Nearfields for audiophile listening?

For future DIY, use a big hole saw and perforate the snot out of that mdf backing, then mount those panels an inch off the wall. You'll greatly increase all the absorption witchcraft, plus it gives you a place to stash unmentionables.

 

I could easily do that now. They're just hung up via monkey hooks with sawtooth hangers on the back, so I can pull them down and drill some holes in. They're floating a bit off the wall right now as it is.

Really digging the battle station now.

 

Killer! On sale or used? Not gonna be touched by much under 1000 bucks

 

Nice. How do the stack up vs the ilouds and vanatoos for tiny desk speakers?

 

I'm in a bit of a pickle. I had/have plans to DIY kickass nearfields for my desk, most likely 3 way to replace my current nearfields based on a modded 4" widebander with a whizzer cone. Since I couldn't find a good widebander I think that I want a coax and I'm seriously considering the KEF Blade drivers. I want something more studio monitor neutral for my desk than Voxativs can offer, otherwise the Voxativs are pretty much what I want.
I realized that was I was going to DIY wouldn't be any cheaper than existing nearfields. What I want to build is/was something like a better KEF R3, so I went to a dealer near me to audition similar speakers on Saturday. I went there with my Gungnir Multibit and Ragnarok.

The KEF R5 and R7 (floorstanders) that they had were super disappointing to me. They lacked resolution and got very congested as the music got busier. The Reference 1 (out of my budget) was a bit better in that regard, but the tuning was awful. Way too warmed over. Even then the bass was abysmal. In the end I even thought some B&Ws 80X D3 series speakers they had there were more resolving.

So after being disappointed by traditional audiophile speakers I went to the just music store to listen to monitors. They have most of the studio monitors discussed here and their room ended up sounding pretty f'ing good. Here's a pic so you can get an idea: https://imgur.com/a/pvDxyk3
Well, unfortunately I didn't like most of the speakers here, either. The LSR305 and KRK 5" G4 really aren't that great. I hated the Neumanns and Genelecs they had. Dynaudios were meh. The two speakers I liked most overall were the Adam A7X and the S3H and I pretty much kept switching between those two. Their AMT has some issues, but they're far less pronounced than I was expecting. Treble has a bit of a hash and the A7X is tuned bright and forward in the upper mids, but overall I thought these two were the most resolving speakers they had. The S3H sounded a bit more focused to me and I thought it was more cohesive in the upper midrange. I was disappointed by how bad the bass quality from the S3H was, but I guess you can't expect much from such a small cabinet. It merely hinted at what the tracks had to offer sub 300Hz. Unfortunately they didn't have HEDDs there. I wonder how the Type 07 stacks up vs the A7X. I also wonder about how the Type 20 sounds, but I don't really have the space for those 3 ways on my desk next to my CRT.

I think on my desk I'd want something with the drivers closer together than a regular two or three way to get good imaging. My 4" widebanders I currently have image better than the KEF Reference 1s and either of the Adams IMO, but they suck outside of 300Hz-5kHz. I especially want better treble than those have (the treble is way worse than my Voxativs) and I'd be fine with bass quality similar to the Kii Three.

 

Did the store set them up or did you listen to them on the shelf like that? You said most of them were bad but most of those monitors are decent and much better for their intended uses than KEF and Voxativ. All of the smaller speakers will have power handling and directivity issues if not properly set up. The 5” woofer ones will all fall apart on a music store shelf but not at your desk 1m away. Especially the ones with controlled directivity waveguides like JBL, Genelec, and Neumann. All of the Dynaudios less beefy than BM15 will run out of gas outside of proper distances and the tweeters need to be on axis. Hell these monitors are all meant to be used directly on axis. If the Adam S3H had nothing below 300hz, then the speakers were blown or the room was terrible. It is going to be impossible to judge most of the things sitting on the shelf like that.

Don’t even bother with most three ways for small desk nearfields 1m away. The drivers won’t blend together perfectly and you’ll just be dealing with another crossover point. If you can pull your desk out and put midfields there, you can do that but that exposes you to more room issues. I’d go with two ways with a 5-7” woofer and a soft dome tweeter depending on the brand. Don’t buy a specific size. Buy the best size in the range. One is always the real product with the most design time spent on it and the others are shelf turds meant to hit price points and sizes. so if you go JBL 3 series get the 305 mkII, if you go 7 series, get the 708, and if you go Adam get A7X, Yamaha the HS8, you get my point.

For bass? Kii? Wth the bass is awful and inconsistent with a complex sliding limiter. A traditional two way with a sub is better and cheaper. Who cares about anything below 40hz in nearfield? If you want good bass above 40hz from a nearfield, get something beefy and badass like Dynaudio BM15a, Quested V2108, DSP Genelecs, or JBL LSR 708p. Size does matter. Place them accordingly and just live with the midrange.

Honestly dude you need shielded drivers to use them next to a CRT. Adam do not use shielded woofers. Get the Dynaudio BM6A if you don’t want present upper midrange and a smaller speaker with shielded woofer. The brands listed in the paragraph above this are all reliable and pro. Dynaudio is the least pro by far of them for service but their monitors are still sturdy. KEFs are a joke in comparison to any of them.

The ATC SCM50ASL are huge, three way, 15k, and shit on everything else here for detail too. The dome and tweeter blend up close and if you can get them to extend down in your room, you don’t need anything else ever. Sell all your headphones, coax crap, and meme horns.

 

As far as can be read from measurements and other data coax drivers are rather shit compromise.
Some more higher end candidates:
- KingCoax from Seas (discontinued, but still available at stores)
- SB Satori Coax, not yet available in stores

Why not build 3-way with very low bass-to mid xo, say 100 Hz, high order (LR4) and use small mid,
while mid to tweeter xo can be 1. order.
Then, perhaps you are the only dude out of million, who can still hear the bass axially separated.
For nearfield use you will not sweat the mid too much for power handling and you get properly resolving speaker.
You will have the choice of almost any mid (5'' up for power handling so low) and any tweeter.
Alternatively, why not even get some totl midwoofer and get rid of high pass (series caps).
For bass drivers World is your oyster.

 

DIY coax drivers usually suk dik and require serious filter-fu, to look comparable to a nice traditional mid-tweeter setup. KEF coax actually does mop the floor with them, judging by some 3rd party measurements.

This is my concern as well. Also what source did they use for the monitors?

It's not easy to get a 3-way to sum perfectly in near-field. Genny The Ones and Neumann KH310-like monitors are your best bet, but good luck DIY-ing them. Maybe look into using that new Puri-fi woofer with a RAAL or Bliesma tweet? Should be interesting. The Puri-fi woofer will go very low and seems to handle large excursion very well.

 

@Serious you could commit fully to the nuttery of DIY and build a new desk that has a backloaded horn integrated into it.

 

Some good points. I just tried them on the shelf like that. Chain was Phone (Galaxy S8) -> GO2A (SE output) -> weird input switcher -> volume control -> speaker selectors. I'm sure a better chain and XLR inputs would be nicer, but this allowed me to just test them with the music on my phone and quickly switch between the speakers. I mostly listened to Hotel California from HFO, but also some more modern music that highlights treble issues better.
The effect from having the speakers on the shelf like that wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Honestly sounded more like soffit-mounting the speakers than putting them on a desk. Imaging wasn't shit from most of the speakers. A desk is most likely a worse environment acoustically. They all just sounded a bit warmer in the bass and lower midrange than they would normally from what is an effecively larger baffle, but aside from that it wasn't bad. I agree that the smaller speakers should've been closer to the listening position (the LSR305 and KRK 5" were on the top shelf), but even then they didn't fare too terribly.

@Psalmanazar I didn't mean the S3H was lacking in quantity below 300Hz, I only meant it was lacking in quality. Like most of these speakers it sounded a bit too U-shaped to me, but it was still a lot more linear than those audiophile speakers I tried on Saturday. It was still the most competent speaker in the bass of those that I tried, it's just that neither of these monitors seem to come anywhere close to even a good floorstander with 2x10" drivers or so. Bass guitars just sound blurry, impacts muted.

I might go back to have another listen to the KH310A, but on initial listen they sounded dead to me with no inner resolution. It is cohesive and neutral, though. The Dynaudios I thought were similar, but not as extreme. I'll see if I can find a place to listen to the HEDDs, as those seem to be more like what I'm looking for.

@Priidik From what I can infer the Blade coax should measure pretty well. The downside is third order distortion in the midrange and lots of distortion (dunno if 2nd or 3rd order) below 500Hz at higher volume levels when it runs out of excursion. I think the Reference drivers aren't as limited in excursion, but from what I gather the FR is less nice. There are measurements for the individual drivers (midrange and tweeter) somewhere, but not for the Blade afaik. With the distortion there also seems to be some compression, as per the SoundstageNetwork measurements.

I think for close distance these 3 ways could actually work better than normal 2-ways. I'm not as concerned about the crossover between woofers and midrange as I am about the one between midrange and tweeter. Even then I think the center-to-center spacing is noticeable with a 3-4" mid and a good coax gets better imaging. Imaging is very important to me, I just have no idea if the Blade drivers are as resolving as the AMT in the Adams.

The idea of using a 5" driver with a 1st order XO to a tweeter seems nuts to me. 4" is pushing it already as I think you should get good linearity to 10kHz from your mid and decent dispersion at least to 5/6 kHz so it doesn't sound weird. 1st order mid to tweeter XO probably ends up sounding worse than a 2nd order, especially nearfield where I find dispersion and FR to be of higher priority.

Maybe I won't proceed with this project at all. It's going to be expensive either way and I'm not sure I'll end up liking the sound. My OBs will most likely mop the floor with any nearfield and my DIY project would end up more expensive than the OBs. Maybe I'll just stay in mid-fi 4" widebander purgatory.

BTW: I have about a 100L volume behind my desk that is unused that I could built a sub into. I fear incoherency though and I think I'd prefer a somewhat beefy 7" nearfield tuned low rather than dealing with a sub XO. The group delay from integrating a sub will no doubt be bigger than a port. There's also at least a 2ms delay simply from the woofer being behind the speakers quite a bit.

 

For DIY desk use, I've wondered about one of those DIY designs based on the 7" slit cone Scanspeak driver (Zaph has one; there may be others). They're usually a short-ish tower format, but if there's space behind your desk no reason you couldn't raise the cabinets to get the drivers where you want 'em. Seems like this approach would bring together high quality drivers with adequate cabinet volume for relatively uncomprimised bass performance.

 

The shelf placement will kill the response of anything with controlled directivity, which is almost of these. Monitors are not designed like domestic hifi speakers for dispersion, even the mains monitors. Those tend to be horn loaded or absolutely massive soft dome soffit mounted or refrigerator sized boxes.

Oh yeah that’s just the Adam house sound dude. The older S series are bass light and the X series are a little v shaped. I wouldn’t spend more than A7X or the A77X.

The Kh310 are dead dude but they do have inner resolution. Certainly more than what you have. They deaden everything so you can hear everything. It’s a soft but tight speaker. It’s cool but not the most accurate. Absolutely amazing for detailed monitoring but I wouldn't want to listen on it exclusively or mix into it. Add 2xsubs and it’s gold if you like the soft mids. The bass is super tight being a sealed cabinet but guitars are dead on them. The 0300 from Klein & Hummel used a more lively and much more expensive ATC dome but the bass was even deader when I heard them due to underpowered plate amps. Sennheiser tries to sell their new oem driver as less distorted than atc but it’s obviously not as good. Everything is a compromise.

Dynaudio speakers vary wildly but have much greater innate resolution than Neumann due to the better drivers. The Lyds are dead inside, no depth, dsp junk with weird crossovers and atrocious dynamics. I vibed more with cheap KRKs and the 2nd gen JBL 305 than any of the Lyds. Now the old BM6 and M series are great speakers. Especially the Ms and the original BMs. The original BM6a and BM15a are still in production with the better mosfet plateamps. The BM6a is great if you learn it’s bass response and how to push into its upper mid dip. The BM15a sounds huge but has big lower mid and upper mid dips that sound great but make it one dimensional and much harder to use for production. It’s not as good overall as the BM6a. The later version BMs vary but none are as good as the originals (some have much better midrange than the BM15 of course) but not as bad as the Lyds.

If you crave inner midrange and treble resolution, get a pair of ATC SCM20ASL for 5k. They will give it to you more than anything under 10k a pair due to the driver tech used. Get the matching subs because they have no bass at all on their own. The three way ATC SCM50ASL and up also have that resolution with bass but cost 10k more a pair. Vox and fullrange drivers are jokey in comparisons. If you want more full-range resolution with less forward and detailed mids and treble than ATC, Quested V2108 are comparable with volume for days for 2m away max. They just have soft upper mids and dark highs.

Try the JBL 708p if you want something that sounds awesome. If you can deal with the compression driver tweeter, it’s f'ing awesome. The detail is not there compared to two other speakers mentioned above because most stuff will sound good but it certainly shits on vox and aer for horn loaded style projection. Vibe for days with a great midrange for an 8” woofer two way.

Being next to a a CRT cuts out a lot of very good bang for buck stuff like A7X, KRK V6S4, HS8, etc. only get magnetically shielded drivers. Confirm they’re shielded from the manufacturer. No hearsay.

 

@Serious one more thing, the jbl 708 is way more badass than the Quested 8” and the atc NS10m. It punches and smacks and roars. Quested will never smack.

 

WTF I thought you said the 708s were garbage? Did you hear them recently?

 

Not entirely relevant to this thread, but my Blade bubble just burst:

Got to hear the Blade 2 in the other room of the same dealer. I hated it. Ambient information just got swallowed. Granted this room was less damped than I'd like and they had some questionable gear, but that can't account for how much information was gone. I'd always hoped my show impressions weren't as reliable as I thought and sort of trusted some people on forums claiming that they were detail monsters, but they were not. And yes, the dealer had them set up like this, facing almost straight into the room. I would've preferred on-axis or close to it, but that doesn't change anything.
I heard the Blade 1 a while back and its bass is much better, but I wasn't here for the bass. In terms of bass quality some of the larger monitors would've slaughtered the Blade 2, too. The imaging isn't bad though, but it's not exceptional, either. I doubt the lack of resolution is due to their choice in crossover parts or slopes. The parts don't seem that bad to me and they don't have super steep slopes, either.

I guess I'll just have to listen to more monitors. I'm not married to my CRT as long as I can get an OLED replacement. Maybe 2020.

 

@Psalmanazar
nice impressions

on another subject, uh, anyone still using crts?

 

Damn, ill take two