NEAR 50me. Tall slender budget (yet exotic) time aligned speaker with bespoke esoteric spiderless drivers from the mid to late 90’s. It took until 2021 for another manufacturer to succeed at this (Audio Physic). NEAR technically never quite succeeded in that you had to delicately align the woofer voice coils with your fingers.. or rotate the driver by 90deg increments to balance them so they didn’t scrape the magnet.
Went to Von Schweikert, Magnapan, but then back to the NEARS. Twice. Thus I’ve owned three pairs. They did it all. The last pair I bought around 2014.. the shipping costs were more than their purchase.. which is laughable given I still go to shows now and often hear speakers for 10x the cost of the NEAR 50me’s (as new).. and yet they often don’t sound as good as these I’ve got which are now decades old.
Company no longer makes these.. only outdoor speakers now. Some of them looked like rocks. Literally.. they’re rocks.
I even had the original designer rebuild my midranges once to keep them alive. He is quite a creative thinker. Alas they are on their last midranges.
Ocean Way Audio Eurekas waiting in the wings once the NEAR’s finally do let go.. they have a similar vibrancy, imaging, and transparency yet a bit ’thicker’ less detailed sound. We will see.. but I’ve little choice in a near full-range dynamic speaker under 10k. With the 50me’s it’s the ferrofluid in the midranges that eventually kills them (after about 25 years).
Very transparent, near full range (if not slightly distant) speakers.. budget greats which few have experienced. Very smooth speaker for vocals.. very present.. realistic vocals. The latest model had a different one-piece inverted dome mid.. not the same.
Forever Indebted to Marty at Hi-Q Audio in Thousand Oaks, CA for enlightening me and selling his only demo pair.. way back when.
