Funky design..eccentric.
Nice integration and decent midrange.

Harsh and bright treble. Unbearable at times. Slight "boxy sound" hard to put on stands.

I may be in disagreement with the people here but...here goes.

My friend had bought a pair and we did an entire day's trial against my Legacy studios (800 pair). We came up with the conclusion that although they use good parts...all scanspeak . The tweeter was badly engineered in regard to the crossover. The legacy's tend to be bright, but the Norh's are much more aggressive. Silibance and raspiness were hard to tolerate on some cds.

The speaker also had been broke in for about 3 months, so I don't think this was an issue. Surprising, considering the execution of the same tweeter in other commercial designs.

The midrange was okay, decent at this price I would say. The soundstage was pretty nice though. They are also hard to place on stands.

I'll keep my Legacy Studios. As for my friend, he's gonna do some major tweaking to the crossover !

Similar Products Used:

Martin logan, Proac, Legacy studios,

I have been a videophile for over ten years. I am one of those generation X'ers influenced by MTV, VCRs, and Laser Disks. Consequently, I was never
interested in sitting down and simply listening to music.


Not being an audiophile at the time, I did not understand what listening fatigue was and therefore couldn't explain why I would get fidgety listening to music. My previous systems had all been designed to provide multichannel effects. Subwoofers were mandatory to capture the impact of explosions and gunfire.


My last pair of loudspeakers were made by Snell. They cost about $1,500 per
pair and weighed over 104 pounds. I still feel that these speakers sounded
quite good. Perhaps it was the AV amplifiers that I was using that left me
unfulfilled.


A friend of mine started a loudspeaker company in Thailand. The loudspeakers
are carved from solid wood and are shaped something like a jet engine. The
sound of the Vifa based speaker had more impact and sounded more involving
than what I remembered from my Snell speakers.


I asked if he could build a pair that used SCANSPEAK drivers. I was
familiar with SCANSPEAK's reputation if not their sound. My friend agreed
that if I paid for the drivers, his company would build a pair.


The speakers took three months to design. I must say that what resulted was
the most impressive sound I have ever heard. The NORH 7.0s are the most
detailed loudspeakers I have ever heard.


Not having been an audiophile for many years, I don't have the words to
describe how the NORH 7.0 sounds. What I can say is that it sounds as if
each instrument had its own amplifier and loudspeaker. Nothing ever gets
lost. The improvement I heard using the SCANSPEAK drivers was the type of
improvement one hopes for when they upgrade their CD player or D/A
converter. The difference is resolution.


Now that I have the NORH 7.0s, I rarely watch videos or even movies. I find
more vivid images coming to my mind as I listen to my newly acquired XRCD
collection. The sound nearly paralyzes me to the point that once I put on a
CD, I can not move until the CD is finished.


The NORH 7.0 was added to NORH's catalog and is now their best seller. I
understand that most people buy it as a kit and build it themselves. Many
owners of the NORH 7.0 have exchanged e-mail with me. We all agree that it
is absolutely magic.


Perhaps most of the magic is in the SCANSPEAK drivers themselves. After all,
there are many magical speakers that use these fantastic drivers. However,
none of them are available for about $1,000 USD per pair.

In my previous review I put the company's web site but it is gone somewhere. i guess that may be the manager of this site thought I was using this page for ad. Nope, I have nothing to do with the NORH company except I bought a pair of NORH 7.0. Whenever I read someone's review, I often wished they put their source of bargain or web site. That is why I put the web address. To visit "NORH" web site you know what to do. Just remember the name and put You will not be sorry for yourself and me. I made another mistake in my previous review:the "DYU" suppose to be "DIY" (Do It Yourself). NORH speakers deserve all music lovers attention.

I would like to start by saying that this speaker is awesome. I've never heard anything sound so perfect. Check out the design! Finally, a speaker that uses a different shape. I'm tired of boxes, can't any speaker company's in-house designers think of anything different? B&W Nautilus, Jordan Watts Accoustics FLG, and Anthony Gallo Acoustics Solo, and Referance deviate from the box shape as well. The sounds of the B&Ws and the Gallo References are good but the Norh 7.0 just sounds better. And now compare the prices! I would love to have a pair of Black Nautilus in my studio but they're just too darn expensive. So I ordered me some Gloss Black Norhs and put them on some matching black stands and viola`, killer looks and killer sounds!!!
On a side note about the Norh subwoofer. It's just too bad that the Norh subwoofers don't follow the same theme of the drum design. They lost me there.

Mel posted the same garbage on the Newform Research 645 page and the norh 9.0 page. Obviously he is going around and ruining 5 star ratings. I doubt Mel heard these speakers, both nOrh and Newform are direct order companies and can not be auditioned localy. Interesting thought, is Mel a dealer or just a tool? This crap ruins this website.

Hmm, I just realized that I have replaced my wood 7.0's with the marble 7.0's several months ago & I have never posted my impressions of the new speakers. I had both speakers in my home for about 2 months, so was able to do some extensive comparison. I will try to keep this short as my last review (below) of the wood 7.0 was pretty extensive & I just want to point out the areas where the marble 7.0s sound different.

So, let me say for the record that the marble enclosures do make a rather signifigant difference in the sound of the 7.0's - The slight warmth I noted earlier on the wood speakers is now gone. The marble 7.0 is as close to a truly neutral sounding speaker as I have heard when it comes to overall tonal balance. The highs sound about the same on both speakers (I have the 9500 tweeter on both the wood and the marble speakers, but the 9700 tweeter is now standard with the marble 7.0, and yes, it is a better tweeter - more detailed & pure sounding, but also more revealing & thus less forgiving to poor recordings). The bass and the mids is where the differences are. The mids sound much clearer, cleaner, and more "pure". Little details that normally are buried in the mix are easily discernable. Vocal inflections are not smoothed over, but are laid bare in all their beauty/pain/sorrow/joy, etc. . . . The marbles sound is even more free of the physical speaker than the wood's sound, and that is saying something since the wood speakers were some of the least "boxy" sounding I had heard previously.

The other area that is a large difference is in the bass. The bass does not extend any lower with the marble speakers, but it does sound much more powerfull, almost a "percussive" sound. I think this is because the wood speakers lose just a bit of force as they start reaching their lower cutoff range, while the marble speakers retain the full force of the bass, all the way to the point that the bass response drops straight down off the chart, around 45 hz.

Normally this is the point where I would do a bunch of comparisons with different music & point out in minute detail where the marble and wood speakers differ in great detail. But 2 things make that unnecessary - 1st, the wood is no longer officially available from nOrh, so those comparisons are somewhat pointless. 2nd, the marble is slightly better in most areas & very signifigantly better in the critical areas I mentioned above. Since the 7.0 is now standard with the 9700 tweeter, then I can safely say that the highs are MUCH better also (I stuck with the 9500 tweeter as I know the 7.0's would go in to the HT & my equipment there, while good, is not on par with the 9700 - for the record, the HT uses an Acurus Act 3 processor and Bryston amps for all speakers). Besides, if I ever want to try out the 9700 tweeter in the 7.0's, I just have to order the crossover board for it from nOrh & source the tweeter myself. Changing out crossovers is really not that difficult and changing out the tweeer is even easier. If I ever get a very expensive high end processor, I may do that (something like a Theta or a Meridian, or a Lexicon, or even a Tag).

So, with my current tweeter, the marble 7.0 is a big step up from the wood 7.0. With the 9700 tweeter, it will be in a different league all together (a lot closer to the 9.0, which I also now own). While the price on the 7.0 has increased from $1400 to $2000, I still give it 5 stars for value becuase of the very large performance increase. Overall it is the 2nd best bookshelf speaker I have heard (not counting electrostatic or ribbon based speakers). The best is the 9.0. So I am keeping the overall rating at 5 stars also.

nOrh seems to be one of the new wave of high value/high performance internet direct type companies that are just cleaning the clocks of their B&M competition. If the look of nOrh speakers is not for you, I highly recommend that you check out some other online companies such as ACI (www.audioc.com), Newform Reseach (www.newformresearch.com), VMPS (vmpsaudio.com), or North Creek Music (www.northcreekmusic.com). For a good sub to go with these great speakers, VMPS makes a couple of good ones, as does SVS (www.svsubwoofers.com) and Hsu Research (www.hsuresearch.com). For wire, I really like both bettercables.com (for copper wire & digital/video wire) and for silver wiring in a very high end system I like Pure Silver Sound (www.puresilversound.com).

I bought a pair of Norh 7.0 few months ago. This exotic speaker uses the best parts money can buy for $1400 (shipping included). Put aside its high quality parts, the intriguing appearance (inverted horn that looks like a Thai long drum) makes it look like a piece of elegant furniture.(www.norh.com)

Beginning with its parts, Scanspeak tweeter and woofer, Silver wire for wiring, gold plated terminals and multicap capacitor are used in this speaker. $1400 for a pair, the company ships them to your door worldwide. Sounds pretty good, right!! When you hear the music from the speaker, you can say that the speaker is like MSB Link or Millersound speaker cable, the best deal in audio world, no kidding.

However, I guess they take me more than 200 hours to break in and it’s not easy to find a speaker stand for them.

The sound is exceptionally good for the price. When I use silver interconnects, the high is sweet and not annoying. The mid range is clear and dynamic like its upper low and mid-low. However, the low end (around 30Hz to 20Hz) is not there. ( I’ve never heard any two way speaker can reach 30 Hz. I mean “good quality 30Hz sound”)

The cabinet started to crack a bit after four months, but I believed they will send me a new one for half the retail price($75).

I will give five stars for its value and sound, three stars for craftsmanship. (grill is not ideally done. The cloth is off a bit. I glue it back by myself.)
Since the sound quality and value are my major concern, I would like to give this product the highest rating possible, an enthusiastic “five stars”

Quad amp
MSB link
Homemade silver interconnects and speaker cables

Surprising bass and very good imaging

Need good source components to do them justice

The norh 7.0 has turned into a bit of a cult speaker. Guess that has to do with the eccentric/odd/fun website they have and the funny shape of the speaker. It doesn't hurt that the speakers sound good and are a really great buy.

The norh 7.0's replaced an 18 year old set of B&W's mini-monitors in my system that were dearly loved.

The norh's put the old speakers to shame. Better bass by far. Better clarity. An erie soundstage. Guess a couple of decades make a difference, eh?

The best way to describe the sound is to put them somewhere between the clinical accuracy of Dunlavy's and the rounded warmth of the Hales I've heard.

Give the norh's a cold source and they sound cold. Warm source (in my case tubes) and they sound warm. They seem to reflect whatever you feed them.

They very much remind me of the Nova Ovations (that use the same Scanspeak drivers).

I'd give 'em 4 stars in the real world except they run over so much the competition in their price range. Their value for the money is unbeatable.

Guess the best recommendation I can give them is that, given a choice, I'd buy them again.

Yeah, there is better out there but you are going to pay dearly for it.

after having these speakers in my home for a few weeks, i wanted to post my impressions. let me not waste any time - i love these speakers! they replaced a pair of monitor audio speakers that I was quite fond of. the norhs are better by far, which is very high praise considering the monitor's were my speaker of choice in the under $5000 category. so why did i sell them & get new speakers? because they had a spike in frequency response at around 10k hz. not a big spike, but enough that it bothered my ears after about 2hrs of listening. other than that they were great speakers in my opinion, but like i said, the norhs are better. the strengths of the monitor's were in speed, transparency, detail, driver coherence, and delineation of instruments even in loud/complex parts of the music. the norhs are at least equal to them in all these area's, plus it handily beats them in a couple of other areas that i feel are very important: tonality of instruments are much more accurate and music has a fuller, richer sound, more like you would hear in a live performance. plus, the bass is much better on the norhs. both speakers actually have the same bass extension, more or less, but the norh is much more forcefull in the low end, and has signifigantly more detail down there. but a point by point analysis does not really give you an accurate view of the overall quality of this speaker. let me give you a few samples of how some of the people in my life reacted to them. when my wife Ortrun first listened to them she said they were "like the ocean - the music just washes over me". my neighbor George commented that they sound excellent from anywhere in the room, unlike the monitor audios, which had to be listened to in the sweet spot. but perhaps most telling is the reaction of my friend Steve who was visiting me from out of state. he is definitely not an audiophile, but he is a big Shostakovich fan, so we qued up the Shostakovich string quartet #11. everything is going along nicely & it sounds really good, but i can tell that steve is not really impressed. but then we get to the slow movement and about 15 seconds in to it the cello joins the other instruments in a plaintive, intense melody. the look on his face at that moment traversed from shock/amazement to pure emotion. he could not sit still - he got up & started pacing around muttering "unbelievable! un-f***ing-believable!" i could see tears in his eyes. do the norhs connect you emotionally to the music? yes, i'd say they do. plus, as an added bonus, they look nothing like regular speakers, and the wood finish (mine is the walnut finish) is absolutely gorgeous - the pictures that are on the norh web site (www.norh.com) simply do not do them justice. put it this way - my wife recently had a small get together at our house for some people that go to her church & almost everyone commented on how nice they looked. these are people that find the typical look of speakers very offputting. a couple of people told me they were going to put aside some money in the near future to buy a pair. on a side note, i would like to say that dealing with Michael Barnes, the proprietor of norh, is an absolute pleasure. all of my emails were returned very quickly (I always had a response within a day). plus he answered all my questions, however whimsical or silly they might have seemed. i was able to find the scan speak drivers locally for a great deal less than other people can get them and Mr. Barnes graciously allowed me to order the 7.0's without the drivers so I could source them myself. but, perhaps the most astounding part is the customer service available from this company that you will not be able to find anywhere else. for example, norh sells a subwoofer that exactly matches their speakers. it uses a vifa 8 inch driver in a transmission line box with an absolutely amazing amp/crossover driving it. they sell them in pairs & they work great as stands (& look really nice too) but i did not want a vifa woofer, i wanted a 10 inch scan speak driver. Mr. Barnes directed my to Yuths, their head engineer. I gave Yuths the T/S parameters on the woofer & he is running a simulation to determine the size & shape of the box necessary to house the woofers. then they will CUSTOM BUILD THE SUBWOOFER TO MY SPECIFICATIONS AND MR. BARNES IS ONLY CHARGING ME WHAT IS WOULD COST FOR ONE OF THEIR STANDARD SUBS!!!!! the only difference would be the cost of the scan speak woofer as opposed to the vifa woofer. i have never, ever received customer service like this from any other company. so, am i happy with my purchase? you bet i am!

the rest of my system consists of:

Acurus ACD-11 CD Player (excellent transport)

Bryston B60 integrated amp (great buy - only Plinius is better in anything close to this price range for solid state)

Modified MSB Link III (perhaps the best piece of electronic audio gear I own - certainly the best performance for the $$)

Speaker wire: PSS Sextets (Braided pure silver wire).

Interconnects: PSS Quartets (Braided pure silver wire).

Digital Interconnect: EVS Digital Cable (pure copper in an air dielectric w/ a copper shield).

so, to sum up, the norh 7.0's are pretty much the best 2 way speaker I have ever heard, at any price (and I have hear a lot of them). At a price of $1400, they are self recommending. If music means anything to you, buy these speakers.

Looks are the best I have ever seen. Workmanship. Imaging, detail, soundstage has massive width,height and depth, HUGELY dynamic. Service

Long wait time to get them. They show up my cheap electronics and recordings.

At the beginning of 2000 I purchased a HT setup consisting of a Denon AVC-A1D, Krix Lyrix, Marantz 7000 dvdp, Velodyne VA-1250x sub, and it was put into the living room.
Unfortunately, I am a 3rd year university student and I spend a lot of time in my room studying etc, and I could not listen to the stereo when I was studying.

So the quest started for a bedroom system to get around my panasonic minisystem. My budget was around $AU3K.

Speakers available at the $1500-$1800 price point included the dynaudio audience 50, which was my favourite sounding speaker under $2k, but I knew I wouldn't be happy with it for a long time.

I first heard of nOrh at AR. They offered the finest components in the world, a radically new approach to cabinets, and a factory direct price. Apparently they sounded similar to dynaudio, and when I found out that I had the Australian Scanspeak Distributor 30mins drive away who sold the cheapest SS drivers in the world by 1/2, I took the plunge, and ordered the now discontinued marble 7.0 kit. I was able to get the 7.0's at an unbeleivably good price. But having heard them, $2k is cheap. As per other peoples recomendations (tyson in particular) I went with the 9500, as 10 different people all told me it was not as harsh as the 9700. I have not heard the 9700 myself, so I can not say for sure.

2.5 months after ordering they shipped. They came right in the middle of my exams, a nice little distraction....
In went the drivers after gasping at the workmanship (these really are a work of art), only to notice missing driver screws, probably lost by Australian Customs, who looked at them for a week, probably listening to them for all I know.. :)

I received the final screws today, the drivers have in excess of 100hours on them, probably 30-40 at over 90dB.

Associated Equipment:
NAD 540 cdp (new)
Cyrus 3 50W/chan Integrated Amplifer (second hand)
DIY sandstone 24" stands
Tara Labs Prism Omni Speakers Cables
Tara Labs Prism 3 interconnects
Heavily furnished room, speakers placed according to the cardas method.


All I can say is unbelievable. I took them down to the local Audio shop, and put them up against the entire Dynaudio line. Not even the $AU10000+ 3.3 (can't remember exact price, closer to $12k I think) was even close. They are too heavy to move around to every audio shop to make massive comparisons.

Imaging and detail was the biggest different between the 3.3's and the 7.0s. The 3.3's are a great speaker, but cant compete against the 7.0's. I listen to the French electronic band Air - Moon Safari's cd, and triangles etc that didn't even show up on the 3.3's were easily aubible on the 7.0's, far far more detailed.

They simply dissapear into the room. When I turned the lights off, and asked my friend to come and listen, he could not pick the speakers out in the dark, despite being only 2m away from them. I haven't heard that many high end speakers in my time, due to the limited companies in my city, but the sheer depth which they extract still startles me. I place them 2m away from a rear wall as the soundstage is VERY deep. They need more, but they will then be to far out in the room, asking for trouble. Soundstage is (using my limited audio vocab) extremely coherent, and very "thick". It seems very textured. This is another area where the dyn's just couldn't keep up.

The speakers around 2m apart, the room being 3.8m wide. Listening position forms an equilateral triangle. The soundtage I am guessing is 2m deep (to the rear wall), 2m high and 3.5 wide. I suspect the room is a big limiting factor.

They are also very natural sounding. It excels in making a female voice actually sound like a female voice, and a piano sound like a piano. On another one of Air's cd's, there is a trombone and you can hear the musician take his lips of the mouthpiece to take a breath. You can also hear the air being expelled from the end of the trombone.

Dynamics are unrivaled in any speaker I have ever heard, except the B&W Nautilus and the Dynaudio Evidence (as it should at its price). At no point are the speakers showing any sign of compression until you cross over the maximum linear excursion of the drivers. They will jump from silence to in excess of 100dB instantly, but more importantly, they will do it easily, without losing "composure".

Now for the weaknesses, I think I am the first to have a slight criticism about the sound.

I would prefer I slightly warmer sound. The problem is that on a good recording, it sounds great, but on a bright recording, it sounds bright and harsh. Whilst this is good in many ways, it obviously has it's drawbacks, making several of my cd's almost unlistenable. I don't think the silver wiring helps this, so I will soon change the silver tweeter wire over to a copper one, from the advice of Michael Barnes(no emails about DBT's please). I have measured using my RS SPL meter, and I have a ok room response, but I have a peak at 1kHz, which I suspect is the culprit. I have moved them around, and brightness was present at the audio shop, so I am mentioning it here.

But dont let this deter you. They are not really bright, just VERY revealing. The marble 7.0's are a true high end loudspeaker, and they produce a serious high-end sound.

Bottom line, I am yet to hear better from any bookshelf speaker. At $2k they are a steal, and I will almost certainly buy more nOrh products in the future. I cant think of a better recommendation than saying I will buy from then again.

Thanks goes to:

Michael Barnes and nOrh, for allowing me own a true high-end speaker on a student budget. Even if became a millionaire tomorrow, I would not buy another pair of speakers, except maybe the 9.0's.

Tyson, for helping my out with everything to do with nOrh.

Paul Lam, for leading me in the right direction, and his infinite wisdom in all things audio.

Similar Products Used:

Krix Lyrix, Dynaudio Contour 3.3, many others, but I directly compared these to the 7.0's