No other score allows them to skip this test. Let's remember that they won't release a new speaker unless it passes double blind listening tests against its competitor. As I noted in the review, broad deviations in the measurements, despite their low level, may have a much larger subjective difference.Īt some point we will have to reconcile these differences, either setting me straight on my subjective evaluations being wrong, or us not knowing all that Harman knows about good speaker sound. The other factor is not letting the higher frequencies dominate the mid-range. I am really starting to think the 100 to 200 Hz region plays a much stronger role than we think in subjective sound a speaker produces. So could this be behind my preference for speakers like Revel M16? Here is its predicted-in room response: Olive's latest tests shows people like to hear more bass than originally though. I like us to allow some allowance for them to sink in though. Of course my subjective evaluation is much less reliable. And they present for the third time a conflict with my subjective listening impressions. The objective measurements will nail the Olive score no doubt. I have since made this part of the protocol. Once I filtered that, the sound was very good. I get this same sense when I EQ a speaker for a room.ĮDIT: later testing showed that the room mode at about 105 Hz was impacting the tonality of the speaker. There is a "loosness" to notes that is hard to describe but notes are separated and delightfully clean and pleasant. I can't emphasize enough how much difference this makes and how it impacts my subjective reviews.Ģ. Wow, all that gorgeous came right back! There are two things I clearly detect:ġ. To make sure my mind has not gone crazy, I replaced the R3 with Revel M16 which I recently reviewed. But overall experience was unexciting and unengaging for lack of a better word.
Sadly hardly any of them sounded all that good here. My standard routine is to cycle through my reference clips that I have selected during all my normal listening to sound superb on my Revel Salon 2 Speakers. The sound was clean.Īlas, once again subjective feeling was low. Power handling was now excellent as I could turn up the speaker as much as I needed and despite only one speaker playing. It was replaced by very clear response together with strong deep bass when required. Fancy audiophile cable was used so no worries there.įirst the good news: the type of buzzing distortion I thought I heard with KEF Q100 was not there. The speaker was driven by a 1,000 watt monoblock amplifier (into 4 ohm) so power availability not an issue. It is stand mounted with tweeter roughly at ear level with me sitting some 12 feet away. I setup the KEF R3 in the same far-field setting I have used for my other high-fi speakers in my main system.
#KEF REPLACEMENT GRILLS Q100 DRIVERS#
It is as pretty as single coaxial drivers due to woofer handling lower bass now. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws: Over 800 points around the speaker were measured (from 20 to 20 kHz) which resulted in well under 1% error in identification of the sound field to almost 20 kHz where error increased a bit (likely not visible on graphs).Īcoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker can be used. Frequency resolution is 0.7 Hz (yes, less than 1 Hz) and plots are at 20 points/octave. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.Īll measurements are reference to tweeter axis with the grill removed. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than anechoic chamber. It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). We have the same knobs that allow the woofer to be separated from the rest to bi-wire/bi-amp the speaker. The sharp corners make for a nice design but likely not good for diffraction effects (little speakers playing on their own at ever corner).
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