The Inner Ear Magazine - Discover High End

Neeper Perfection One

The young and new in old-fashioned speaker design

These Danish-designed loudspeakers caught my attention as soon as I auditioned them at the Montreal Audio Fest in April. They were connected to a Jeff Rowland amplifier with mega-buck source components from DCS.

I met the speakers’ designer, a, 28 year old Dane named Kim Neeper Rasmussen. To say that I was surprised by the man’s age is an understatement, because I expected to encounter a middle-aged man who has been around the industry for ages. After I had put my bias away, I learned about Rasmussen’s background. It seems he became interested in audio when he was only 12 years old. At 17, he got a job at Thule Audio, a Danish electronics manufacturer. The next job was with Avance International and Gamut Audio. It was at Gamut that he met designer and technical director Lars Goller whose knowledge and background with DST (created through a merger of Vifa, Peerless and Scan Speak) inspired young Mr. Rasmussen. After attending the 2005 CES in Las Vegas, he decided to design his own loudspeaker and Neeper Acoustics was born. The design goal was to create “a more complete speaker than anyone else in the world — complete in terms of design, materials and, of course, performance.”

I have heard these words from many designers and Rasmussen’s ambitions were not news to me, although, my immediate thought was that he had a very good handle on design. I asked Angie Nisi of Audio Pathways to get me a pair of Perfection One for an evaluation under (my) controlled conditions, and she agreed. When they arrived, I couldn’t help but again be impressed with their slim-line tasteful look.

These enclosures can't be considered small, yet they render a sound stage one would expect from small, point-source-like design.

Appearance:
I always like slim enclosures, because they are relatively easy to place. The Perfection One is such a design, sporting a small footprint of 6 1/4 X 14 inches (W X D) with a medium height of only 38 inches. On the baffle, a 21-inch aluminium plate is placed, likely to assist driver mount integrity. Designed for time alignment, the enclosures top part leans about 15 degrees back from the base. A spiked aluminium plinth with built-in milled WBT NextGen binding posts, provides stability and anchors the cabinets firmly to the floor. (On a hardwood floor, it’s wise to use little pads to avoid scratches). Two flared aluminium ports (one on top, one on the bottom) open on the enclosures' immaculately finished rear. Though there are “nice little grilles” (mountable with magnets) for decoration, I’d suggest taking them off before serious listening. The Perfection One looks very elegant and is available in four premium finishes — satin white, maple, Namibia rift, rose burl and black piano.

The Sound
For the auditions, I used my in-house Wyetech Labs, Opal preamplifier, one Bryston 14BSST amplifier, one 8 watts/ch Art Audio Symphony single-ended amplifier and a pair of prototype monoblock power amps by Wyetech Labs, the soon to be available 32 watts/ch (single-ended) Ruby.

Audio Aero’s new Capitole Classic CD player and a mass of interconnects and speaker cables from JPS Labs — the Aluminata series, Nordost — the Valhalla Series and BIS Audio Maestro Series made up the balance of the system components, all plugged into my old Tice power line conditioner.

The various system combinations allowed me to arrive at a fair assessment of the Perfection One loudspeakers and their most conspicuous attribute— imaging. These enclosures can’t be considered small, yet they render a sound stage one would expect from small, point-source-like designs. The overall sound stage is big with great horizontal spread, an impressive vertical reach, and an awesome front-to-back range. I had placed the speakers in front of and on each side of my listening room’s fireplace, and while using this placement with other loudspeakers, never reached the height of a sound stage as impressive as with the Perfection Ones. Using some of my favourite auditioning music , the speakers seemed not to be where I placed them. The sound was indeed, way out of the box. Perception aside, I went to work and began testing the speakers' ability to reach into the bass region. For this listening test, I used my old Todo Sobre Mi Madre CD (Universal 676 208-2) and an older Dorian CD titled The Great Organ Of Saint Eustache (Dorian 90134) with a wonderful rendition of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.” The Universal CD quickly showed the Neeper's ability to reach down to its specified 30Hz. The Dorian recording features organ pedal-notes reaching down to 24.5Hz, just a little lower than the Perfection One’s reach to the bottom fundamentals with resolution. However, I didn’t sense any omitted frequencies, as the loudspeakers’ power and clarity was accomplished and authentic, regarding size and tonal integrity. To test the midrange, I used Carmen McRae’s Fine And Mellow and Gene Harris’ Listen Here (both Concord recordings SACD1005-6 & SACD 1006-6). McRae’s voice is a mellow mezzo, which she uses like an instrument, actually like many instruments with various tonal attributes. This well-produced live recording (available in SACD) is perfectly suited to check a loudspeaker’s ability to recreate the recording space, the voice’s character, and the degree of refinement. Well, all was right in the midrange as every note, regardless of intensity, was controlled, with smooth transitions to upper and lower frequencies. The lack of edginess underscored McRae’s breathy voice throughout the auditions, making it relaxed listening at its best. Her back-up group (organ, sax, guitar, and drums) was clearly audible at stage left, right, and centre, with every tone in its own space and in absolute focus, including the most difficult-to-achieve front-to-back scope.

Instruments performing in the high frequencies, the range from 8000Hz to 20kHz, sounded very smooth, with a bit of a sparkle here and there, the kind that can be defined as polished brilliance with a hint of savoir-faire, I have encountered only in the best high-end designs.

I like listening to pianos to audition speakers and few musicians play the instrument like Gene Harris. I listened carefully and clearly heard the sonic signature of Gene’s Steinway. This fabulous instrument’s typical timbre and harmonics came to life; the piano seemed to be in my listening room — live, that is. I found that the harmonics that delineate an instrument’s personality are of the utmost importance, and the Perfection One speakers rendered all of the ones produced by the amplifiers.

Best sound was most definitely with the Wyetech Labs Ruby monoblocks and Ruby preamp —as mentioned earlier, finished prototypes not yet available. Second best sound was with the powerful Bryston amp. However, all amps provided me with the kind of listening experience I’d call involving — it’s difficult to stop listening — and the feeling of being there that envelops and engages the whole body and holds one’s attention.

To define the Perfection One speakers, this last statement should suffice: Great highs, transparent midrange, and solid bass, all conveyed with smooth continuity on an outstanding sound stage, makes these loudspeakers something very special.

Synopsis & Commentary
I'm thrilled to see that the industry attracts new, young talent to perpetuate the science and art of high-end audio. If I didn’t know this designer’s age I would ascribe the design expertise to a veteran in the field. Consequently, I am intrigued by this young man’s focus on quality components, his attention to artisanship, and his understanding of the importance of loudspeakers to reproduce, rather than produce. I believe Rasmussen succeeded by designing a very revealing loudspeaker that reflects the quality of its back-up components. My personal preference in loudspeaker design is what I call an “organic” sound — an attempt to explain a natural type of sound with the loudspeaker out of the way of the music. The Perfection One has a good portion of this organic sound quality, but a good part of its performance characteristic is its unique sonic signature, its voice. And what a voice! A multi-octave range, a tenor, a baritone, a bass, a soprano and much more in one small, beautiful package I’d call damn close to perfection.

Rasmussen states that he knew what he wanted in terms of loudspeakers: Not speed, size, or pretentiousness “an intangible combination of design, materials and, of course, performance that makes it desirable above all others."
Well, he may have done it, for the bottom line is that the Perfection One ranks amongst the few designs I’d rate as state-of-the-art. Did I mention price? It is mentioned in the right place (under Facts) but I think that this speaker’s performance alone should be equated with high-end. Can we look for a Perfection Two? I hope so. Rasmussen did say that, in good time, more Neeper Acoustics products will follow and will include larger, smaller and centre-channel speakers as well as subwoofers.

MODELS	MANUFACTURER
Neeper Perfection One Loudspeakers	Neeper Acoustics
RATING	CONTACT
♪♪♪♪	www.neeper-acoustics.com www.audiopathways.com
PRICE	FINISH OPTIONS
$23,000.00 CDN	Satin White, Maple, Namibia Rift, Rose Burl, Black Piano.
Dimensions	Weight
100 cm (h) 19.5 cm (w) 46 cm (d)	30 Kg each

TECHNOLOGY

The enclosures are rock-solid. I checked with my stethoscope on the sides, top, and bottom and I couldn’t detect any resonance to worry about. The cabinet’s design, shaped to avoid most parallel surfaces, with a slight curvature in the side panels, inhibits resonance. This was an expensive process custom made by Danish artisans, after Rasmussen tried and rejected Chinese-made cabinets.

The bass/midrange driver is a custom-made 5-inch Scan Speak wood fiber design; the tweeter is another Scan Speak one-inch ring radiator driver. The drivers are mounted in a patented “Hornflex”, bitumen damped enclosure.

The crossover is a two-way higher order, non-resonant design, with a frequency response from 30Hz to 50kHz; sensitivity is 87dB/ 2.83 V RMS; nominal impedance is 4 ohms (minimum 3.8 ohms) and recommended amplifier power is from 70 watts/ch to 300 watts/ch, though I don’t think that a more powerful amp, such as the Bryston I used for my audition is a mismatch.

The bass/midrange driver is a proprietary, custom designed Scan Speak 5 1/2 inch unit. It features a black laser-cut wood fibre cone driven by the same magnet system found in the larger standard Scan Speak 6 1/2 inch woofer. The SD (Symmetrical Drive) magnet system incorporates copper short circuiting rings mounted at the magnetic focal point to reduce unwanted induction in the voice coil. This reduces harmonic distortion by approximately 20dB — almost unheard-of in speaker design.

The long-stroke bass/midrange driver has a total throw of 20mm, which enables it to move more air, thus generating more bass output than most 6 1/2 inch woofers. The special linear spider doesn’t force the assembly, even at maximum cone excursion.

The high frequency driver is Scan Speak’s ring radiator, found in many of the world’s best and most expensive high-end speakers. It was chosen because it maintains controlled constant diaphragm motion. The tweeter remains flat to 50 kHz without breaking up.

The magnet system features a special, large neodymium NdFeB rare earth magnet 20 times more powerful than commonly used ferrite (its magnet is strong enough to drive a 15” bass unit). As in the bass/midrange, the tweeter’s magnet system incorporates a symmetrical drive arrangement to reduce distortion.

Heady stuff, but in this business, nothing beats listening — the ultimate analysis.