NEAT Motive SX1 v Monitor Audio RX6

[VOE]

I'm thinking of trying these at home if I can get some ex-dems for £1500 or less. Are they much better than the original Motives? Is the 1 better than the smaller 2? This magazine has reviewed the 2 but not the new SX1. Do they really only sing with Naim equipment as some suggest? I heard the original 1's about 10 years ago in a shop but you can't always tell in that kind of environment.

 

[chebby]

SX1 review here ...

http://andreweverard.com/2013/11/18/review-neat-motive-sx1-the-great-big-little-speakers/

... Tested with Naim amplification.

 

[VOE]

Yes, thanks for the link, but I had already seen that. It's a good review, certainly, but I wondered if anyone else has heard them. Can any speaker really be so entirely reliant on another manufacturers amps? I appreciate that they were designed with Naim amps in mind but.......

 

[bigboss]

I heard them at Sound and Vision show in February and was very impressed with the sound which belies their size. I can't remember which amp it was though.

 

[stevebrock]

VOE - interesting, what is the rest of your system?

 

[VOE]

CD: Copland CDA 825

T/table: Clearaudio Performace DC/Clarify/Concept MC

Amps: Quad Elite / QSP power

 

[VOE]

Ok, so we gave these a shot at the weekend. Current price is £1885. The existing speakers are MA RX6 (costing £650 on 2010) bought for an earlier and cheaper setup. Obviously the size of the cabinets are comparable but I had high hopes for the Neat's, given the reviews and comments left. The Neat's are three times the price of the MA's after all!

First impressions were not so good. The SX1 sounded tinny when reproducing fiddle. A 2006 CD of Linda Ronstadt / Ann Savoy starts with a Cajun fiddle. On the MA's the fiddle sounds like you are hearing it across a canyon (presumably part of the atmosphere of this great but compressed sounding CD?). By contrast the SX1 sounded similar to a song playing through a cheap transistor radio! Oh well.....

Anyway the disc continued with surprisingly good results. It is mainly vocal with sparse acoustic instruments. Vocally the Neat's reproduced everything very well. A lot of detail is given and the voices were very 3D. My wife then comes into the room and says "That sounds quite harsh, not as good as your others, sorry!". Does this happen to other forum members? That sinking feeling? :help:

We tried many vinyl Lp's including The Beatles "Abbey Road" (Japanes 70's pressing). Yes the Neat's sounded very good reproducing the analogue sound with warmth and plenty of mid-range vocal detail. The bass was also very extended and surprising for a speaker of this size. We then played a few classical CD's. The strings were very rich and smooth and a lot of ambient detail came to the fore. However, I was left asking myself a simple question: are these really any better than the Monitor Audio's at a third of the price? We switched back to the MA's with me expecting to be left aghast at the bright top-end, flabby bass and cloudy mids. Only I wasn't. The MA's sounded marvelous: blacks were black, voices and instruments were velvety smooth and yet the mid-range was still very transparent. The sound of me hitting my head against brick wall followed.

Next day we continued. More vinyl, more CD, more volume! Allowing for the fact that the Neat's are rated at 6 ohm and therefore are less efficient and harder to drive than the MA's at 4 ohm, we lifted the volume on the Neat's to compensate. The sound was still the same. Yes, the two speakers did sound quite different in presentation but if anything we'd have to give the edge to the MA's. They sound bigger and fuller and yet the all-important fine details still come through.

My final shot was to play Miles Davis In Mono CD set. Argh, now we're getting somewhere. Instantly the trumpet jumped out of the mix and sounded, well.....brass-like. I remembered thinking how "black and white" these discs sounded last time I played them through the MA's and reckoned it was the age of the recordings and the mono mix responsible. Now we got COLOUR! So the timbre of the instruments was finally revealing itself through the Neats's. Finally I felt like it was all worth the effort, but just to be certain I went back to the MA's. WRONG! The MA's also had the same sound. My brain had tricked me! So those members who argue here about scientific theory regarding what you hear v what you think you hear were right all along! However that just confirms what I've always believed.

The difference in the sound of speakers is actually very minor assuming everything else in the system is high quality and balanced and you have two fairly comparably sized boxes and both are competently manufactured by specialists in the business. They must also be a similar vintage to be fair. However, in this instance there is no way we'd pay all that money for speakers that do not better a 4 year old pair at a third of the price. It's not worth it.

For a lesser outlay, we know because we have done this several times, we could swap a source component and get much more rewarding results.

So if you're a MA speaker owner, pat the little chaps on the back. IMHO they're doing a good job. There are some critics who do not like them but more than a little hi-fi snobbery weaves its way into the equation, I'm certain. They are not trendy enough for some, clearly. Who cares? The bottom line is they are brilliant speakers and an absolute bargain at the price. Maybe next time we should aim lower to get higher results. What about the new Silver range of MA's for instance?

In the meantime we've saved ourselves £1885 and now appreciate our current MA's even more!

 

[Native_bon]

I for one think you have made a huge mistake. These speakers need a lot of running in. I first listened to these speakers at Graham hifi in london & did nto like them at all, sounding very harsh in the treble department. Then listened to them again a month later at the same shop & could not believe it was the same speakers. All the hardness was gone & it just played, while music... with amazing deep bass. A Naim streamer & amp was at the front end. Amazing speakers.

 

[VOE]

I appreciate the comment about "running in" and I fully understand this but these specimens are actually "demo" units and are about 9 months old. Personally I don't find them that harsh and indeed I have got them to really sing this past weekend with great results. The problem is though that in our opinion they do not sound better than our existing MA's overall; different maybe but not better. We want something much much better for close on £2000.

 

[stevebrock]

CD: Copland CDA 825

T/table: Clearaudio Performace DC/Clarify/Concept MC

Amps: Quad Elite / QSP power

Nice !

 

[Leeps]

Thanks VOE for the detailed and interesting review.

 

[plastic penguin]

Ok, so we gave these a shot at the weekend. Current price is £1885. The existing speakers are MA RX6 (costing £650 on 2010) bought for an earlier and cheaper setup. Obviously the size of the cabinets are comparable but I had high hopes for the Neat's, given the reviews and comments left. The Neat's are three times the price of the MA's after all!

First impressions were not so good. The SX1 sounded tinny when reproducing fiddle. A 2006 CD of Linda Ronstadt / Ann Savoy starts with a Cajun fiddle. On the MA's the fiddle sounds like you are hearing it across a canyon (presumably part of the atmosphere of this great but compressed sounding CD?). By contrast the SX1 sounded similar to a song playing through a cheap transistor radio! Oh well.....

Anyway the disc continued with surprisingly good results. It is mainly vocal with sparse acoustic instruments. Vocally the Neat's reproduced everything very well. A lot of detail is given and the voices were very 3D. My wife then comes into the room and says "That sounds quite harsh, not as good as your others, sorry!". Does this happen to other forum members? That sinking feeling? :help:

We tried many vinyl Lp's including The Beatles "Abbey Road" (Japanes 70's pressing). Yes the Neat's sounded very good reproducing the analogue sound with warmth and plenty of mid-range vocal detail. The bass was also very extended and surprising for a speaker of this size. We then played a few classical CD's. The strings were very rich and smooth and a lot of ambient detail came to the fore. However, I was left asking myself a simple question: are these really any better than the Monitor Audio's at a third of the price? We switched back to the MA's with me expecting to be left aghast at the bright top-end, flabby bass and cloudy mids. Only I wasn't. The MA's sounded marvelous: blacks were black, voices and instruments were velvety smooth and yet the mid-range was still very transparent. The sound of me hitting my head against brick wall followed.

Next day we continued. More vinyl, more CD, more volume! Allowing for the fact that the Neat's are rated at 6 ohm and therefore are less efficient and harder to drive than the MA's at 4 ohm, we lifted the volume on the Neat's to compensate. The sound was still the same. Yes, the two speakers did sound quite different in presentation but if anything we'd have to give the edge to the MA's. They sound bigger and fuller and yet the all-important fine details still come through.

My final shot was to play Miles Davis In Mono CD set. Argh, now we're getting somewhere. Instantly the trumpet jumped out of the mix and sounded, well.....brass-like. I remembered thinking how "black and white" these discs sounded last time I played them through the MA's and reckoned it was the age of the recordings and the mono mix responsible. Now we got COLOUR! So the timbre of the instruments was finally revealing itself through the Neats's. Finally I felt like it was all worth the effort, but just to be certain I went back to the MA's. WRONG! The MA's also had the same sound. My brain had tricked me! So those members who argue here about scientific theory regarding what you hear v what you think you hear were right all along! However that just confirms what I've always believed.

The difference in the sound of speakers is actually very minor assuming everything else in the system is high quality and balanced and you have two fairly comparably sized boxes and both are competently manufactured by specialists in the business. They must also be a similar vintage to be fair. However, in this instance there is no way we'd pay all that money for speakers that do not better a 4 year old pair at a third of the price. It's not worth it.

For a lesser outlay, we know because we have done this several times, we could swap a source component and get much more rewarding results.

So if you're a MA speaker owner, pat the little chaps on the back. IMHO they're doing a good job. There are some critics who do not like them but more than a little hi-fi snobbery weaves its way into the equation, I'm certain. They are not trendy enough for some, clearly. Who cares? The bottom line is they are brilliant speakers and an absolute bargain at the price. Maybe next time we should aim lower to get higher results. What about the new Silver range of MA's for instance?

In the meantime we've saved ourselves £1885 and now appreciate our current MA's even more!

Very resounding conclusion. Having owned the earlier RS6 for years I loved them to bits. You summed it up nicely. Yes there are many better speakers out there... but within that sub-£1,000 bracket the MA Silvers are as good as any.

If you have the urge to hear other speakers, try and blag a pair of Totem Arros: A lot of people tend to match them with valve or Class A amps, so your Quad should sound the bees...

 

[kev g]

Naim equipment was used with the Neats at the Bristol show

 

[Cypher]

CD: Copland CDA 825

Damn..........that is a very nice cd player

 

[stevee1966]

Good to see some positive comments on Monitor Audio for a change as they seem to have a stigma attached to them from many people.

I picked up my RX6's as an ex-demo pair from Audio-T at £500, and to me they are money well spent.

 

[nopiano]

It is very tempting to assume that outlay equals results. You have found that these things can be system specific, and have clearly got a great match with your existing system.

I have heard Neats sound very good a few times, but also pretty scrawny other times. I'm not over-impressed by their thinking that listening matters more than measuring, so I don't really buy their design philosophy. They seem to me like designs that pander to Naim and Linn fans, neither of which have ever made speakers I've enjoyed much. Neats don't seem to offer much for the money in mechanical terms, though the Motive SX2 did very well in the mag's July group test, though they look weedy alongside their rivals.

Monitor Audio have done it the hard way and have been very succesful over decades. They revise models a bit too often for my liking but their engineering has always been outstanding.

I guess we should embrace the differences, and be guided by our ears and not wallet size!

 

[plastic penguin]

Some would say that MA pander to Arcam, as allegedly Arcam used to test their amps with MAs.

Regardless of design philosophy, it'll come down to personal taste.

The only speaker, I've heard, that sounds pretty faultless with most price compatible systems is PMC. I've heard them with Arcam, Naim, Leema, Cyrus, Yamaha, Rega and it's hard to find serious flaw.

 

[CnoEvil]

Would you consider some Kef R500s?