HOLBROOK, New York, June 20, 2023 — At Pacific Audio Fest 2023 Nola Speakers will feature the West Coast debut of its Baby Grand Reference Gold Series 3 loudspeaker. The full-range floorstanding speaker offers a number of upgrades from the previous model to deliver an extraordinary quality of musical realism, including a new isolation system that provides greatly improved dynamics, low-level resolution and other benefits.
The Nola Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 loudspeaker will be showcased at Pacific Audio Fest, June 23 – 25, 2023 at the Doubletree By Hilton Hotel Seattle Airport, Seattle, Washington, in Olympic Room 3, Wing 7.
The speaker employs Nola’s hallmark open-baffle dipole design for the midrange drivers and tweeters, which eliminates “box” enclosure colorations and contributes to the speaker’s spacious soundstage. The Nola Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 features four proprietary true ribbon tweeters along with four newly-designed midrange drivers, and dual 220 mm woofers. The new isolation system is a key element in the speaker’s remarkable performance. The isolation base’s construction features a spiked platform with an improved version of Nola’s ball-bearing isolation technology incorporated into the base.
While the concept may seem simple, the results are profound. Nola president Carl Marchisotto noted, “The idea was inspired by attending a recent live music concert. You can instantly tell live from reproduced music, and I wondered why. I was struck by the fact that with live music, the harmonics decay properly with respect to the fundamental. They’re not lost, or cut off abruptly. I set out to make sure this important aural cue was preserved, by designing the new isolation base, and achieving further improvements in performance with our new low-distortion drivers and upgraded crossovers.” Marchisotto continued, “For the first time, we will demonstrate our ball bearing isolation system applied to the whole system, including the source, amplification and other components as well as the loudspeakers.”
The true ribbon tweeters, which are built with final assembly completed in-house with proprietary components, have a frequency response to 100 kHz, for smooth, effortless high-frequency reproduction. The midrange drivers incorporate Alnico ring magnets for a more lifelike attack and transient response, and now feature the same gold-plated phase plugs used in the woofers. The 220 mm woofers employ magnesium cones and massive Alnico ring magnets, and are housed in individual rear-ported chambers for deeper, more articulate bass with exceptional dynamic response. The 3-1/2-way crossover network is hand-wired with premium components and no PC boards used, to maintain sonic purity.
“These speakers have what designers and reviewers used to call the ‘jump factor,’ where they can surprise you with their dynamic impact and clarity,” Marchisotto said. “You don’t realize that certain distortions in a loudspeaker are eliminated – until you don’t hear them, in a speaker that brings you closer to musical reality. We invite everyone at Pacific Audio Fest to come by and enjoy a very special listening experience.”
The Nola Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 is available in mirror-imaged pairs in a choice of True Piano Black Gloss or True Piano Santos Rosewood finishes, with other finishes and colors available by special order. The Baby Grand Reference Gold 3 is now shipping at a suggested retail price of $150,000 per pair.
About Nola Speakers
In 2004 Carl and Marilyn Marchisotto founded Accent Speaker Technology Ltd. and created the Nola product line with the goal of bringing the experience of listening to live music to a wider number of people. President and Chief Engineer Marchisotto has been designing audio equipment since 1973 at Dahlquist, Acarian Systems/Alon and Accent/Nola, which now offers a complete loudspeaker lineup from high-performance bookshelf models to the flagship $500,000/pair Nola Grand Reference Gold VII System, designed and built to deliver ultimate musical performance in every aspect. Nola employs a number of key technologies including baffle-less dipole drivers, Alnico magnets, Unison Crossover technology that optimally blends the performance of multiple speaker drivers, and many other refinements.
