Learning lessons with T&T’s Nel Signature and the VA Mozart Infinity…
By Roy Gregory
I’ve recently been working with two different, compact floorstanders: the latest version of the T&T Enceintes Acoustiques Nel Signature and the fascinating Vienna Acoustics Mozart Infinity. It’s hard to think of two similarly sized (and priced) loudspeakers that could be more different…
On the outside, the Vienna Acoustics speaker looks so conventional it seems almost staid. But look even just a little closer and it quickly becomes apparent that there’s a lot more here than meets the eye. The beautifully finished cabinet is resolutely rectangular, at first glance the driver line-up is pretty much the norm. Except that those drivers are Vienna Acoustic’s own, in-house (and very clever) ‘composite cone’ flat diaphragm designs, mated to a 28mm fabric dome tweeter. But round the back is where the real difference lies. This Mozart Infinity is the same integrated system/speaker that made such a splash at Munich, demonstrating categorically that, not only can you get the amplification, streaming and source switching functionality inside the cabinet (creating the potential for a genuinely versatile two-box system) but that such a system can outperform its more ambitious, more credible and much more costly ‘audiophile’ competition. In fact, the Mozart Infinities didn’t just outperform almost all of the separates systems on show, it actually embarrassed many of them.
Meanwhile, the Nel Signature is a cat of quite a different colour – literally and figuratively. The slender, tapered cabinet and beautiful metallic paint finish are as distinctive as they are modern. Despite stretching all the way to the floor, the cabinet volume measures a mere 17 litres (or roughly three times the size of an LS3/5a). Driver line up is a 29mm beryllium dome paired with a single 170mm aluminium coned bass/mid driver. Crossover point is a low 2kHz, with the downward-ported enclosure offering a -3dB point at (an also low) 40Hz with a system sensitivity of 86dB. Unusually in the world of loudspeakers, those numbers ring true, with the slim and sophisticated Nel delivering unusual weight, scale and transparency, combined with rhythmic articulation and dynamics that really allow the music to breathe. It’s this combination of qualities that first drew my attention to this unusual speaker.
Small isn’t necessarily easy – or any less rewarding of attention to set-up…
In-depth discussion of both models will await their full reviews, but working with them has highlighted a blind spot in my thinking that is worth discussing in its own right. While I’ve spent a lot of time discussing the importance of speaker set-up in high-end systems, much of that discussion has centred on the specific challenges presented by the weight and bandwidth of the designs in use. In particular, it has dealt with the issue of balancing low-frequency output and the listening room’s acoustics – and the exacting nature of the positional adjustments required to realise maximum performance. Along the way, that has somehow come to suggest that the same rules don’t apply – or at least don’t apply to the same extent – to smaller, more affordable and narrower bandwidth designs: in other words, what might be considered ‘normal’ speakers. It isn’t an explicit statement or view, just one of those ‘obvious’ reactions. It Newton’s third law of mental motion in action: for every conclusion there’s an equal and opposite reaction. If big speakers are ‘difficult’, small speakers must be ‘easy’. It’s not helped by the physical difference in dealing with a smaller as opposed to a larger and heavier speaker. But that just tends to obscure the fact that the specific issues are also different, while the degree of precision required is (or should be) much the same.
