Nearfields for audiophile listening?

Might not be very popular but I love my SVS Ultra Bookshelves

 

I hear you. Nothing beats a proper 15'' paper woofer at slam.

 

Man...I need dual 15's or a good 18" for satisfying infrasonic goodness.

 

Hardly near field, but I replaced my LS50 with Equator Q12's. These are 12" paper coned coax speakers with a 1.5" compression tweeter/upper mid driver. These don't go much lower than 40ies and need a sub to go truly full range. 700W continuos per channel means the Q12's can slam, when needed.

I cross them at 50Hz to my SVS SB-2000 which looks downright small compared to the main speakers. I might one day swap it out for an Equator Q18 sub and die happy.

 

Very interesting. A few years ago I heard the smallest Equator surprisingly well filling a room.

 

We use the small D5's at the office for variety of tasks. Good speakers, some funny stuff going on in treble, but all in all pretty decent for the money. I like the coax monitors for their wide sweet spot.

The Q12's they are not, unfortunately. Where 6" and smaller speakers ultimately fail is impact. Sure, I can get my LS50ies to go down to 50Hz, but they can't move any air below 200Hz. Cross them to a sub and you'll get a decent AFR curve, but there will be a hole in dynamics. Midbass is where the thwack's at and only 8" and up can do it right.

 

the q12's look interesting. kinda looks like an exponential design in a way. interesting cause i would guess for studio use it to use a CD type of design and a much lighter aluminum compression driver instead of titanium but, looks really cool. only knew tannoy still made coaxials. can still buy altec coaxials but, are done only by GPA and i think they're like 2k a piece but, will be matching sets. there is this one guy though who has some weird company name that uses gpa drivers and sells them for high price but forgot his name but, he takes original altecs or gpa models and tries to recone them himself and always messes up the drivers and recones them incorrectly on purpose to get different sound out of them so can sell under his name...i wouldn't buy those.

interesting you use svs at 50hz. i usually start my sub bout near roll off point(like if mains start roll off at 35hz...i use sub at 30hz)

 

cloth surround drivers. i can guarantee for slam and the ultimate job nothing will not outslam a jbl 2226 15''. i can't tell you abuse and hell i put a pair in a 4648 cab through.. to this day never died on me. they mean serious business. if need that 30-50hz slam range you'll need atleast 2400w at your disposal cause they eat up power and your chest will hate you forever after one night with some 4648 bins slamming away...one hell of a new years party i had lol.

the older 2225's are good too and were bred under extreme conditions as well but, will handle bit less power than the 2226's. the 2225's are flatter too while the 2226 seems has slight midbass hump but, completely gone if have it crossover low enough.(i used them at 50hz 8th order low-pass for party use and had large altecs as mains)......

 

I went mostly by measurements and test tones to choose the crossover point. I don't know how Equator came to the conclusion that Q12's go down to 30Hz. You can get output at 30Hz, but 50Hz is where these speakers stop performing at their best. On the other hand my sub has no problem handling this range, so I can safely hand all sub-bass to it.

At higher SPL's the sub seems to struggle tho. 12" sub is a bit too little for 12" drivers.

 

I know what you mean. that's how i usually test out speakers extension as well is test tones from sine gen usually. also use it for detecting room modes as well but, i don't have any type of measuring stuff. just always used my ears so can't say how perfect anything is objectively and might be faults here that probably never detected or not. can't say. just know so far it seems i'm doing ok as of now i think.

 

If space on your desk is at a premium, you might consider the near-field system I'm using. I run Serene Audio's Talisman speakers through a Schiit Modi 4490. Sounds great to my ears! Surprisingly musical presentation, and zero configuration fuss.

 

New on My Desktop: Passive Aggressive? No... Passive SImple!

I just put aside my great-value-for-money powered (not active) M-Audio AV40s and my antique audiophile (but ailing) McCormack pre-amp for a passive system powered by an integrated amp.

For around INR11K (about USD170) I got a pair of transmission-line, single-full-range-driver "bookshelf" speakers; the Cyrus 6 VS2 amp was being wasted in a cupboard; the DAC is back to the humble ODAC. The speakers came from a local one-man maker called Hari Iyer, who posts on the mostly-Indian forum HiFiVision.com and possibly also on DIYaudio. I had had active speakers such as Adam and even Geithain, and passive Amphion on my audio dream list, but what is the point in spending such sums on hifi when the ears are not up to it.

Nearest realistic competitor would have been the JBL LSR305s: At American prices, probably the no-brainer, but somewhat more expensive here at about 2.5 times the spend.

My new speakers may not go very low, but they are more than great value for money, and I'm sure that those with better ears than mine would enjoy them. I don't think that they quite meet the challenge of a loud, heavyweight section in a Mahler symphony, but they do most other things well enough.

I sit in an alcove, wall+window to the right, open room to the left, front and back walls barely a couple of metres apart: it is about the worst thing that could happen to a pair of speakers! Probably everything should sound like boom-boom-boom but it doesn't. The reflections do do strange things to the sound stage, which extends well beyond the speakers --- an odd, but quite pleasant effect.

I have also simplified my headphone listening to the Cyrus amp's headphone amp. I don't know how good it is in absolute terms. I can say that it was listening to this that made me realise how deficient my Audiofire headphone-out was. It is good enough for me now. It gives me speaker-mute/headphones at a touch of button. A headphone amp is the one thing that would pose a difficulty, as the amp's pre-amp-out is really meant for bi-amping, so it is not independent of controls and speakers.

 

When I have enough funds I will replace my LSR305 for 8 inch speakers. Few probably silly questions:

- Should I buy a measurement mic to compare models in my room or just listen by ear to judge.
- Is it normal to use software (DSP?) to make speakers fit your room?
- Will your DAC be useless then?
- In the July NY meet, @sphinxvc commented that a passive pre-amp sounded better then when they where using Raggy as an active pre. Is my Vali2 affecting/holding back my system?

Jokko

 

what software do you guys use for fixing issues after measuring? thanks!

 

I dicked around with mics for years only to realize that I find best positions and treatment combinations by ear.
Some dsp speakers and outboard dsp-s can be used in with high end dac. Tried a pair of 8330 with dsp, with my r-2r dac and there was a nice improvement. Linear fr from dsp and dynamics + soundstage that only r-2r can produce.
edit: inside the 8330 it looks like the signal from analog in goes like adc-->dsp-->inner dac, so take my comments about soundstage and dynamics with a bowl of salt, I don't know what I heard, it makes no sense

 

If you really know what to do, REW is very powerful for doing all kinds of measurements. If you're just in it for the music, Sonarworks and Dirac are very good point-and-shoot solutions.

As for implementing the actual measurements, various hosting utilities can plonk EQ plug-ins in your audio chain. A much elegant solution IMO is getting a MiniDSP 2x4HD and use that for sub management and room EQ. A really effortless solution would be Google Chromecast Audio/Apple TV optically chained to the MDSP 2x4HD and remote controlled for volume/filter settings.

 

So I decided it's time to get back into ultimate desktop monitor business. I had Neumann KH120 and K+H O300's few years ago, so nothing inferior will satisfy. And I really don't want a sub again, but going down 30-40hz hard is a must.

While waiting for some used Neumann KH310A's to pop up (yeah I wish), I got some b-stock M-Audio M3-8's to test from Thomann, 518€ a pair. Nice and smooth sound. Can hear 39hz loud in my room, after that drops from a cliff, nothing. They hiss a bit but manageable from 1.2 meters. Probably worthy candidates instead of Behringers etc.

Reading only good things about EVE Audio, I started to get curious about SC307. Lo' and behold, musicstore.de had b-stock pair for 1770€. They will arrive next tuesday.

Amazingly, yesterday I spotted a cheap pair Genelec 8050A's which was one of my candidates. Immediate two hour drive and got them for 1250€. Quite a bargain, even considering they are from 2005 with minor scratches. He got four offers while I was driving there.. you blink you lose. They play 30hz fine in my room and not surprisingly wipe the floor with M-Audio's..

Next week, EVE vs Genny, who will stay? Will HD800's go also? Measurements. Also waiting for the 7 meters of pipe wool I ordered for my corners..