The new NSMT Model 100 Speakers

@rbautista 

How's the NSMT 100 settling in?

Thanks,

Wig

Hey rbautista,

I agree with Wig, please share what's going on with your experience of the NSMT 100's performance now that have "dialed" them in.

Teajay

My apologies for the late reply.  Life has been busy and trying to squeeze in time to get everything settled in has been challenging.  I'll follow up with more thoughts later but all I can say is that these speakers are very honest.  The 100's will reveal the weak link upstream. 

I started with swapping out my Don Sachs preamp for my Placette passive.  I really like the Don Sachs but I felt it colored the imaging too much to where it could be called euphonic.   The 100's also helped figure out what tweaks I need to make further upstream which was my Lector Digitube v1 (circa 2009).  This is where I've been spending my time since my last post where I was trying to find the right tube.  I went from 12at7 to 12au7 and settled on 12bh7. (*Shoutout to iCloseouts tubes for helping me find what I was looking for*).  Short answer on that tube journey was due to the efficiency of the 100's compared to the 1.6's.  There was too much gain with the 12at7.

I don't want to make this post about the Lector dac but the 100's has really helped me focus on what needed to by tuned.

For now, all I can say about the 100's is that they are much more efficient, neutral, transparent, musical and dynamic than the Maggie 1.6.  With to the bandpass, I think the soundstage has much more presence.  I've never heard that in my system before.  Music just sounds more "solid".  The 100's have traits of my 1.6's but to a much higher qualitative level (top to bottom).  Never thought I would own a reference pair of speakers.  Props to TJ for helping me out with my new audio journey.

To be continued....

@rbautista 

Thanks for taking the time to update us on your journey and it appears that your NSMTs are settling in nicely 😊

Ron 👍

Still tinkering with the 12bh7 tubes in the Lector dac rotating the output and cathode follower tubes.  Settled on Ratheon in the output and RCA (dimple getter) in the cathode follower.  

Something new to me compared to the Maggie 1.6 is that I am able to hear "through" the speakers with the 100's.  With the Maggies, the soundstage could be described as a giant painting on the wall.  Back then, I thought the soundstage had good depth until the 100's replaced them.  Now the image with the 100's is like looking through a window where the soundstage is past the speakers.  The 100's depth of the soundstage is deeper than the Maggies to where the Maggies could be described as being "flat" if I were to directly compare the 2 speakers. This is what I mean by hearing "through" the speakers.  I can see the speakers but everything is playing behind the 100's almost holographic like.  My soundstage could be much deeper than it already is with the 100's if it weren't for my 65in flat panel tv.  Considering the room situation, the 100's are definitely a huge step up from the 1.6's.  The 1.6s were beautiful sounding and I'm not sure moving up to the 3.7 would have been better than the 100's.  The overall presentation, transparency, dynamics, and PRAT of the music is a qualitative level higher.  Not knocking the Maggies since I did enjoy them all those years but the 100's are a game changer (maybe end game) for me when it comes to my speaker setup.