Floorstanding loudspeakers — Nola Grand Reference VII Gold

The Grand Reference VII Gold is a loudspeaker system from Nola, part of Accent Speaker Technology, built as four towers per stereo pair. Each channel combines a Main Tower and a separate passive Subwoofer Tower, and the full set of eight pieces also includes two external passive crossover units and two IP-1A ball-bearing isolation platforms for those crossovers. Driver count for the whole system is 54, and this generation fitted the ribbons with magnets twice as strong as before and cut the moving mass of the bass section to 27 percent of earlier versions.

Key specs that matter

For the overall system Nola quotes 12 Hz to 100 kHz, a sensitivity of 94 dB at 2.82 volts, an impedance of 8 ohm with a 4 ohm minimum and a maximum output of 120 dB. Each Main Tower is 213 cm tall, 30.5 cm wide and 40.6 cm deep with its base and weighs about 136 kg. Each Subwoofer Tower shares that height but measures 33 cm wide and 66 cm deep and weighs about 181 kg, so one channel totals about 318 kg. Cabinets come as standard in True Piano Rosewood, set on bases in piano black.

Engineering and use context

A Main Tower holds 23 drivers and covers everything above 40 Hz. Eight 4.5-inch cast magnesium cone woofers, mounted four at the top and four at the bottom, span 40 Hz to 400 Hz, working in pairs inside four chambers with rear double-flared ports. Their Alnico ring magnets drive gold-machined phase plugs. Six 110 mm tri-laminate midrange units run from 400 Hz to 3500 Hz on an open baffle dipole in a short line array, and nine 4-inch true ribbon tweeters with neodymium magnets form a second line, each ribbon moving only 0.0061 gram. The Subwoofer Tower handles the range below 40 Hz with four 12-inch drivers, each in its own vented chamber with a 76 mm port flared inside and out, and each driven by double-stacked 3.2 kg magnets for over 32 mm of peak-to-peak linear travel. Nola states that this maximum output is reached even at 20 Hz with both towers driven. Internal wiring is Nordost mono-filament silver.

Pairing

The Unison passive crossovers let either a single stereo amplifier or two mono power amps drive all four towers, and connection runs through two pairs of copper binding posts on each Main Tower plus one pair on each Subwoofer Tower. The footprint of four large cabinets suits a dedicated space well beyond 20 m2.

Alternatives

The Nola Concert Grand Reference Gold 3 is a two-tower floorstander that puts 12 drivers, including two 12-inch subwoofers, into each cabinet.