The effect of the isobaric bass-loading is clearly visible in bass extension, which is unusually good for a standmount design. A generous rear port shares the back panel with two terminal pairs that are spaced well apart and linked by brass strips. The whole thing feels very solid, helped no doubt by the extra rigidity imparted by the internal partitioning and a total weight of 15kg - the same as for the Ultimatum MFS.
#Neat video review drivers#
The drivers are nicely rebated, and, as with other Neat speakers, there's no grille available. Because these use concave 25mm alloy dome diaphragms, they look rather like Focals, but they are in fact different.Ī medium-size standmount with an internal volume of around 14 litres, the Momentum 3i comes in a choice of four smart matt-finished real-wood veneers - oak, maple, cherry and 'rosenut' being the standard options. Neat, therefore, chose to create its own tweeters. However, a few years back, Focal decided to concentrate on its complete speaker systems and (almost) stop supplying raw drivers to other manufacturers.
#Neat video review driver#
The main driver (and presumably its internal partner, though that can't be confirmed) is Neat's familiar high-class 168mm unit with a 120mm diameter doped and flared paper cone, now with a metal 'bullet' pole-piece extension.įor many years, Neat used to buy in its tweeters from French manufacturer Focal, who, unusually, make designs with inverted (concave) domes. Isobaric or not, this is essentially a two-way design. However, an alternative way of looking at the system is to see the internal driver as removing much of the effect of the enclosure from the driver on the front, cutting the build-up of pressure as well as reducing internal reflections from reaching the back of that driver. The actual benefit here probably has as much to do with delivering good extension from a relatively compact enclosure as with any other factor. Neat glues its drivers in place, for superior mechanical integrity, so internal examination isn't possible, though a diagram on the company's website suggests that the cavity between the drivers is quite small.Īssuming the cavity intimately couples the two diaphragms together, it effectively doubles the moving mass of the diaphragm (lowering its fundamental resonance), and also doubles the electromotive 'shove'.
Exactly how this operates isn't entirely clear.