Infinity R162 Bookshelf Speaker Review

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

I removed Shellac with denatured alcohol from 120 year old woodwork. It was pristine. Felt like sanded down to 400 grit.

 

[Fers66]

Cheers Amir!
Nice to see a budget speaker doing fine...
My old system was 4 Primus P160 and a Beta C360...love then!
I also had the opportunity to compare the Primus P160 with some others speakers from Paradigm...B&W...Polk...Taga...
To my untrained ears the Infinity Primus was very competent against more priced speakers...and sounding like the famous B&W (not considering speaker size difference 5" vs 6" woofer)...
Today I have the Paradigm Monitor SE3000f in my system. My first impression with the Paradigm after +- 15 years with Infinity was "Wow that speaker is too bright/hot tweeter)...
After "brain burn-in"and 2 days A/B the P160 vs SE3000F I ended with Paradigm. There´s more detail in the high frequencys..."very engaging" for music listening...
Would love to see a ASR review of the Monitor SE3000F or the new Atom Bookshelf...

 

[amirm]

Spin data added to the review.

 

[amirm]

@amirm Thank you for the measurement. Did you mean Revel M22? The M20 hasn't been measured here (yet).

Actually I meant M16.

May I know which part of the measurement shoes that the other speaker cannot play as loud?

Nothing right now. It is a lot easier for me to identify power ability with my ears than instrumentation. I listen for the woofer falling apart/bottoming out. This is why subjective listening tests have value in these reviews.

Longer term I will add some test for that. I worked on it for a bit today but didn't get there.

 

[thewas]

I wonder if piano finish improves SQ.

According to Yamaha it does

Glossy Black Piano Finish Provides Improved Signal-to-Noise Performance—and Adds to the Luxurious Joy of Ownership

All six external surfaces of the enclosure have a glossy black piano finish created using the same dedicated paint, primer, and polishing processes used for renowned Yamaha grand pianos. The uniform and hard membrane further increases the overall rigidity of the enclosure, and at the same time it suppresses fine vibrations, contributing to the bright sound and significantly enhanced signal-to-noise performance.

(from https://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio_visual/speaker_systems/ns-5000/index.html)

Well, theoretically an additional layer on the enclosure can reduce vibrations a tiny bit, but to measure or even worse hear the difference...

 

[maty]

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/infinity-reference-r162-speaker-system-test-bench

[ This graph shows the quasi-anechoic (employing close-miking of all woofers) frequency response of the R162 satellites (purple trace), SUB R12 subwoofer (blue trace), and RC263 center channel (green trace). All passive loudspeakers were measured with grilles at a distance of 1 meter with a 2.83-volt input and scaled for display purposes. ]

Again we have discrepancies between the expensive Klippel and traditional measurements. Why?

 

[edechamps]

Spin data added to the review.

Thank you, Amir. I have added the Infinity R162 to Loudspeaker Explorer where it can be compared to other speakers.

Consistency within the listening window is interesting - it's fine, but there is a big problem at +10°V. You definitely don't want to place these speakers below ear height:

 

[thewas]

You get then a "warm BBC dip", many people like it, especially with bad/harsh recordings.

 

[tuga]

CSD/waterfall graph shows the resonance we saw at 700 Hz

Probably the port. This is a measurement of the R152 I found online:

http://averagejoeaudiophile.blogspot.com/2015/12/infinity-reference-r152-infinitys-high.html

 

[BYRTT]

Great thanks to Amir publish another benchmark ...

...Maybe @BYRTT would be kind to do one of those overlay comparisons if you have the time?

Which one would be harder to drive? The min. impedance is higher on these (4.7Ohm vs 4 Ohm), but not sure about the phase shift.

Tonality/impedance comparison R162 verse Q100 below and think not they so coherent, M16 and M22 is closer a look alike to R162, i could squizze out some very beautiful tonality curves for R162 seen in the lower spin using EQ so say sample to sample is within low deviation anechoic response could be decorated a bit ...

 

[modes]

These look great. Hope Jbl studio 220/230 from the same era are in the pipeline at some point.

 

[maty]

The graphics after EQ are very apparent but much EQ substantially modifies to worst the sound quality in high quality recordings with real instrumentation and voices without Autotune. For movies, series, games... no objection.

It is also true that these quality recordings are the least reproduced in the vast majority of audio systems, I think.

 

[Cahudson42]

@amirm : Subjective impressions R162 vs. DBR-62?

 

[amirm]

@amirm : Subjective impressions R162 vs. DBR-62?

DBR-62 is better.

 

[spacevector]

Does anybody know about distortion mechanisms in the crossover region?

For the Infinity R162, looks like distortion is dominated by the 3rd harmonic. Whereas for the JBL Studio 530, 2nd harmonic seems the dominant one. Is this just a matter of the drivers' design which makes 2nd dominant for some units but 3rd for others?

Also a note to Amir: it would be nice to use same color for the traces between reviews. 2nd harmo is dark green for R162 but hot pink for 530.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Does anybody know about distortion mechanisms in the crossover region?

For the Infinity R162, looks like distortion is dominated by the 3rd harmonic. Whereas for the JBL Studio 530, 2nd harmonic seems the dominant one. Is this just a matter of the drivers' design which makes 2nd dominant for some units but 3rd for others?

Also a note to Amir: it would be nice to use same color for the traces between reviews. 2nd harmo is dark green for R162 but hot pink for 530.

View attachment 56912
View attachment 56913

Should be noted that 2nd order is often considered a very minimal issue , extremely hard to hear- even desirable in some cases. I forgot this. This makes the measurements for the 530 even better in my world.
4 and 5th are considered by far the worst offenders and 3 not so great as well.

 

[spacevector]

Should be noted that 2nd order is often considered a very minimal issue , extremely hard to hear- even desirable in some cases. I forgot this. This makes the measurements for the 530 even better in my world.
4 and 5th are considered by far the worst offenders and 3 not so great as well.

Thanks - got any source for 2nd not being a problem?

 

[ROOSKIE]

Thanks - got any source for 2nd not being a problem?

Off the top of my head audioholics had a good article and I remember Axiom the speaker manufacturer published an article about a distortion test conducted with loudspeakers. Sorry I can't get links now but google should find this stuff, and many more articles do exist about this.

Edit here is the one https://www.audioholics.com/loudspe...tortion-at-bass/total-harmonic-distortion-thd

 

[spacevector]

The audioholics article seems only applies to bass.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

Thanks Amir. Very pleased as I bought the pair for $144 shipped from Harman!

How on earth can Harmon sell for this sale price?