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Those are Nenad Napijalo's initials in N.N. Acoustics. By using Raal ribbons in his loudspeakers, he's connected to Aleksandar Radisavljevic. By needing electronics to complete his personal and show system, he's linked to Dragan Solaja whose components he owns. By living and working in Serbia, he's part of this RoadTour. And like Raal's Eternity project, Nenad was working feverish overtime to complete a new model in time for the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2008. Two days prior to our departure for Serbia, he did not yet have photos of the finalized Xenia. "Overtime" is thus no casual choice of words. And "...we lost much time by bureaucracy procedure about getting business visas for USA." No doubt the hype on terror was taking its toll.

The above is Nenad's reference system: His Masterpiece 3-way speaker with 95dB dual-concentric Tannoy 15" widebander module and auxiliary Raal ribbon tweeter; and (from middle left top to bottom, then right bottom to top) Solaja Audio's SA180D amp, SA TVC1 preamp, SA-R preamp and SA400D integrated amp; custom-made 500-watt monos with green Granite fronts; custom valve preamp with outboard power supply, both in green Granite; BD-Design prototype dual-mono DAC (silver face) with integral battery power supplies; and music server laptop. The next photo shows the Xenia cabinets without the ribbon chambers and on the right, a Rubycon pair with time-aligned ribbon modules.


Perusing Nenad's website, you'll agree that this gentleman is comprehensive about his personal background. Repeating it here would serve little purpose. Instead, we'll take a closer look at the Xenia cabinet. This forthcoming two-way model is named after Nenad's 12-month old baby daughter by the way.

Clearly Nenad subscribes to the "a good speaker enclosure is a dead enclosure" ideal.

Even the tweeter pod seems massively overbuilt for the intended purpose. Perhaps concerned it would take further incentives to stimulate my curiosity, Nenad added: "I have one suggestion for Sunday, September 14th. In Beograd there will be the Serbian audio show in the Holiday Inn hotel. Except for us, many Serbian manufacturers and distributors will participate. The show is organized by the Serbian Hi-Files Magazine. We can go and visit the show after the listening session at my place and lunch. You'd be the only foreign publisher at the show. If you agree, I'll inform Ljuba Miodragovic, the editor in chief, about our visit." Talk about timing. Checking in with Sasa at Trafomatic, the weather forecast was for 38 degrees C. Heck, this had all the makings of a vacation - no cell phone, no laptop but bring camera with plenty of batteries and memory card capacity. I was ready. I just needed to burn a few sampler CDs for the planned auditions...