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Eve Audio SC305 Studio Monitor Review

Rate this Speaker

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 12 14.8%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 47 58.0%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 20 24.7%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 2 2.5%

  • Total voters
    81

sarumbear

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This is a bit off-topic and aimed at the ears of the manufacturers:
What is up with these company websites that require you to accept cookies? Else they block you from visiting.:mad:
Either way, I am going to delete your cookie, when I close your website but when you give me no option to 'opt out'... you just told me to get lost!
D'accord!
All European websites must obey a law called GDPR.
 

Pietro

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Eve audio's distortion measurement does not reflect HF distortion
EveAudio_SC305_Distortion.png
 

thewas

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This is a review, listening tests and measurements of the Eve Audio SC305 studio monitor (powered speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $999.
View attachment 232946
You may think this is an MTM configuration but it is not. It is actually a 3-way speaker with one of the woofers playing down low like a small sub. As such, there are three amplifiers. You can choose which woofer is playing the major role and which is acting like a "sub." The front volume control and lets you setup a handful of parameters. Kind of hard to navigate but does the job. The LED ring around it is "smart" and changes function based on what it is showing.

View attachment 232947

As you see, the ports are in the back. Even though this is a DSP speaker, it doesn't have digital input which is a bit of a shame.

Back to the controls, the LEDs flash when the input level is too high which is very useful. It lets you know when the ADC is being overloaded which can create nasty distortions. Most speakers have clipping indicator for the amp. That would be useful was well.

The grill in front of the tweeter is magnetic and can be removed and rotated. Company said it makes no difference so I left it in place although measurements may indicate you should remove it.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). 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). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

Eve Audio SC305 Measurements
Let's start as usual with our frequency response measurements:
View attachment 232948

I was surprised to see the variations in different regions as the company data shows almost ruler flat response. Looking more carefully, their measurements are smoothed to just 1/6th octave which would have that effect. There is large directivity error when the tweeter kicks in around 3 kHz which I forgot to note on the graph. And we have a bit of bass boost. Maybe that was put in there to counteract the resonances around crossover region.

Digging into individual driver response using near-field measurements shows the reason behind some of the response errors:

View attachment 232950

We see two distinct port/cabinet resonances. Good news there is that the port is facing back so as long as you don't put it near a wall (or put some 4+ inch absorber there), it should not have a ton of impact. The two woofers and tweeter go after each other in the crossover region especially since their roll off is not very good to avoid driver resonances/break up.

There is a sinusoidal response in tweeter which also shows up in my anechoic measurements. I am wondering if the grill is causing that.

Interestingly the early window reflections are a bit smoother:
View attachment 232949

Predicted in-room response for far-field listening shows a better picture than on-axis:
View attachment 232951

Separation of low bass into its own driver/amp plays dividends in very low bass distortion:
View attachment 232952

View attachment 232953

The peaks in 3 to 7 kHz may be tweeter or woofers still playing. Either way, like to see that gone or lowered.

Beam width is highly variable which is disappointing. This is likely due to interference between the dual driver and directivity mismatch with the tweeter:

View attachment 232954

Same but as heatmap:
View attachment 232955

Vertically is actually smoother:
View attachment 232956

The waterfall shows the usual resonances:
View attachment 232957

Finally for fans of step function:
View attachment 232958

Eve Audio SC305 Listening Tests
I listened to the SC305 in my near-field setup. Listening distance is about 1 meter/3 to 4 feet. If you sit this close and certainly closer, you can easily hear the sound source being shifted to the left between tweeter and woofer (wonder if I should have made this the acoustic center). The right woofer is playing the "sub" role and is essentially silent. So I suggest putting some distance between you and the speaker. Moving left and right at close distance does change tonality.

In this setup, I found the sound to be pretty good. It was only after I EQed the 3 kHz region that I realized it was a bit hot there, making female vocals to stand out more than they should. I could detect some distortion at very elevated levels in high frequencies. Then again, the overall dynamics are excellent with none of the fall of the cliff that you get with monitors in this size. Because the very low frequencies are separated, the main mid-woofer barely gets distorted and even then, you can only tell if you block the tweeter with your hand as I did. I really, really like this as nothing makes me unhappy with a speaker than it running out of power/excursion.

Back to EQ, this is what I tried:
View attachment 232959

The one at 2.4 kHz is necessary although in short-term listening and depending on content, you may prefer otherwise. The one at 700 Hz seemed to make no effect due to its narrowness. I left it in there as I "thought" it reduced distortion in a hair. So really, you can listen without any filters or just the one. The variations in the graph are too fine to be very audible.

Conclusions
Nice to see some variation in design of powered speakers. Having the very low frequencies play in a sperate driver+amp, is a good idea. Having it then interfere with the other drivers higher up, isn't. I think the trade off is a positive one due to my sensitivity when it comes to distortion. To get 3-way monitor without this issue will cost you a lot more than SC305. Overall, this is a nice, compact speaker with good performance.

I am going to recommend Eve Audio SC305.

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Why isn't the usual poll included on this?
 

pseudoid

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All European websites must obey a law called GDPR.
Sorry! Neither EU nor GDPR forces any website to prevent entry, if the viewer prefers not to be 'tracked' (via cookies).
You know?
It is beyond the argument of opt-in versus opt-out debate (which neither entity stipulated).
I can get information for some of their wares elsewhere, but it lost my "eyeballs"! Which is the purpose of a website; should not be deployed for tracking purposes.
YMMV
 
OP
amirm

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So either Amir measured a defective unit or Eve's provided measurements are insufficient
They have no test conditions for theirs and are using 1/6 octave smoothing. They are also cutting off at 50 Hz.
 

heflys20

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A mediocre (10 years old or not) product that should've been updated a log time ago. I'm also surprised by the high distortion of the AMT driver.
 

Puddingbuks

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Puddingbuks

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Always weird speakers, these 2,5 way / double woofer systems.

Curious if an Eve 3010 or 3012 would measure and sound good.
 

KSTR

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1/3rd to 1/6th ocave smoothing of SPL frequency responses is thought to be representative to what is actually heard in terms of variation and thus became sort of industry standard.

1% @ 90dBSPL is a typical (and often optimistic) distortion value for AMTs from that time.

AMT design and manufacture is very challenging compared to dome tweeters. Especially the pleating process (done by hand, even today for most AMTs) is very delicate and tiniest variations of the geometry quickly show up in measured differences, both distortion and frequency response. Usually there is only one employee in the company who is really mastering this and have consistency, after many years of experience. Same goes for glueing the folded diaphragms into place in their frames (also done by hand). Not to end with, the magnetic circuit is also much less straightforward to stabilize (for the closed-back AMTs, at least).
From these factors AMTs generally are expected to have larger unit-to-unit and batch-to-batch differences than other tweeters. They also show much larger variation to heat (self-induced or not) and, sometimes, moisture (as the diaphragm material is often quite hygroscopic). Heat changes the geometry because of different expansion coefficients of diaphragm material and "voice coil" conductor, and moisture changes elasticity.

Obviously, as a manufacturer you tend to cherry-pick devices/speakers for measurements. Insider fun fact: The tweeters that looked bad in terms of uniformity of the pleatings typically measured better wrt distortion. Tweeters preconditioned to be hot (diaphragms starting to show significant wrinkling) also often measured better.
 

heflys20

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LOL. It's sad, really. Even the older (if I'm not mistaken), non-DSP Adam A5x had better tweeter performance, and EVE is an offshoot of Adam. LOL. So much for rigorous testing, and re-testing. Just marketing fluff.
 

sarumbear

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Sorry! Neither EU nor GDPR forces any website to prevent entry, if the viewer prefers not to be 'tracked' (via cookies).
You know?
Websites do not block your entry. The vast majority give you the option to allow cookies or not. However, most modern websites requires some sort of cookies to function as intended. That message gives you the option to opt out of that.

It is beyond the argument of opt-in versus opt-out debate (which neither entity stipulated).

I can get information for some of their wares elsewhere, but it lost my "eyeballs"! Which is the purpose of a website; should not be deployed for tracking purposes.
YMMV
As you said it is an argument. As a web developer I like the cookies. They help me and my clients.
 

Robbo99999

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1/3rd to 1/6th ocave smoothing of SPL frequency responses is thought to be representative to what is actually heard in terms of variation and thus became sort of industry standard.

1% @ 90dBSPL is a typical (and often optimistic) distortion value for AMTs from that time.

AMT design and manufacture is very challenging compared to dome tweeters. Especially the pleating process (done by hand, even today for most AMTs) is very delicate and tiniest variations of the geometry quickly show up in measured differences, both distortion and frequency response. Usually there is only one employee in the company who is really mastering this and have consistency, after many years of experience. Same goes for glueing the folded diaphragms into place in their frames (also done by hand). Not to end with, the magnetic circuit is also much less straightforward to stabilize (for the closed-back AMTs, at least).
From these factors AMTs generally are expected to have larger unit-to-unit and batch-to-batch differences than other tweeters. They also show much larger variation to heat (self-induced or not) and, sometimes, moisture (as the diaphragm material is often quite hygroscopic). Heat changes the geometry because of different expansion coefficients of diaphragm material and "voice coil" conductor, and moisture changes elasticity.

Obviously, as a manufacturer you tend to cherry-pick devices/speakers for measurements. Insider fun fact: The tweeters that looked bad in terms of uniformity of the pleatings typically measured better wrt distortion. Tweeters preconditioned to be hot (diaphragms starting to show significant wrinkling) also often measured better.
Ha, what a nightmare! :D
 

pseudoid

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*As a web developer I like the cookies. *They help me and my clients.
Of course, cookies are well-liked by web-developers; but to say they 'help my clients' goes against the move by google to curtail cookie-tracking but that move only goes as far as "3rd party cookies".
Can you please instrument 'helps my clients' remark and give it to me in raw (or dB) numbers or a graph?

Regardless of cookies' debates with which I did not want to get sucked into; the gist of my OT reply (to website creators) was the fact that my eyeballs can't get where they (or you they) want them to go. Unless (like a hostage), I consent to and approve their means of tracking me (yeah, okay it makes it convenient for re-entry, so you say and maybe even majority of your "clients" say!)...
 
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sarumbear

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Of course, cookies are well-liked by web-developers; but to say they 'help my clients' goes against the move by google to curtail cookie-tracking but that move only goes as far as "3rd party cookies".
Can you please instrument 'helps my clients' remark and give it to me in raw (or dB) numbers or a graph?

Regardless of cookies' debates with which I did not want to get sucked into; the gist of my OT reply (to website creators) was the fact that my eyeballs can't get where they (or you they) want them to go. Unless (like a hostage), I consent to and approve their means of tracking me (yeah, okay it makes it convenient for re-entry, so you say and maybe even majority of your "clients" say!)...
I want to report my clients how many visits they had to their website. That’s starters.

I do t understand why you think we want to know who you are. You are just one person out of a thousand if not a million. You are just a number.
 
OP
amirm

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Smoothing on distortion graph?
It is a relative/percentage which requires the original frequency response as reference. That response is smoothed presumably at 1/6 octave so impacts the percentages. I use much lower smoothing which makes their measurements less comparable to mine.
 

pseudoid

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You are just one person out of a thousand if not a million. You are just a number.
Let us go as far as calling it billions. I mean 'billions' as in billions of data points for "just one person"!
We can dig a bit deeper: And ask the real question when even a single data point (a big but a single number) becomes that "just one person"?
Facial Recognition? Finger Print? DNA? Those were all some farcical concepts until they became "just one number"!
Kinda like resolution and bit depth... imho!
Cookie: yum!
 
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