Neodio B2 Orange : In living colour…

By Roy Grégory.
Original article in English: https://gy8.eu/review/the-neodio-b2-orange/

For those in the know, Neodio’s original B1/B1 Evo /B2 quickly established themselves as ‘go-to’ equipment supports/system treatments, used to control parasitic resonance in components and eliminate the distortions they generate. While originally employed solely as a footer or support product, in which role it was already impressive, the arrival of the B2 (and the equivalent, upgraded B1 Evo) with their significantly higher efficiency, not only created a significant lift in performance, it opened up a whole host of new applications. Suddenly, it became a case of trying the B2s anywhere and everywhere. The dense, dumpy, 65mm/2.5” ‘drums’ could be placed beneath equipment or on top – of a speaker cabinet, chassis or rack component. They could be placed on the floor or even on surrounding furniture or features, such as a mantle-piece between the speakers.

I covered the B2 and its various applications at length when they first appeared – https://gy8.eu/review/the-neodio-origine-b2/ . If you aren’t familiar with that report, or your memory needs refreshing, I’d recommend revisiting it to get the background and basics of using the Neodio B2s to greatest advantage. I’m not going to repeat that voyage of discovery here, save to observe two things:

Since then, the B2s have remained an ever present in the various systems that have graced the Gy8 listening rooms, but especially the Reading Room. Since their arrival, no power strip has ever touched the floor, while equipment is regularly to be seen sporting a squat, silver cylinder sat at some point on its top-plate.

Secondly, everything that applied to placing the B2 also applies to the new B2 Orange (and presumably the more affordable B2 Blue too). So, no need to describe that exploratory path again. Instead, I can concentrate on the differences between the two products and the benefits that accrue.

Despite the three different designations, the B1, B1 Evo and B2 were essentially the same product, the B2 being an improved version of the original, the Evo designation given to B1 units that had been upgraded to B2 status. Now comes the next step(s): the B2 Blue and B2 Orange, visually differentiated by the coloured bands around their circumference. The B2 Blue effectively replaces (and improves on) the original B2, with the price rising from €250 to €300 each. The Orange is a higher performance variant, priced at €450 each. They are available in sets of two, three or four. As with the previous models, there’s an M6 thread in the ‘top cap’ of each B2 and you can order them with M6 or M8 threaded adaptors. If you require a different thread, a wide range of options are available online. We received a set of four B2 Orange for review, enough to ring the changes.

As outlined in the B2 review, placing one of the Neodio units on top of each speaker, directly above the tweeter has a pretty impressive impact on musical performance. However, the extent and nature of the benefits depends on the material that the loudspeaker cabinet is constructed from. They’re most effective on wood-based cabinets, markedly less-so on metal enclosures, while synthetic finishes such as polyurethane lacquers also minimize those benefits. The same strictures apply to the new versions of the B2, but to a lesser extent.  Trials on the Göbel Monarque speakers produced a subtle but extremely worthwhile improvement in performance – an improvement I’ll return to later. I don’t have any metal-enclosure speakers in-house currently to test, but the benefits on the Göbel suggest that the increased efficiency and performance of the new B2 versions has also broadened their application.

But for starters, let’s stick to the optimum employment and a pair of Peak Sinfonias, the very essence of a wooden speaker cabinet. I started by removing the B2s that were in residence and establishing a base line before replacing them. As expected, they brought extra resolution, harmonic development, a lower noise floor and fuller, richer sound. Playing the Sarabande from Debussy’s Pour le Piano (Víkingur Ólafsson – Reflections – DGG 483 9214) the placing of notes is more deliberate, their timing and the space between them more explicit. They carry more body and weight – accounting for the richer tonal balance. The instrument is more solid and dimensional, the human agency more apparent. Overall, it’s a substantial extension of the speakers’ quality and performance envelope, in qualitative and quantitative terms. It’s also a hard act to follow…

Not that I needed to worry. Substituting the B2 Orange for the original model amounted to a paradigm shift. Where the B2 had built on and extended the performance of the speakers, the Orange transformed its communicative qualities. In quantitative terms, it added all of the extra information, weight and tonal richness that the B2 delivered It just allowed the speaker to do so much more with it. The spacing of the notes, the subtlety and variation in their weighting and attack, the sense of the pianist actually shaping the melody and the piano responding to input were simply in another league. To the extent that this now sounded like a piano, rather than a recording of a piano. The instrument was big, solid and stable, the harmonic complexity and layers beautifully developed, the sense of human hands energizing the instrument, the balance of left and right hand – all were suddenly natural, unquestioned and independent of the speakers. In terms of bringing expressive range, intimacy and communication to a system I’ve rarely if ever heard anything do to a system what the B2 Orange did to the Peak Sinfonias. I’ve definitely never heard anything so simple, reversible and affordable come even close.

Anything that can do this for piano, the most demanding of individual instruments to reproduce, is clearly onto a good thing. That ability to find body, space, harmonic complexity and temporal clarity transfers directly to other recordings. The messy, congested arrangements and submerged vocals of Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks (Absolute Analogue/Columbia 69097) is a perfect case in point. Listen to ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ and the Oranges not only bring space, order and separation to the soundstage, body and purpose to the guitars, they pull Dylan’s vocal into space, adding diction and intelligibility to the lyric. But most of all, they bring a sense of rhythmic integrity and swing to the track. What can sound a little slow and downbeat, becomes measured, vital and fluid, with an inevitability that matches the song’s theme and echoes the story. The loose-limbed rhythm of Michelle Shocked’s ‘Graffiti Limbo’ (Short, Sharp, Shocked – Polygram CVLP1) finds its groove, the voice gaining intimacy, the lyrics clarity and emotional punch.

And so it goes: it doesn’t matter what you play, Bach to the B52s, the recording opens out, the voices and instruments gain body and identity, the music gains sense, immediacy and a more powerful connection, be that the intricate patterns and symmetry of a baroque violin concerto or the manic rock rhythms of Athens’ finest. As per previous experience I tried the second pair of B2 Orange in various locations – under the speaker cables, on top of CD players, power supplies and amplifiers – but the one I finally settled on was under the power strip, where everything gets the benefit. But they didn’t stay there long…

Intrigued by the B2 Orange’s clear superiority in terms of musical impact when compared to the already impressive original, I wondered how effective it might be if used outside its comfort zone. Could its (considerably) increased efficiency overcome less than ideal circumstances? I hadn’t tried the original B2 on the Göbel Divin Monarque, following its failure to make any real impression with the much smaller Divin Comtesse. Placing a pair of those original B2s on the larger speaker now, the results were much the same: a very subtle improvement in air and focus, and slightly more fluidity to the ensemble and solo playing. But you needed to listen to pick the differences, differences which would easily be swamped by aberrations in set-up or speaker positioning.

Swapping to the B2 Orange wrought an immediate improvement. Where the original B2’s impact was virtually undetectable, the Orange was very detectable indeed. Despite the melamine cabinet material, the lacquer finish, the symmetrical driver layout (which places the B2 well away from the tweeter) and the astonishingly well-behaved cabinet, the effect of the B2 Orange placed on the top front centre of each cabinet was low-key but very worthwhile, adding dimensionality, immediacy and a more natural sense of shape and flow – these last, areas in which the system already excelled. This may have lacked the dramatic gains in bandwidth, dynamic range, harmonic development and musical impact that the Oranges bring to a wooden cabinet, but the musical benefit was just as fundamental.

Playing the Batiashvili, Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (with Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin, DGG UHQ-MQACD UCCG-41048) the increase in air and musical tension, the phrasing of the orchestra, the natural pace and momentum in the opening tutti all led, with a now wonderful inevitability, to the soloist’s opening phrases. It’s in the solo violin that the step up in articulation, fluid phrasing, sense of purpose and sensitivity in the playing are most obvious, elevating the quality and emotional impact of Batiashvili’s performance. The improvement in temporal integrity is not the most immediately obvious difference you can make to a system, but it is utterly fundamental to the shape and pattern of the piece being played and just how convincingly it’s reproduced.

These are not smack you in the face differences. They are all about less: less intrusion, less mechanical influence, less information loss. They are by their very nature, submerged in the fabric of the performance. But they are the difference between a very, very good system and no system. The B2 Orange seems able to strip away the last artefacts of reproduction, the smeared fingerprints of electronics and speakers, the limitations of the storage medium and replay. It seems to be able to do it regardless of cabinet material: it just makes a bigger difference that’s more obvious with wooden enclosures. It allows the system and in particular the speakers, to step from the character and limitations of recording and replay into the sense of the performance.

Given the effect of the B2 Orange on the Monarques, I set out to experiment with it elsewhere in the driving system. With three Wadax and eight(!) CH Precision PSUs to play with, I wasn’t exactly short of options, but I struck gold with the Ref DACs’ twin supplies. Removing the HRS Damping Plates that I usually employ on the shoe-box PSUs, placing the Oranges between the top-plate logo and the rear fixing boss produced a really significant increase in transparency, focus, separation and the harmonic envelope and identity of instruments. Playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, the emotional intensity and sensitivity in Batiashvili’s playing took another step up, her bowing and weighting of notes became even more natural. Now, in large part, that depended on the Oranges already sat on top of the speakers, but this is definitely a cumulative and compound effect.

Now I have a problem. With only four B2 Orange to hand, do I split them across the two listening rooms or deploy them in a single system? The answer of course, is both: or, in other words, get more units! The B2 orange has become instantly indispensable, to the extent that I find myself carrying them around with me as I move from one listening room to another. Which brings me to a really important point. As I suggested earlier, the B2 Orange isn’t just super effective, it’s also incredibly simple to use, or to try in a whole host of situations. It’s literally a case of pop it in place and listen to the results. If you like what you hear – great. If you are not sure, ABA testing has never been simpler. If you are less than impressed, move on to a different location or component. Once you’ve nailed down which components benefit the most, you can refine positioning, but if my experience is anything to go by, you’ll not be struggling to hear the differences. When it comes to speakers with sloping or curved tops (the current Magicos for example), you might encounter problems placing the B2s, but otherwise, any flat surface is just inviting you to try the Neodio pucks.

For owners of existing B2s, the good news is that anywhere a standard B2 works, the Orange works better. In fact, the Orange is so powerful that in many cases, one on top of a component will outperform three standard units underneath, so that although in unit terms the Oranges cost more, you’ll need far fewer of them. It also works brilliantly in concert with the standard B2. Just because the B2 Orange is better than the original version, doesn’t make those earlier units any less useful or effective. The bad news is that, unlike the B1 to B2 upgrade, standard B2s cannot be upgraded to Blue or Orange status. And while we’re on the subject, what about the Blue? Consider it an upgraded version of the original B2, rather than a baby Orange. It’s good, but Orange it ain’t…

Ultimately, the impact of Neodio’s B2 Orange depends on the scope and components in your system. With modest set-ups its influence is spectacular, both musically and in value terms. Step up to more ambitious systems and the benefits might be more subtle but they’re just as fundamental and just as musically important, while the cost is vanishingly small compared to the total investment in the system. In that context, if you are seeking a sonic extravaganza, you’ll likely be disappointed; but if you are are after more natural, more communicative and more engaging musical performance, the B2 Orange should be at the top of your Must Try list. And like the original B2, the beauty of the Orange (and the Blue) is just how easy they are to try.

For years, audiophiles have turned up their noses, or downplayed the importance of system elements that are outside the signal path – to our universal cost and the detriment of system performance. The B2 Orange distils the benefits of external system treatment so succinctly and in such a compact and useable form that if you ignore its advantages (and its implications)it’s at your system’s peril. In fact, it’s so simple and so effective that you’d be a fool not to try it. As we’d say in the UK, “The future’s bright, the future’s Orange!”

Price and availability:

Neodio Origine B2 Orange – Available in packs of two, three or four – €450 per B2

Neodio Origine B2 Blue – Available in packs of two, three or four – €300 per B2

M6/M8 adaptors – €3/ea.

Prices include 20% VAT.

Manufacturer –

Neodio

Bordeaux, France

www.neodio.fr/en/