Naim Ovator S400 Floorstanding Speakers – Cherry (2011)

Here we have a pair of the excellent Ovator S-400 loudspeakers from British company Naim Audio. They are in very good condition with one small blemish – one speaker has a tiny mark on the front left – please see photographs. They are supplied in original factory packaging with our standard three month warranty.
Naim Say….
Constructed on the rigid foundation of a pressure die-cast aluminium plinth, the Ovator S-400 comprises visually stunning leaf-spring decoupled enclosures fitted with two custom designed rigid paper cone bass drivers. Located above the bass drivers, within nested and decoupled enclosures, is a uniquely advanced Balanced Mode Radiator. The Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR) drive unit reproduces the full bandwidth from the low midrange crossover point to well above audibility with a flat frequency response, minimal distortion and consistently wide dispersion. Encasing all of this, each stunning Ovator curved-panel enclosure is an outstanding example of contemporary aesthetic industrial design. The form is striking yet subtle and with four real wood and one solid colour finishes available, it integrates effortlessly into domestic settings of any style. Music played from the Ovator is a revelation. The uncoloured, detailed and natural coherence of the Balanced Mode Radiator combines with the rhythmic clarity and accuracy of the twin bass driver system endlessly to reveal previously unheard musical details and insight. Stereo imagery and recorded ambience are portrayed with scale and depth that remains consistent across the listening room and an entire music collection becomes new again. The speaker is the point at which recorded music leaves the world of electronics and becomes real. With the Ovator, the reality is a musical experience that sounds live and real.
The Ovator Range is the result of a four-year development programme and represents both a remarkable new expression of proven Naim speaker engineering and a technological advance that, quite literally, recasts the accepted ground rules of electro-acoustics.
Our entry-level floorstanding loudspeaker, the Ovator S-400, is designed to deliver outstanding results in smaller rooms and with less ambitious levels of amplification than the S-600 and S-800. Equipped with Naim Audio BMR drive units and twin 165mm bass drivers, the S-400 employs much of the ground-breaking technology of its larger siblings.
It also features the same system of progressive decoupling. The plinth is isolated from the main enclosure by an innovative leaf-spring suspension system and the BMR drive unit itself sits in its own flexible suspension system, such is the attention to detail in getting the best possible sound.
The Ovator S-400’s balanced mode radiator (BMR) constitutes its most visible technological advance, yet the performance of this loudspeaker is equally the result of painstaking refinement in numerous elements of design, construction, and material selection.
For example, there is so much more to the musical reproduction of bass than low frequency extension, so the Ovator S-400 LF driver is designed not simply to play bass, but to do so with faultless musical accuracy. It incorporates a multitude of electro-acoustic details aimed at minimising distortion and compression, and the result is extended bass with peerless timing, dynamics, and pitch accuracy.
The Ovator S-400 crossover network is housed within the plinth and divides the audio signal between bass drivers and BMR with fourth order acoustic slopes at 700Hz. Each component selection is the result of intense technical analysis and listening, and the component arrangement is fundamentally informed by the layout and earthing techniques developed for Naim Audio power amplifiers. A crossover module suspension system and individual component decoupling ensures any chance of microphony is minimised.
Features:
Twin 165mm bass drivers and 46mm Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR)
Frequency response down to 36Hz, and up to 35kHz
Ultra-rigid multi-composite enclosure, strategically mass-damped and internally sub-divided to provide optimum loading volumes for each drive unit
Decoupling leaf spring suspension between die-cast plinth and enclosure to avoid low-frequency colouration
Flexible rubber suspension built around BMR drive unit itself
Specifications:
Frequency Response: 36 Hz to 35 kHz
Sensitivity: 88 dB for 2.83 V RMS
Nominal Impedance: 4 Ω (Minimum Impedance 3.8 Ω)
Suggested Power Amplifier Rating: 25 – 130 W (8 Ω rating)
Dimensions: 1060 (H) x 330 (W) x 345 (D) mm
Weight: 31 kg

For a review from What Hi-Fi? magazine please click here