Le Amp.  The Pyramid is probably the biggest breakthrough we have ever had a nOrh. The sound of the Pyramid exceeded our expectations.

See the new nOrh factory.

Le Amp is reviewed on www.6moons.com this month.

White Mini 9.0

The White Mini 9.0s are beautiful and in perfect condition and ready to ship

nOrh Loudspeaker has dedicated itself to making high-end sound more affordable. In the past, there were two choices--setlle for low-quality, ugly and cheaply made audio components or pay a fortune for high-end sound.  It is sad that so many people have lost all interest in music simply because the equipment to really enjoy it costs too much.  Today, most of the audio systems I see in people's homes are made of plastic and look tacky.  Not only do they look tacky, they sound horrible.  I think the best description I have ever heard that describes these systems was in a review in TNT Audio. They used the term "noise with rhythm".

It is not necessary to put up with ugly audio systems with garish sound anymore.  nOrh loudspeaker has created a line of audio equipment that has high-end sound and styled like fine art for the same price as audio systems that look and sound like junk.

Our new best selling SE 9 is one of the absolute lowest price audio products that can be classified as high-end.  The SE 9 is absolutely beautiful.  The combination of glass, black and black is very stylish and looks very retro.  The SE 9 is very simple to operate.  There is a volume control. a switch for two inputs and a volume control.

The SE 9 takes a simple and purest approach to audio.  Single Ended means that each of the EL34 tubes amplifies works through the entire cycle instead of sharing the work with a second tube.  This approach is the purest approach.  The SE 9 only consumes 35 watts of power which is about the same as single light bulb.  The power output of the SE is modest.  The SE 9 puts out 9 clean watts of power.  9 watts might not sound like a lot of power but unless you listen to your music at deafening levels, 9 watts is really quite enough.
 

SE 9 - only $395.00

Loudness is a result of the combination of the power of the amplifier and the efficiency of the loudspeaker.  It is possible that 9 watts will play louder than an amplifier with 100 watts if the loudspeaker being used is more efficient.  Our Pyramid loudspeakers are rated at 94 dB. This means that at 8 watts we can output 103dB.  A loudspeaker rated at 85 dB sensitivity would require 64 watts to achieve the same loudness.  The SE 9 could drive the 85 dB sensitive speaker to 94 dB which is still quite loud. The following scale will give you an idea of just how loud.
 

nOrh has just moved our factory. During our move, we discovered a lot of items that we have that we need to get rid of.  We have lots of Synthetic Marble cabinets that are dull looking instead of shiny. Other than the dull finish, these cabinets are identical to the standard cabinets.  Instead of just keeping them in our warehouse forever. we have decided to make them into SM 6.1s and offer them for at a loss.  The SM 6.1 is very efficient and would make an ideal loudspeaker to match with the SE 9. The SM 6.1 is reated at 90 dB. Therefore, the SE 9 can drive the SM 6.1 to 100 dB.  This is a very limited offer and will never be repeated.  The price for the SM 6.1 is $600.00 per pair and remains at $600.00 per pair. However, if you would like to have a pair with the less than perfect cabinets, we will ship them for $400.00.  You simply will not find a better value than this.

SM 6.1 Black

The SM 6.1 is rated from 48 to 20,000 Hz +/- 3dB. The sound is quite smooth. The SM 6.1 can handle 120 watts. The SM 6.1 is ideal for home theater because of its dynamic range and the ease that it can be mated with subwoofers.  We have many different colors available.

Introducing the nOrh Pyramid

I hooked up the finished pair of Pyramids today and wanted my wife, Linda to listen to them. Getting her to listen to loudspeakers is quite difficult. Those of you who have visited these pages for the past four plus years have never seen my wife's photo. You have seen all our employees. You have seen my photo and you have seen my daughter's photo. We have even had photos of some of our visitors. The reason is that my wife is not interested in audio what-so-ever.

That doesn't mean she does not appreciate the aesthetics of nOrh loudspeakers. She particularly likes the looks of the ceramic red nOrh 4.0s. She also likes the Prism 3.0 because it is small. She thinks the SE 9 is cute. Getting her to actually listen to the speakers is very difficult. Usually she will say "yeah that sounds fine" and walk away.

I called her in to hear the Pyramids. She walked into the room and said "Those really sound good". I was so pleased with her acknowledgment that I asked her to pose with the speakers. She agreed and so for the first time, I have a picture of my wife, Linda on the webpage.

Linda posing with the Pyramid loudspeaker

Background

After introducing the wildly successful SE 9 amplifier, several customers have written that they would like to see more efficient nOrh loudspeakers. We point out that the Prism 6.6s are quite efficient but they are outside the budget for many of our customers. Several customers have suggested various drivers that they would like to see us use to increase efficiency.

There is a difficult balance that all loudspeaker designers have to play with. These include, size, efficiency, power handling and bass output. Generally speaking, you have to give up something to get something. A speaker that is more efficient will likely produce less bass. The reason is that efficiency is generally obtained by making the cone lighter. Lighter cones will generally produce less bass in a given size cabinet.

One of the drivers that was suggested to me would roll off at 150 Hz. This would absolutely force customers to buy a I also believe that the drivers we have been using simply sound better with more amplifiers that the drivers that had been suggested. There is another way to improve efficiency. That is to use more drivers. This also increases power handling and lower distortion. The drawback is that as you add more drivers, you have to increase the size of the cabinet and the additional drivers increase the cost.

I designed a loudspeaker two years ago that I never released. It used three full range drivers and fit into a corner. The idea was that for home theater, you could put the speakers into the corners of the room. It seemed like a good idea until I started noticing how few room had four corners. The speaker sounded very good but it stayed on the drawing board. I had also designed a center speaker I called the Wedge. It looked like the nOrh 4.1 but was designed to be hung from the ceiling. The speaker had three drivers. One pointed to the center, one to the right and one to the left. The listening tests had been gone very well but it was another project that never saw the light of day.

As more and more people asked for efficient speakers, I tried to dust off these older designs and see if I could do anything with them. I asked our factory manager to mount three drivers in an 11 meter drum so that we could do some tuning. She sent over two pairs. One pair had three drivers and the other had four drivers. I don't know exactly way but the four driver version sounded much better. I know that four drivers should sound better but I don't know why it was so much better. The improvement was dramatic.

I started thinking about what could we do to put four drivers on these older designs. I thought that I could mount a driver on the back of the Wedge. That wasn't possible because the area wouldn't be enough to handle the two magnets. It then occurred to me that we could do a pyramid. We did some research and found that pyramids were built with a variety of angles from 38 degrees to over 53 degrees. The pyramid designers finally settled on 51 degrees as the right angle for pyramids. During my research, I also came across several articles that spoke about the perfect acoustic nature of pyramids. I even came across an article that talked about a musician who recorded inside a pyramid and a description of how great the recording sounded.

I only got one prototype back to test. I decided to test it as a center loudspeaker. I brought the Pyramid up and replaced my 5.1 which I use for my center speaker. I put on Anaconda. I wanted a movie that was quite noisy so that I could see how well the dialog kept up. I was absolutely astonished with the way the Pyramid worked. Not only was the dialog loud and clear, it was powerful. I moved around the room and the sound was always the same.

I wanted to hear a pair. I called the factory manager and told him to rush me another Pyramid. The next day, another Pyramid showed up and I decided to try them out on music. I played James Taylor's JT album first and followed by Jimmy Buffet's Son of a Son of a Sailor. I picked these two albums because I have been listening to them for over 20 years and because I believe that voice is the very best instrument to judge loudspeakersfollowed by piano and then violin. I spent two hours listening. This was a rare treat for me because I rarely allow myself this much time. The sound was astonishingly good but I heard a bit of harshness that I knew would go away with enough burning in. I let them play for about thirty hours so that I could hear what they sounded like fully broken in. I put on some Louis Armstrong's "I've got the world on a string". This is not a particularly well recorded album but I was just in the mood to listen to it. Listening to "I Don't Get Around Much Anymore" I realized I was listening to some of the most musical sounding loudspeakers I had ever heard. The sound was live. It sounded real. The image was perfect. I continued listening to the entire album. I then put on Dave Brubeck's Take Five followed by Diana Krall's "When I Look in Your Eyes".

Just in case I was patting myself on my back too hard, I decided to get some other people's opinion. I brought the nOrh staff up to listen. They all commented how live the speaker sounded. They all said they sounded fantastic.

The Technology

A classic design

The Pyramid has four full range drivers mounted on all four sides of the speaker. Each side is tuned so that the sound coming from each side is identical. This means that no matter where you sit, you are sitting, you will hear exactly the same thing. If the speaker happens to be to your left, you will hear the same as if you are sitting right in front of the speaker. With a pair of Pyramids, you will enjoy the full fidelity of the music, no matter where you are sitting.

This is dramatically different from how most loudspeakers work. Most loudspeakers are omnidirectional but only for some frequencies. Bass information below 100 Hz is omnidirectional while frequencies above this become more and more directional. A very good generalized way to think of this is that a woofer is like a light bulb while a tweeter is like a spot light. If you walk around a loudspeaker, you will hear the information from the woofer but you will loose the information from the tweeter. This is why most loudspeakers have a very small area where you actually hear the correct stereo image. This is called the sweet spot. Some people will toe in their speakers because they sound better. This is because they are pointing the tweeter where they are seated so that they get all of the information from the tweeter.

With the Pyramid, the listener is free to roam around the room and enjoy the music. Because there are four drivers, the Pyramids are unbelievably sensitive. They are rated at 94dB sensitivity. I have seen other efficient loudspeakers but many of them will handle no more than 15 watts. The Pyramids will easily handle 80 watts. At 80 watts, the Pyramids will produce more than 109 dB!!! The Pyramids will play louder than this but nobody should ever play their music this loud.

It also goes without saying, there are no parallel surfaces.

Ideal for your living room... or the dessert?

Pyramid Specifications

• Omnidirectional

• 4 x 3 inch full range drivers

• Sensitivity 94 dB at 1 meter

• Maximum power handling 80 watts

• Size 15 inches wide 11 inches tall

• Frequency response 65 Hz to 22, 000 Hz +/- 3dB

The Pyramid for Home Theater

Remember that there is a sweet spot for listening to stereo. This sweet spot is positioned between the loudspeakers about the same distance from the loudspeakers as the speakers are apart from one another. Assume we have a room that is 12 foot long. We have the speakers two feet from the wall and eight feet apart. If we sit between the speakers eight feet back, we should be in the sweet spot. Some speakers might be different, this is an average rule.

Suppose we put the speakers right up against the rear wall. In a 12 foot room, the speakers are only two feet behind the listener. This is not far enough away from the rear speakers to be in their sweet spot. To solve this problem, some people put the speaker to the side. This would work except that the information recorded onto the tracks assumes that the sound is coming from behind the listener and not from the rear.

Recently, some decoders have tackled this problem by adding additional drivers. Dolby EX adds a sixth speaker in the center rear and there are also seven channel arrangements. All of these are trying to come up with a way to get the correct information from the rear channel to the listener.

The Pyramid provides an elegant and inexpensive solution. Because there are four drivers, it doesn't matter if the speakers are only one foot behind the listener. There will always be a full range driver pointed at the listener.

Preview of SE 18

The SE 9 is getting rave reviews from customers all over the world. The SE 9 is probably the lowest priced integrated amplifier in the world that can wear the high-end badge. Most integrated amplifiers in its price range have very modest intentions.

The SE 9 is ideal for bedrooms, offices, apartments, students, casual listeners, multi-media computers and second systems. This month, we announce our second single ended tube integrated amplifier. The SE 18 has twice the power of the SE 9. Instead of a passive preamplifier, the SE 9 has an active amplifier. The SE 9 also features a built in phono preamplifier. The SE 18 is the absolute perfect choice for an audiophile who wants to keep his phono collection but wants to have an AV system as well. There are many of us older audiophiles who have large LP collections that we simply can not replace with CDs. There are some audiophiles who prefer LPs. The SE 18 is probably the most cost effective high end solution. For those audiophiles and music lovers who simply want a little more power than the SE 9 offers, the SE 18 is a reasonable alternative.

We have used the SE 18 with our more expensive loudspeakers. While the SE 18 does a very good job driving the SM 6.9s, nOrh 9.0s, and nOrh 7.0s. Personally, I still prefer Le Amp to drive these more expensive loudspeakers because I tend to play my music loud. However, with the Pyramids, the SE 18 plays astonishingly loud. The SE 18 is ultra quiet, articulate, fast, and detailed. The price of the SE 18 integrated amplifier is $795.00 USD shipped.

The SE 18 has three inputs (one of them being a phono in). The SE 18 is rated at 18 watts per channel. nOrh also offers a dedicated tube phono preamp for $250.00 USD.

SE 18 available November 2002

The Nature of Music

All musical instruments are omnidirectional. The instrument produces sound in all directions. If you go to a concert, you don't have to worry about where you sit in order to hear the music. Because of the omnidirectional nature of music, you won't find that if you happen to sit to the right, that there won't be any high frequencies or that you will only hear the violins. Our approach is to create a system where the music information is identical from every position.

The Pyramid works the way musical instruments work, it produces music from as a sound source that generates all frequencies equally in all directions. This is not the same as trying to add ambiance by bouncing some frequencies off a wall. This is a point source for musicjust like a musical instrument.

Also remember that all loudspeakers are omnidirectional to a point. The bass is omnidirectional while the higher frequencies are directional.

In Conclusion

For those who have read this site for years know, I rarely rave about our own products. I have raved a few times. I raved about the CD-1, Le Amp, the nOrh 9.0 and the Ceramic 4.0s. Where there are weaknesses in these products, I have been honest and pointed them out to customers. I believe that the Pyramid is another breakthrough product. The Pyramid could be the best A/V loudspeaker available. It could be the best loudspeaker for budget low powered amplifiers (such as tube amplifiers).

The Pyramid can be mounted directly on the wall or mounted from the ceiling. The Pyramid can be placed just about anywhere in a room. All Pyramids are shielded and can be placed near or on a TV.

We are introducing the Pyramid at an unbelievably low price. The introductory price is $225.00 each shipped.

Boom with a nOrh 4.0 and the SE 9 Integrated

The SE 9 continues to get rave reviews from customers. The SE 9 remains the lowest priced amplifier on the market to enjoy high-end audio. Very soon, we will introduce the SE 9's bigger brother, the SE 18. The SE 18 is also a single ended integrated. The SE 18 features four EL34 tubes Each channel uses two EL34 in parallel. The SE 18 has an active preamplifier and features a tube phono amplifier. The SE 18 raises the bar even higher at a slightly higher price. The SE 18 will sell for $799.95 shipped. The first SE 18s will ship out late October.

Pan, our factory manager, buys her own personal SE 9

Songs of Bangkok CD

I had the great fortune of hearing some of the most beautiful music I had ever heard. The recording is incredible. I don't think I can remember a more natural sounding recording ever. The music is almost hypnotic. Most of the music is violin and piano. Some of the songs feature female vocals. While the songs are in Thai, they are haunting. The music is unlike anything I have heard before. If I try to pinpoint it, I would say it probably music from the 1930, probably songs that would be sung in smoke-filled night clubs of that era. We will offer this unbelievable recording to customers who make a purchase for only $7.00. Simply add $7.00 to your order for Songs of Bangkok. You will not be disappointed.

Sincerely,

Michael C. Barnes

nOrh Loudspeaker Company, Ltd.

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