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Neumann KH420 Review (Studio Monitor)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 3 0.6%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 29 5.6%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 488 93.5%

  • Total voters
    522

WillBrink

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It's really interesting they use A/B amps vs class D considering there's excellent Class D amps and would save weight and costs. That seems like an oustanding value for $. I think actives are the future and if I was starting from scratch, would go with actives. I have actives from Sigberg audio arriving shortly for review.
 

Muddywaters

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Hi,

I don't have the speakers centered in the room because I have my mic / storage, etc to one side - so the left is approx 4 ft and the right is just under 3 feet from the side wall.

What is "AK"??

happy Monday :)
AK is another forum, guess on my part. :facepalm: (pio1980) sorry

Do you listen at higher volume? > 85dB

Any sense of variation in clarity with variations of volume?

Thanks
 

Pearljam5000

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It's really interesting they use A/B amps vs class D considering there's excellent Class D amps and would save weight and costs. That seems like an oustanding value for $. I think actives are the future and if I was starting from scratch, would go with actives. I have actives from Sigberg audio arriving shortly for review.
Screenshot_20230123_161108_Chrome.jpg

Obviously that was in 2015
Now they seem to believe in Class D Becaue they use it on KH150
 

thewas

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Now they seem to believe in Class D Becaue they use it on KH150
Not typical Class D though:

Neumann engineers took great care to develop a patent pending amplifier technology which combines superior audio performance with the energy efficiency of Class D. Although the KH 150’s amplifiers deliver up to 145 W to the 6.5” woofer and 100 W to the 1” tweeter, they only consume 17 W at idle. Auto-standby reduces power consumption to 0.3 W when the KH 150 has not been used for a while, but can be deactivated.

Source: https://en-de.neumann.com/kh-150
 

Waxx

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Neumann try to preserve the Klein & Hummel sound that was absolute top level, so they are conservative in their designs, that is true, but you don't need to change a winning team because you need to change... It's still one of the best speakers arround, proven by measurements and subjective impressions. Even with a class AB amp system.
 

Pio

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AK is another forum, guess on my part. :facepalm: (pio1980) sorry

Do you listen at higher volume? > 85dB

Any sense of variation in clarity with variations of volume?

Thanks
Nah man, not me.. but that pio1980 must be one cool dude as all Pio's are!! LOL

I don't normally listen that loud - when I do, the music peaks might be around 93db or so.. no problem with the 420's.

When I 1st got the Neumanns, I had them for a couple of weeks in our HT set up - just ran them w/o center or surrounds to get a feel for their dynamics and they rocked - we sit like 12-13 feet away from the speakers in that room, the room is 25x20 or so. The bass and jump factor was definitely great. Again, this was w/o a sub. I really want to add a pair of 870's to these, but that is way down the line.

If you're on IG, check out my gear page - @my_audio_addiction
 

Pearljam5000

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I assume there will be a new revised KH420 soon because it's 8 years old by now
 

Pio

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I assume there will be a new revised KH420 soon because it's 8 years old by now
I would think updated drivers and class D amps.. I would love to see a 12" model, I would jump on those quick!
 

WillBrink

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I would think updated drivers and class D amps.. I would love to see a 12" model, I would jump on those quick!
Perhaps class D was not ready for prime time in their view 8 years ago, but by most accounts, they are now. Would save weight and hopefully $ and power use at idle I'd expect.
 

Pio

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Perhaps class D was not ready for prime time in their view 8 years ago, but by most accounts, they are now. Would save weight and hopefully $ and power use at idle I'd expect.
Would save on heat too.. the back panel gets pretty warm!
 

Pio

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you should touch my parasound JC1, 250 watts each when in function o_O:D:D that is another reason why i would like to switch to active monitors
ohh I know the JC1's all too well. They drove many a speaker for me from '07 until 2020.. heavy MFs..
 

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dfuller

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It's really interesting they use A/B amps vs class D considering there's excellent Class D amps and would save weight and costs. That seems like an oustanding value for $. I think actives are the future and if I was starting from scratch, would go with actives. I have actives from Sigberg audio arriving shortly for review.
They used AB because to get good Class D performance you need discrete designs (the chip amps are as a whole quite dire!), where class AB chip amps are quite good (or at least, good enough that they aren't audibly impacting things).

Neumann uses I think four TDA7293s in BTL for the woofer on this amp.
 
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teashea

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His next sentence clarified the point:

“Most people's intuitive reasoning blames the bass drivers exciting the back of the large waveguide plate and introducing re-radiation.”

I related that fact to you some years ago. I referred to it as “reverb” and got a lot of flake for it. Apparently, more than one person perceives that said re-radiation. I love Genelec—an outstanding company. But it’s only MDF for me—measurements be damned.

As for a question you posted elsewhere, IMO the 410 sounds more sterile compared to the 1237. Some people might like it—good on them—but I find the 1237 notably more musical. I don’t mix or do any professional work, so the latter attribute is more important for me. If I had to analyze it through the lenses of music production, I would care less about it.
The music is supposed to be musical. The monitors are supposed to be flat and uncolored. That way the monitors allow the music to be heard the way it was produced.
 

HairyEars

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The music is supposed to be musical. The monitors are supposed to be flat and uncolored. That way the monitors allow the music to be heard the way it was produced.
First off, it doesn't matter to me how they are supposed to be, rather how they sound. I want to enjoy my music, not to produce it.

Secondly, for your education, the professionals on GearSpace mostly disagree with your statement:

Amiram barged in with his flatness dogmas and got trashed for it. It starts around page 134. Don't attack me. It's the opinion of the folk who mix your music. The gist: for them, the best monitors are the ones that help them prepare music so it translate to most sound systems out there--even if the monitors are not perfectly flat. Intimate knowledge with the monitors and room interaction is what counts most in their view.

BTW, some claim that speakers which boost the upper lows and upper mid are preferable by most listeners.

No need to argue with me. Log in to GearSpace and make your case with them.
 

HairyEars

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I guess we don't have the same post/page configuration, I got only 102 pages for this thread. Could you cite the post number or the link to the post?
Post #4060 is where I can see a contributor engages with Amiram. At first, it’s not so interesting. You’ll have to keep scrolling down to see more exchanges. It goes on for quiet a while. There are a lot other subjects interspersed in between, so keep moving along.
 

mj30250

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Are we talking about mixing/producing, or simply listening? I read teashea's post a couple of times and I suppose I could interpret it either way.

With listening, the notion that "flat" speakers are inherently "unmusical" somehow is just bizarre to me. The music is what's musical (or not). I want to hear the music, not so much the speakers. I expect a good speaker to deliver as much of what's on a given source track as transparently as possible. If said track is well recorded, produced, and mixed, a neutral speaker system that is otherwise well-designed, executed, and suited to your listening space should deliver as much of its musicality as is reasonably possible.

Beyond that, it's simply a matter of preferences. If you like shelved up treble, or lots of midrange, or boosted bass (as I often do), etc etc, that's fine - but that really has little to do with musicality. If you're listening to sources of mediocre or poor quality, use tone controls to help them sound more "correct". Simply using speakers as tone controls is highly problematic because poor sources are poor in a variety of different ways, and a single set of speakers can only address a very limited variety of poor sources by themselves.
 
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teashea

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First off, it doesn't matter to me how they are supposed to be, rather how they sound. I want to enjoy my music, not to produce it.

Secondly, for your education, the professionals on GearSpace mostly disagree with your statement:

Amiram barged in with his flatness dogmas and got trashed for it. It starts around page 134. Don't attack me. It's the opinion of the folk who mix your music. The gist: for them, the best monitors are the ones that help them prepare music so it translate to most sound systems out there--even if the monitors are not perfectly flat. Intimate knowledge with the monitors and room interaction is what counts most in their view.

BTW, some claim that speakers which boost the upper lows and upper mid are preferable by most listeners.

No need to argue with me. Log in to GearSpace and make your case with them.
Unfrtuantely, Gearspace contains a lot of misinformation. There are some good posts there but most of it is poor qulaity. That is why ASR is a much better source of information.
 
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