Listening to the Neat Mystique Classic speakers
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These speakers sound energetic and pure. Are they unpolished? No, but the music gets the raw energy of a punk group. Your reviewer has rarely experienced the feeling of being as close to the music as with these Neat Mystique Classic speakers.
How should you interpret this? If you had the chance to sit in a recording studio in the control room, while musicians are playing in recording room, the sound in the control room, which has not been mixed or processed, has a pure immediacy and energy that is almost never experienced that way in the mixed and mastered final product.
It is as if these Neats manage to extract that energy a little from the recording you play back at home. The result is stunning, but certainly not everyone’s taste. The level of immediacy should appeal to you, but if you feel that connection then the sound of these speakers will get under your skin.
As if you were present
A lot of music has been played over the long review period, from CD, via streaming services and from vinyl. From the new Beth Gibbons “Lives Outgrown” to the van Baerle Trio’s 5 CDs with the Beethoven Trios for piano, violin and cello. Not only is the van Baerle Trio’s recording outstanding, the great performance is palpable with the Neat Mystique Classic speakers.
With any CD, LP, whether you stream the music from Qobuz or from your own hard drive, it is consistently the same experience: as if you are in an intimate room and the musicians are playing right in front of you. When Beth Gibbons sings ‘I’m floating on a moment’, you float along on the sounds. The dip in the melody to the lyrics ‘No one knows, No one can stay’ every time feels like going down a gentle rapids for a moment.
The speed, lightness and rhythm of the Neat speakers is what catches your ears. The pure and energetic nature is caused by the speed of the transients, like the attack of a cymbal for example, but also in how microdynamics in instruments and voices are made audible.
With Vega Trails’ album “Tremors in the Static”, it is like sitting in a pew, right in front of the players. The Neat speakers flawlessly let you hear what is happening in the interaction between the space of the church and the outbursts of the saxophone. While at the same time, the saxophonist’s breaths can also be followed exactly. As a listener the whole experience is pure energy.
The Neat Mystique Classic sounds very open and is clearly detailed in the highs. Not in an unpleasant way, but Neat’s AMT unit bring the sounds to life.
The experience is enhanced by the stereo image that embraces you. You can almost pinpoint the layers in the music, both in the construction of a piece and in how instruments are placed next to and behind each other in the stereo image.
So is it all perfect and great? No, unfortunately there are limitations too.
The limitation of certain recordings
Glenn Hansard’s album “This Wild Willing” on vinyl sounds normally grand, layered and impressive. Sliders have definitely been played with in the mix and master on the console. On the Neats, the whole foundation under the stereo image falls away and it sounds thin and bare. The first speakers this has ever occurred with. No doubt this has something to do with phase.
It is an effect that is noticeable on more albums that have been heavily mixed. The huge stereo bubble produced by the Neat speakers seems to amplify or attenuate effects in the mix. With classical music this is not heard, but with rock and pop it is.