Vladimir Simovich
The Burning Amp founder ( The Burning Amp)

Let me skip over trivial introductory paragraph and say "Wow" What a pleasure was listening to Xsenia speakers from NN Acoustics!  Now lets roll back to a start. At this years Burning Amp Festival our guest from Serbia was a dream team consisted of Aleksandar Radisavljevic of RAAL fame, Dragan Solaja from Solaja Audio and last but not least Nenad Napijalo from NN Acoustics. They presented their products where Mr. Solaja and Mr. Napijalo worked as a team and played their presentation through the Solaja's preamps and amps on Xsenia speakers.

We were all taken by surprise how well they sounded. Even though the listening environment wasn't so great ( the bar at Presidio Yacht club was working at the full speed serving beers) they filled  the room with the magic but without any  audible effort.  The magic is the right word - they had a warmth but with enough precision, they had a strength but without boomy sound. As a lucky owner of pair of RAAL ribbons I am quite familiar with what they could do, but it was the discovery to me how well they sounded in a two way system. Xsenia's imaging was right there all around us. Maybe that is the feature that I liked the most - wide enveloping imaging, yet not too wide to sound fake, just the right widawakeningth and depth. The tonal balance was another feature that I liked the most, and that I still recall.

The real awakening was when we used Xsenia as a house speakers to blind   test Buffalo DA converter. The system was consisted of CD, Buffalo DAC, Solaja's tube preamp SA-R, and one exhibitor's SE 6550 tube amp that roughly had 8W. We had about jaw dropping 30 - 40 listeners. The room was filled with 8W SE amp! Maybe the best compliment to Xenias was when the amp designer  came to me and asked : "Is that my amp playing?"

I do not recall hearing lately speakers that are as romantic, relaxed and natural.

Burning Amp Festival 2008 is well behind us. For the next year's BAF we really hope to have again the  opportunity to see and hear NN Acoustics at the show. If I could have my way I wouldn't mind hearing Xsenia again, yet looking at the product list on their site, Masterpiece is something that I would definitely put on the list. Only question that I have is if Xsenia is not called Masterpiece, than how the Masterpiece sounds?