Premiere Design

Almost exactly one year ago, I profiled the Universal Power Amplifier from NBS, an American boutique audio company known mostly for its high-end cables. It also offers some audacious speakers, including the Eva (shown above) and Butter/Fly.

Weighing in at 850 pounds, both models reproduce the left and right channels of a stereo signal from a single cabinet over seven feet long and two separate bass modules that stand behind the main unit. Each sealed-enclosure bass module sports a single 18-inch subwoofer firing downward into the floor, while the main cabinet houses two JBL compression-driver midranges in a 25-inch horn structure and two JBL ring-radiator, horn-loaded tweeters. The midrange drivers are located toward the center of the cabinet and fire backward and downward, while the tweeters at the far ends of the cabinet fire backward into the bass modules, which reflect their sound into the room.

Named after designer Walter Fields' mother, the Eva comes with two pyramidal bass modules that stand four feet tall. However, a customer's wife complained that the main cabinet looked like a coffin—not surprising, since the design was borrowed in part from a Daniel Greenfield speaker called The Coffin! So Fields redesigned the system, and the Butter/Fly was born with bass modules that follow the contour of the sloping main cabinet. Both use the same internal geometry and achieve a frequency response from 15Hz to 20kHz with an efficiency of 96dB/W/m.

So take your pick, and be prepared to plunk down $200,000 either way. And while you're at it, why not grab a couple of NBS Universal Power Amps for $80,000 each to drive this thing?