Sony SS-NA2ES Towers, SS-NA5ES Bookshelf, SS-NA9ES Sub & SS-NA8ES Center Loudspeaker Series Preview

Sony is solidly back in the US high-end speaker market with the release of their new ES speaker line and the continuation of their AR speakers. The new ES line lends from the AR series on some design traits, but branches out into completely new territory with others.

Sony’s goal with the ES series was to create a speaker system that faithfully reproduced sound without adding anything to it. Essentially, they tried to remove the speaker from the equation, allowing listeners so hear what was recorded, nothing more and nothing less.  In order to accomplish this lofty goal, they built that cabinets out of Scandinavian birch and constructed completely separate enclosures for the two bass drivers and the mid/high drivers. The cabinets are completely built by hand in Japan and we were told the flagship SS-NA2ES floorstanding speaker takes over 3 months to build (but no official press release makes this claim). The most unique feature of these speakers is the I-Array tweeter system, which uses one 25mm soft-dome tweeter and two 19mm soft-dome tweeters arranged in a sorta MTM design. We are told these three tweeters act as one, all playing the same frequencies, which provides for a very wide dispersion. We questioned that bit of information, however, and would have guessed that the two smaller drivers were actually crossed over at a higher frequency acting primarily as super tweeters but this was not the case.

The model#'s are bit confusing so let's break them down:

• Sony SS-NA2ES Towers
• SS-NA5ES Bookshelf
• SS-NA9ES Subwoofer
• SS-NA8ES Center
  

 Sony ES Speaker Demo

We were able to listen to a demo of a 9.2 ES speaker setup driven by a Sony STR-DA5800ES receiver. The SS-NA2ES floorstanding speakers ($10k/pr) were used in an LCR arrangement (the do have a SS-NA8ES center speaker available), six SS-NA5ES bookshelf speakers ($6k/pr) acted as front height, surround, and surround back speakers, and two SA-NA9ES subwoofers rounded out the LFE. The video was provided by a Sony 4K VPL-VW10000ES ($25k) projector onto 130” screen. First off, the picture was absolutely amazing. We viewed a native 4K clip of Skyfall fed off of a movie server that looked ridiculously good. And I mean ridiculously good. The sound was natural and the bass was tight and punchy. The receiver was using a proprietary Sony matrixing  technology that was a little distracting, but made the soundstage huge.

Conclusion

It will be interesting to see how this new line of speakers is received by the audio community at large. They can stand on the solid reputation of the AR line, but are up against a lot of stiff competition in the $6K to $10k price range. They certainly look to be well designed, and sounded good at our demo. Make no mistake however than all of the upper echelon Sony loudspeakers are being engineered and crafted to a higher standard than we've seen produced by them in many years.  Click the "Specifications" link above the Executive Overview for full specs.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.