N.E.A.R. 40M Speaker System Review

New England Audio Resource, Inc. (NEAR) has developed a line of loudspeakers designed to provide high-quality reproduction at affordable prices. The NEAR-40M, a floor-standing columnar two-way system, is representative. It contains a single 8-inch woofer operating in a vented enclosure, with the port on the back of the cabinet. The woofer cone is formed of plastic-laminated metal with a compliant rim suspension. Its center is 18 inches from the floor, about halfway up the front panel. A 1-inch metal-dome tweeter is located near the top of the panel. The cabinet, attractively finished in oak-grain veneer, measures 35 inches high, 10-1/2 inches wide, and 10-3/4 inches deep, excluding the removable black cloth grille, which adds about 5/8 inch to the depth. Two heavy-duty, multiway binding posts, which accept dual banana plugs as well as stripped wires, are recessed into the back panel. The system has no level controls. The NEAR-40M weighs about 40 pounds. Price: $800 a pair.

Lab Tests

We placed the speakers 2 feet in front of a wall and at least 4 feet from the side walls. Their averaged room response, at a distance of about 15 feet on the axis of the left speaker, was impressively smooth and flat. The low-frequency room effects on the response were minimal, although there was a distinct response hole of about 5 dB at 600 Hz and a shelved overall response at that frequency (higher frequencies were 3 to 5 dB lower in level than the frequencies below 600 Hz).

The close-miked woofer response, combined with its port response, was ±2 dB from 25 to 500 Hz. The woofer output rolled off gradually from 500 to 1,500 Hz and steeply above the latter frequency. (NEAR specifies the crossover frequency between the two drivers as 2,500 Hz.) When we spliced the woofer response to the room curve, the composite frequency response was within ±3.5 dB from 20 to 20,000 Hz. Above and below 600 Hz the response was much smoother than that, but the dip and slight shelving at that frequency could be seen in all of our response measurements: room, close-miked woofer, and quasi-anechoic FFT.

The FFT response at 1 meter showed a 12-dB tweeter resonance at 28,000 Hz, well above the audible range. From 1,500 to 26,000 Hz, the axial frequency response varied only ± 3 dB. The horizontal dispersion was very good up to 8,000 Hz, with an increasing difference at higher frequencies between the response measured on-axis and 30 degrees off-axis.

The system’s impedance was at a minimum, 5.3 ohms, at 150 to 200 Hz, and it measured 5.5 to 6 ohms from 2,000 to 20,000 Hz. The upper-bass resonance was at 50 Hz, where the impedance reached its maximum of 17 ohms (the lower resonance point appeared to be at 20 Hz or below), and there was also a peak of 14 ohms at 1,100 Hz, possibly related to the tweeter crossover. The system’s sensitivity was 87 dB sound-pressure level (SPL) at 1 meter with a 2.83-volt input of pink noise.

We measured the woofer distortion with a 4-volt input (corresponding to a 90-dB SPL in our sensitivity test). At 50 Hz (the crossover between the cone and port outputs) the distortion was 3 percent, and it fell to 1 percent at 83 Hz and 0.75 percent between 100 and 400 Hz. The distortion in the port output was 1.5 percent at 50 Hz and a maximum of 6 percent between 30 and 20 Hz. In our single-cycle power-handling tests, the woofer cone rattled with a 280-watt input (into its 6-ohm impedance) at 100 Hz. At 1,000 Hz, the amplifier clipped before the speaker distorted, at 510 watts into 14 ohms, and at 10,000 Hz the amplifier also clipped first, at 1,100 watts into 5.7 ohms.

Comments

The NEAR-40M sounded well balanced and smooth, with a slight trace of warmth. The deep bass was excellent, especially considering the speaker’s modest driver complement. It was an easy speaker to listen to with any type of program material.

Although the installation instructions were adequate for their purpose, we were surprised at the lack of information on the speaker’s performance or special design features. For instance, there was nothing about the system’s unusually rigid woofer cone. Considering the excellent performance of this single bass driver, the manufacturer would be well justified in elaborating on its design (we have often seen far more publicity attached to much less worthy developments).

Still, the most important quality of any speaker is its sound, and the NEAR-40M certainly ranks high in that respect. It is also a very attractively styled unit, with or without the grille in place.

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