NHT Super Zero 2.1 Review (bookshelf speaker)

[leeroy 85032]

Well, you are in for a treat them since I have my sample for sale. How much will you pay for it?

Just for full disclosure.. I own the 530s...like them very much.. More than you , i would think..

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Atkinson tested a different speaker. The main clue is comparison of the impedance plots. The crossover area especially looks quite different.

Yeah, there have been a couple of minor crossover component changes. That's why the impedance peak is different in that area. The same basic driver and topology configuration has existed from the outset though.

I have the crossover schematics of a couple different Superzero versions on my computer here somewhere, but I can't seem to find them right now.

Dave.

 

[leeroy 85032]

Why? Sell what you have, buy this one from me and add a sub and you are golden.

And what do you have anyway?

I'll take my 530s on one set up and my Dennis Murphy mods (on the other)and call it a day

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Well, if that is the case, logic would say to not post negative things post review and hence "stir up discussion!" To the extent you are the guilty party in doing so, then I say the arrow points back at you, not me.

As I noted in the review, I bought this speaker a year ago. I had forgotten about it until someone offered to send one to me for testing. I went on Amazon to look it up, only to be told that I had already bought it in January! So decided to test it before it starts to rot in its carton. That you are up in arms about it is not my concern. I test speakers as they come and are recommended to test using the same protocol for all to preserve fairness and following strict science that other variables need to be controlled.

The objective measurements -- which are out of my control -- show this speaker to be deficient in many areas from efficiency to directivity. So it gets poor rating. I suggest you park your emotions outside of this forum. I have little patience left with respect to your posts which seem to all read this way now.

You seem to be under the impression I'm "up in arms" and "emotional" about ASR. I can assure you I'm not. I think you labeling me as such is just a cop-out to deflect legitimate critquing of your approach here. Others have noticed issues with your approach/conclusions as well. This shouldn't be a surprise to you.

BTW, threats have no effect on me. If you choose to view my posts as "outbursts" and/or "emotional" then so be it. But have some integrity as a forum moderator and take appropriate action vice manufacturing a straw man argument to justify your position.

Dave.

 

[amirm]

Just for full disclosure.. I own the 530s...like them very much.. More than you , i would think..

That's cool. But I am still trying to find out why you won't want to own this speaker and add a sub to it. What would be the issue with that relative to the 530s you own?

 

[amirm]

You seem to be under the impression I'm "up in arms" and "emotional" about ASR. I can assure you I'm not.

Excuse me? You didn't write a long message to our last moderator telling him he didn't know what he was doing and that we should be doing this and that to run the forum? Your posts continue to be non-constructing, complaining, angry types. As was this one I just responded to.

I suggest you print your posts and show them to a loved one and see their reaction. Plenty of people critique my posts but don't continuously complain about the forum as a whole, and the people who run them in the specific, like you do.

 

[leeroy 85032]

That's cool. But I am still trying to find out why you won't want to own this speaker and add a sub to it. What would be the issue with that relative to the 530s you own?

I'm not in the market... I just don't do obsessive buying....I'm good ,really..

 

[More Dynamics Please]

No measurements to offer, but my ears tell me bass distortion is greatly reduced when crossed to a sub at 160 Hz as might be expected with a 4.5" mid-range posing as a woofer.

 

[pma]

I have JBL Control 1 Pro which measures similar in bass and midrange area. Yes no bass, what would we expect. A speaker like this is useless for any kind of more serious listening.

 

[Plan9]

I'm not ashamed to admit that my late partner and I used these as "traveling speakers" in the 1990's. We took a portable CD player, a tiny El84/6BQ5 SE vacuum tube amplifier, and the NHT Super Zeros and set them up in our room in B&B's and small botique inns up and down the US West Coast and the interior mountains of the California Sierra Nevada and the Cascade range further north up through the State of Washington..

Lois enjoyed Beethoven and Mozart, and it was nice to have decent sound (but not high-end) and a nice bottle of wine for those romantic evenings. It certainly beat the hell out of any TV or clock-radio in the rooms. I remember fondly a few Thanksgiving weekends spent in the quaint little tourist town of Mendocino on California's North Coast, including one wonderful Thanksgiving in the upstairs front room of the McCallum House Inn. (We didn't want any bass to disturb the neighbors in such shared lodgings.)

There is more to life than "perfect sound".

View attachment 100929

I'm sitting here enjoying some original 1991 Super Zeros with a matching SW1 sealed passive sub(!) in a smallish room. From Mendelssohn's "Italian Symphony" to well recorded 12" singles from the 1980's and a lot of other music in between, this combination is just relaxing and fun to listen to.

 

[sarumbear]

NHT has been pretty transparent about the need for a sub with this set for decades.

Please show us that “transparency”. There’s no mention of the need for a subwoofer on the product page.

You are spreading false information!

 

[watchnerd]

I had a pair of original Super Zeros back when they first came out.

Doesn't the original design pre-date Toole's research, or at least came out before the research was concluded?

 

[watchnerd]

Please show us that “transparency”. There’s no mention of the need for a subwoofer on the product page.

You are spreading false information!

Dude.

It's got a 4.5" woofer and a -3 dB at 85 Hz.

That's in the specs.

That's pretty transparent that you need a sub if you want real bass for anyone who has even entry level knowledge about audio.

 

[Shike]

Please show us that “transparency”. There’s no mention of the need for a subwoofer on the product page.

You are spreading false information!

Per the main product page:

the SuperZero 2.1 complements the SS 10 subwoofer perfectly in creating an affordable yet high-end stereo or surround sound system.

That plus the high -3dB are straightforward.

 

[StevenEleven]

Please show us that “transparency”. There’s no mention of the need for a subwoofer on the product page.

You are spreading false information!

On the one hand, I think saying that @ROOSKIE is spreading false information is a bit of an overstatement. He seems like a pretty straight shooter to me. I think it’s fair to say that they are transparent about the fact that a subwoofer may help, but not so much about how absolutely necessary a subwoofer might be.

On the other hand, to that extent, you’re right about the product page, IMHO. https://www.nhthifi.com/products/10654-superzero-2-1-our-amazing-mini-monitor#description They state that the superzero 2.1’s sound much bigger than they look, and mention a newly revised woofer, which kind of implies adequate bass IMHO, as opposed to indicating a need to supplement the bass, which would be more straightforward. Just about any speaker can be helped by a subwoofer, so indicating a matching subwoofer is not exactly being transparent about the need for one. They indicate that a subwoofer may complement their speakers, but no, that’s not the same about being transparent about the need for a subwoofer. And in the end, I think that objectively they are probably not very good speakers, on a few fronts, at least as reflected by the measurements in @amirm ’s review.

For those who question @amirm ’s subjective impressions, I get that, that’s why they’re called subjective, and further they‘re not blinded. If you like it better than he does, then that’s that. But for those who question his listening in mono, you should know that there is research to show that subjective impressions tend to be more efficient and reliable and to provide wider differentiation if done in mono. It’s in Toole’s book. If you don’t accept that research, okay, but at least know that it exists. As I understand it, that research would indicate that if @amirm conducted listening tests in stereo instead of mono his impressions would tend to be be less discriminating and less reliable.

 

[EJ3]

From that page:

”Unlike most small speakers, which try to fool you with boomy, pseudo-bass from a port, the SuperZero 2.1 acoustic suspension (sealed) enclosure skips the bass and focuses on making beautiful, lifelike midrange and high frequencies.”

EDIT: Who needs bass? Let’s just skip it...

The 1 in the 2.1 part of it's nomenclature indicates that it is designed to be used with a sub-woofer.
That is no excuse for the massive amount of faults that it has.

 

[More Dynamics Please]

Straight from the NHT website:

"SuperZero 2.1 complements the SS 10 subwoofer perfectly in creating an affordable yet high-end stereo or surround sound system."

 

[More Dynamics Please]

The 1 in the 2.1 part of it's nomenclature indicates that it is designed to be used with a sub-woofer.
That is no excuse for the massive amount of faults that it has.

There was an earlier NHT SuperZero 2.0 as the second coming of the original SuperZero and the 2.1 is just an updated version of the 2.0.

 

[SIY]

But for those who question his listening in mono, you should know that there is research to show that subjective impressions tend to be more efficient and reliable and to provide wider differentiation if done in mono. It’s in Toole’s book. If you don’t accept that research, okay, but at least know that it exists. As I understand it, that research would indicate that if @amirm conducted listening tests in stereo his impressions would be less discriminating and less reliable.

The problem with that is for speakers that deliberately have asymmetric radiation. For example, The AR MGC, or NHT’s 3.3 do not function at all well as mono speakers, nor are they intended to.

 

[StevenEleven]

The problem with that is for speakers that deliberately have asymmetric radiation. For example, The AR MGC, or NHT’s 3.3 do not function at all well as mono speakers, nor are they intended to.

That does sound like a problem. It doesn’t seem like it applies for the superzero 2.1 though.