See review

Amp runs a little hot.

Listen to John Meyer of Newform speaker fame. He really is on to something! I have about 2/3 of his latest recommendation, and I'm here to tell you it is not only something very special, but an incredible bargain. My setup consists of Newform R-45 ribbons, Acoustic Energy AE 2's- used for mid ranges, and a pair of Entec SW-1 subs. The electronics are a Tact 2.2X that feeds a digital signal to a Behringer digital crossover, and then to a Panasonic XR-45 receiver. I use the Behringer to send the signal to the subs, and four channels of the Panasonic to handle the mids & ribbons. I cannot begin to tell you when a two thousand dollar expenditure ( I already had the AE2's & the subs) has reaped so much lovely sound. The speakers are about twelve feet apart, and the sound stage is huge, with no hole in the middle. This setup has all the depth & height you could want. The sound seems to wrap around you the way they say Nearfield speakers do. The background is dark black, and low level detail is there in abundance. I have been a great fan of the Spectron Musician II amps ( I own three of them) - John's web page also steered me in that direction some years ago. I am not lying when I say, at reasonable levels, in a blind A-B test, I'd be had pressed to correctly identity which amp I was listening to, the Spectron or the Panasonic. Considering the six channels of the one costs only 3% of the other, I am dumbstruck. One can now put together a state of the art system for under ten grand including pre amp, amp, speakers, and source equipment. The high end is changing dramatically - check it out!

Similar Products Used:

Too many to list. Currently have Waveform Mach 17 spks + SOundlab Ultimate's. Spectron & OTL amps, etc

The R645SC (aka KSU3) is an iccredible bargain with performance better than speakers costing many times their price. From 35Hz to 20,000Hz they are as good as or better than anything I have ever listened to.

They could still use a little help below 35 Hz. They could use some improvement in the appearance/wife approval area.

Newform Research R645 with the R645SC (aka KSU3) upgrade. I will begin by saying that my initial impressions of the Newform Research R645s was not entirely positive. They were a pleasant speaker to listen to but nothing that blew me away as so many others have reported. The bottom end was not particulary extended, nor did it have punch. Perhaps, boomy would better describe its nature. The Scanspeak divers did not blend well at all with the ribbon. I could easily distinguish that which came from the woofers and that which came from the ribbons. The mids were smooth, but a little muddy. The speaker lacked dynamics. I found that I had to really pour on the power to make the speaker rhythmic, then it was playing too loud over all. The ribbon had good dispersion but lacked the kind of detail I expected after reading all the reports by current owners. The ribbon also seemed to suffer the slightest harshness. So I went back to my heavily modified IMF SACMs and pondered what to do with the 645s. Various places on the net, particularly the Newform group on Yahoo, I kept reading about the KSU1 and KSU2 upgrades and the kind of differences they made in the 645s performance. It sounded like these changes addressed many of the weaknesses I had noticed. I was torn between selling the R645s or investing in an upgrade that "might" make the speakers perform up to my expectations. I decided to call Sonic Craft to buy the components for the upgrade and ended up spending a very long time on the phone with Jeff Glowacki the owner. Jeff really knows the speaker business and why things work the way they do. What a wealth of knowledge! Enough history. I followed Jeff's recommendation. I sent my speakers to him for the R645SC (aka KSU3) upgrade. When the speakers returned the differences were amazing! My R645s did not sound like the same speakers! In my haste to get things hooked up I didn't get the left channel speaker wire attached securely so when I fired things up there was momentarily only one channel working. The sense of depth coming from just one speaker was greater than the depth reproduced by the pair before the upgrade. The clarity, depth and width of soundstage is phenominal. On several recordings the sound stage extends beyond the room boundaries. This is no small feat since the room is 20 ft by 24 ft. The speakers are placed along the 20 ft dimension around 34 inches from the rear wall and 46 inches from the side walls toed in slightly. They are now very dynamic at low volumes. This would lead me to believe that the R645SC is a "must do" for those low power tube guys. The integration of the Scanspeaks with the ribbon is greatly improved. I don't notice a particular sweet spot or optimized window like I did before. They now perform better in a variety of listening positions within the room. The bottom end seems much more extended without the boom or bloat. The bass is much tighter with greater authority. A huge veil was lifted from the mids! The mids seemed to have more continuity with an optimum balance between micro detail and smooth musical flow. The highs were now as good as anything I have ever listened to! To sum things up simply, the speakers went from pleasant to a reference by which I will judge all other speakers. The sense of realism is scary! Jeff said it best,"the improvement will yield things you didn't know you wanted". The R645 plus upgrade is one of the greatest bargins in audio available today IMO. The rest of my system is as follows: Marsh P2000 Preamp (modified),Completely tweaked out pair of Odyssey MonoBlocks that are referred to by Klaus as "The Full Gary", A Phillips DVD963SA basically re-engineered by Rick @ EVS, Hovland ICs, and Goertz MI-2 speaker cable. The room has been tuned flat as possible from my primary listening position (~ +/- 2.5db 50Hz-15kHz).

Similar Products Used:

TDL Monitors, IMF SACMs (modified) Martin Logan, Magnepan 3.6Rs B$W and many others.

Excellent imaging and wide sound stage even when moving about the room.

.....and what are those things?"

By June of '03 it will be 2 years now I've been auditioning the 645s. The first day I set them up these speakers sounded great. I have since moved them farther apart, scooted them closer together, toed them in, angled them out, tipped them forward, leaned them back and on and on only to realize what an awesome speaker they are just sitting there the way I origionally set them up. The sound stage is so good you don't need a lot of set up tweeking. And I've thrown nearly every genre of music (and movie) you can imagine and sometimes at the outer limits of my Denon amp. Whether I'm playing background or party music the sound is so compelling when I'm walking around that I find myself sitting down and getting into the music. Even after owning these speakers for 2 years! I must admit however I did incorporate a 12" HSU to add that needed slam when enjoying movies, but for some music it fills in quite nicely. I do turn the sub off when I really want to get critical about a piece. Never the less I think it essential to have a good subwoofer with these speakers. Over the past 2 years I've had many different people walk into my listening area with music playing and all just say "WOW! sounds great.....and what are those things?" refering to the speakers. I look forward to many more rewarding years with my 645s and wait for the day when in my next house there will be enough room for another pair!

Imaging and soundstage incredible. Wonderful detail and smooooth midrange and highs. Great transient response on bass. Integrates very well with quality subs like HSU Edge etc. Just plain musical, unbelievably so. Pretty easy to set up, compared to dipoles at least.

Not good for wall-pounding rock and roll at full volume (the bass drivers bottom out, but it is pretty darned loud before that happens.)Not stable enough for earthquake country as all the weight is on top. It is recommended, and easy, to make a bigger base for the speakers.

I bought these speakers to couple with the new Bryston 4BSST. The front end is a Mark Levinson 390s CD player with a Bryston BP-25 pre-amp. The Levinson was played both direct into the amp, and through the BP-25. The sound was virtually identical either way. (Great job Bryston! A pre-amp that is truly neutral is rare in this hobby. You want more warmth, get a tone control.) After break-in of the system, the Bryston and ribbons produced a beautiful soundstage and a sweet, clear midrange. Bass integrated well with the ribbons, after a little work in placement. Bass was quick and detailed, just not deep enough for me. The addition of the 12" HSU powered sub fixed that with no loss of transparency. My friend (He of the 23KHZ hearing range) and I hit the high-end stores and auditioned solid-state systems in the $20,000 to $50,000 class. While that much money buys you better bass (sometimes) none of the systems displayed better midrange or highs. Well done John! But a problem appeared. While the sound was everything it was supposed to be I just could not quite get into the music emotionally. Was I going to have to go with tubes after all? When I talked to John (on another matter) he mentioned the Spectron Amplifier. (See review on that amp) I searched and was able to purchase one that was already broken in. What an amazing difference! While the Bryston is truly as good as all the reviews say it is (it is easily the sonic equal now of SS amps 5 times its price) the Spectron is in another league all together. The speaker is now much *more* detailed and yet even smoother than before. The improvement in dynamics puts this system in world-class range. The soundstage deepened both behind and in front of the speakers. Bass is even more controlled and deeper than with the Bryston (quite a feat as that is the Brystons forte). All this is to say that the emotion is there now. In spades. Celine Dion can rip your heart out when she lets loose. The sythesizers and natural bass on Peter Gabriels "Up" album can clearly be heard as seperate things, both harmonically and spatially. His voice in "I Grieve" brings goose bumps to everyone that hears it. Music seems to flow as if it has its own purpose now. Joan Baez's voice can bring tears, Etta James brings back memmories of love lost, Irish Jigs make you want to get up and dance. The Newform ribbons can capture micro-dynamics like nothing else that I have ever heard. Large, complex passages are clearly delineated with no loss of sweetness, yet brass has all the edge it is supposed to. This is what I have been after for the last 20 years of my hobby/obsession. A real keeper. I plan to buy 2 more ribbons for the rear channels when I get around to surround sound (I am in no hurry!) I can't wait to see what the cross-over/box mods can do!

Similar Products Used:

Maggies, Accustats, Martin Logan, Apogee, Wilson-Watt, JM Labs, Dynaudio, and many other box designs.

I replaced my Martain Logan SL-3's with these speaker after having read reviews on these and older Newform models. The Logans were not amp-friendly and I wasn't in a position to upgrade amps. I realised as soon as I started listening that I would not miss the ML's and as they broke in things got even better. They have performed flawlessly for the last 2yrs but it was time for an update. I installed Theta caps for the ribbons and and removed the stock caps from the crossover. I moved the crossover to boxes inline with the cables to the low/mid cabinets and then experimented with bypassing the resistors one set at a time and found the perfect balance for my room/ears with one set bypassed. I also removed the stock cabimet filler material and installed Black Hole 5 liner fron Sonic Craft. The difference was stunning. I can't believe i waited this long to do these mods. I am bi-amping using Arcam amps so the next step would be digital crossover but now I can't see why. As for the weak baes that some peaople report, it relly seems room dependant/system/mucic dependant, In my room with half the resistors bypassed and all tone controls bypassed I get great bass, on material that has good low end content, Hey You by Pink Floyd had my brother looking for the Sub and he has a Pardyme reference sub in his system! Bottom line is stock these are 4 out of five cost no object speakers and 5-5 in thier price range. Modified 4.9 cost no object and off the scale for the price.

*High Frequency Resolution *Reproduction of Stringed Instruments *Reproduction of Voices (for audiophiles read: midrange) *State of the art reproduction of XRCD cds. *Imaging *Superb, unbelievable value. *So far, spikes are very sturdy. *To me, cool looks. *Allows bi-wiring or internal tweeter capacitor bypass/upgrade. *Owner of Company is very easy to do business with, very patient. very open about his thoughts.

*Admitted absence of Deep Bass *Possible low WAF (wife acceptance factor) on aesthetics due to great height and techno looks. *Left and right Binding posts too close together (distinguishing them from no other speakers I've owned.) * In my dreams, they'd be curly maple. In reality they are black only. *Admitted need to upgrade tweeter capacitors. (bfd - call owner, john, get the Theta and Hovland contact info, flip a coin to pick between em, get your credit card ready for a sum well under $200 and order em up) * Few audiophiles have heard of em, so when you brag about how great your speakers are they can only take it on faith.

I wanted to post a quick review after hearing a $5,000 + pair of Totem Speakers with plinius amp and the top of the line Sim preamp and cd player. The Totem did do a great job of focusing female vocals in the center between the speakers and overall it was a very to excellent system. Nonetheless, on returning home to my 645's I was reminded of two things that make the 645 kick celestial butt: (1) the 3 foot long ribbon towers do a superb job on all treble information, which on these speakers (in my opinion) includes some of the higher guitar frequencies {so if you love guitar music, these speakers are a phenomenal performer and a musy audition} (2)pretending that I know what "psychoacoustics" means, the sound source on these speakers, from the top of the tweeter tower to the bottom of the lower mid-woofer is about 5 linear feet and creates a great illusion of the real band being there. As the designer would admit, the bass here isn't state of the art, because there isn't room shaking deep bass, but you can always add a subwoofer and still get a great deal overall. My two final thoughts today: (1)I bought these speakers because I felt their performance was competitive with Audio physic virgos - both are imaging champs (2)I cannot forsee upgrading this out of my system for at least five or ten years. Price no object, I guess they'd get a b or b+ comparing them to amati homage, pipedreams et al. Compared to the speakers in their price ballpark (under $8K)that I heard at the 2001 and 2002 CES shows in NYC, there is no comparison - these speakers get an A++. If I could take the time machine back to the day I bought them, I'd buy them again in a New York second. I did add the theta caps for the tweeter towers. The designer told me where to order them from.

Similar Products Used:

Legacys Audio Physic Virgo Joseph Audio Totem

Extremely revealing. The high is to die for.

When you are in this price range, you could ask for more. Get a quality sub (don't use an Hsu - REL is the best followed by Velodyne)

This is a follow up to my review a long time ago. This review is for the stock model. There are numerous mods and hacks that exist, and I guess they sound better than the stock unit. This pair is more like an transitional pair of mine. My original pair was sold a long time ago and I got a chance to really try some cost-no-object (middle-class wise) setups. Purely my luck that somebody asked me to try this pair out for equipment matching experiments! So I signed up! ***** Franky, I have to lower my ratings this time around for many reasons. First of all, the ribbon is very very fast, but I also found the Revel F30 *faster*. The mids of the Revel F30 could only be described as "exquiste", something better than the Newform. Also, soundstage-wise, the Revel F30 and the Alon IV are simply much more 3-D and precise. They are also less recess than the Newform. Bass is possibly the weakest of the R645. It does go deep for normal listening, but as I have experienced many full-range speakers (B&W Matrix 801 S2, Revel F30, Alon IV, etc), and some top notch subwoofers (REL, Velodyne), I must say the R645 needs a good sub to enhance the listening experience. Finally, I found many full range speakers in this range sound more coherent than the R645. I could possibly blame this as a less-than-perfect match between the scanpeak woofers and the ribbon. I also think that, for $2500 or so, you have many other good choices depending on your taste and your preferred music genre. I still love those speakers. But I think if you could get a much better combo in similar price range by trying... (A) Triangle Celius + REL sub (B) Silverline Sonatina + REL sub Last note: The R645 is no Coincident Victory (93 db sensitivity, I think)! My 36w/ch SET monoblock did not have a good time driving the R645. The R645 is more efficient than the old-time ribbon or many existing ribbon-hybrids, but a high quality juicy amp will bring the best out. ***** My setups in pitting the R645 vs the world... (I) Mark Levinson #26 preamp + #23 amp (200W/ch dual-mono) (II) Wadia 25 digital preamp + Antique Soundlab DT1006 (845) single-ended triode monoblocks (36wpc) (III) Musical Fidelity A300 int amp (IV) Sonic Frontiers Line III + Power III (V) Melos SHA-1 preamp + Conrad Johnson MF2300 power amp All NBS Monitor III cables in my setup. ***** P.S. If you are considering buying an Magnepan instead of the R645, I have a word for you: "Don't!".

Similar Products Used:

Revel F30; B&W 801 Matrix S2; B&W 605 S2; Alon IV; Tyler Acoustics Taylo Ref Monitor; Audiovector F3 Signature; Infinity RS6000; Magnepan 3.3R and Magnepan MMG; some Castle and Celestion and Wharfedal

Definition beyond realism when connected to great electronics. Great and one on one service from Newform Research

None at this price range

My purchasing experience, since I bought those speakers only after visiting Richard Dolan, as been great. Even if when I received the speakers, noticing one of the ribbons as been slightly damaged, John Meyers replaced the damage ribbon driver at no cost to me in days only. Again I bought these speakers unseen via email and used. Owning a pair of R645 just puts me in the big league as it is one of the best speakers in the world. Granted the R645 are not as colored as other claim of fame speakers, it is only after one listen to these speakers for a while that the magic of the ribbons shines. The bass drivers are nothing but first class. Thanks to helpfull and honest audiophile that I am a proud owner of John Meyer's speakers.

Similar Products Used:

Maggies and Logans in resolultion (I still own a pair of Maggies)

Openess, air, detail, and efficiency.

Huge and heavy. Some slight finish glitches.

I just got my R645s and they are spectacular! They have an openess and air to them that is unmatched! The detail is astounding! I had a very pleasurable experience buying them because the designer himself helped me with my selection. I heartily recommend them. I also do not have the most esoteric of gear, but they sound awesome with what I have. Do not hesitate to buy them now, you will not be disappointed! Music, HT, they do it all! My system- Rotel RSP1066, Rotel RMB1075, Toshiba SD9200. Tributaries interconnects, and Monster cable. Mirage BPS400 sub, and Eosone surrounds.

Similar Products Used:

I have heard Magnepans 1.6QR, and Martin Logan Ascents, and Odysseys. For the price, these blow them away.

Imaging, transparency, speed

Ugly - Newform needs to hire industrial designer...but then the price will probably will go up.

After owning these speakers for more than a year, I finally feel like they are worth the hype given to them in this forum, as well as the associated user group. I was sufficiently disappointed to the point where I had thought about replacing them several times. I even started looking at new speakers. I am now glad that I didn’t. What finally won me over is the change in my front end. I had been shopping for a CD player for awhile, and have been doing a lot of auditioning while working in China on an overseas assignment. This includes the Shandling CDT100, Regas, Audio, MFA3, Electrocompaniet, Audio Refinement, Creek, CEC…, as well as some Chinese brands. I know there are differences between players but I never realize the magnitude of change a good player can make to my home system. Until this week. While home for a brief break, I borrowed a Musical Fidelity A3.2CD from a local dealer. This player has the 24/192 upsampling DAC and an upgrade from the old A3. It also looks much better. The improvements this made to my system blew me away. The speakers opened up dramatically. There was much more air. Imaging was wider and deeper. The music had a more 3 dimensional sense - more like “being there”. Musicians sound holographic. CDs that I deemed tolerable before now sound very smooth and with much more detail. My wife, who is no audiophile but has very good hearing, could not even recognize some of the disks that she was familiar with. We can hear more body from the acoustic guitars. The sound had more snap, more air and a much greater sense of envelopment. The ribbons just sing, sing and sing. The bass was tighter and much better integrated with the ribbons. I kept saying to myself, O my God, this sounds so good. The 645s finally remind me of QUAD ESL63s. All this with compromise placement. The moral of the story? Garbage in, garbage out. Upgrade your source. I planned to try more expensive players, just to see if it can get any better. The speakers? They are keepers at last. My system: Plinius SA250 MK4 operating in class A mode Plinius M16L line stage Gryphon speaker cables with WBT spades. Custom made balance cabinets between amp and preamp. Custom made silver plated twisted pair interconnects between source(s) and preamp.

Similar Products Used:

Merlin, Klipsch classics, B&W, Proacs, PSB