For quite some time, one of our favourite little loudspeakers simply wasnt available.
The Neat Iota Alpha was always a rather unusual speaker. In fact, if you had never heard a pair and judged them purely by looking at them, you could be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about.
Barely knee-high, occupying very little floor space and looking unlike most conventional floorstanding loudspeakers, they really shouldnt have produced the sort of sound they did.
But they did.
And that was exactly their charm.
Then production stopped. Months passed, and for those of us who knew the Alpha well, there was a conspicuous little gap in the Neat range.
Well, were rather pleased to say that gap has finally been filled.
The Iota Alpha is back.
Or, more accurately, it has evolved.
The new Neat Iota Alpha II has arrived, and we have just taken a pair into the Peak HiFi showroom for demonstration.
What made the original so interesting has been retained. At just 45cm tall, the Alpha II is a genuinely tiny floorstander, but inside that little cabinet is some decidedly unconventional thinking.
The upper section uses an upward-angled main drive unit together with Neat's 50mm EMIT planar magnetic tweeter, while a separate downward-firing bass driver works in the lower section. The crossover is hand-built with premium components and point-to-point wiring.
The result is one of those loudspeakers that rather confounds your expectations.
You see something small.
You hear something that most certainly isn't.
Neat says the new Alpha II develops the original concept with greater scale and depth, while retaining the open, engaging character for which the Iota family became known. And despite its diminutive dimensions, the specified frequency response extends down to 33Hz.
There is another reason we've always had a soft spot for Neat.
These aren't anonymous boxes designed by committee thousands of miles away. Neat loudspeakers are hand-built in the North East of England, and the company still places considerable emphasis on developing and tuning its designs by listening to music.
That's an approach to hi-fi that we rather like at Peak HiFi.
So after a long absence and an equally long wait on our part, there was something particularly satisfying about unpacking a pair of Iota Alpha IIs and putting them into the demonstration room.
We're going to spend some time getting properly reacquainted with them.
And if you've never heard what a loudspeaker only 45cm tall can do, you might find them rather surprising too.
The Neat Iota Alpha II is now on demonstration at Peak HiFi.
Sometimes good things really are worth waiting for.
Peak HiFi serious about sound.
Discover the Neat Iota Alpha II
