Salk WoW1 Bookshelf Speaker Review

[Selah Audio]

Just a quick on-axis measurement with the port plugged should show whether that is responsible for the dip, which it seems likely it is. If that is the case then simply plugging the port would make it a much better speaker but also make a subwoofer mandatory.

Plugging the port results in an over-damped sealed box. Not a good idea, especially with this woofer.

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Plugging the port results in an over-damped sealed box. Not a good idea, especially with this woofer.

Rick,

Well obviously, for crying out loud.
But the point is just to confirm the port issue.....as you mentioned.

However, I understand why Amir is reluctant to spend the time doing this.
Regardless, it is what it is, and if operating correctly this IS the performance of the system, as designed.

Dave.

 

[aarons915]

Plugging the port results in an over-damped sealed box. Not a good idea, especially with this woofer.

I'm not a speaker designer by any means but just to clarify are you saying it's not a good idea because the woofer wouldn't be controlled well enough with the motor alone or would the bass just be way too anemic without a port? Would a rear port fix the cancellation?

 

[AudioJester]

Salk cabinetry has always been amazing. I have lusted for their versions of the Rythmik servo subs for many years.
Sad to see this type of performance.
Has the review been fed back to them?

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I'm disappointed by the overstated sensitivity (~5.5dB)


Assuming it's on-axis (and tweeter level), here is a compairson (matched at 2kHz):
View attachment 74548
Blue is Klippel and red is Salk.


________________________________________
@Dennis Murphy or the member who purchased these, can I know the shipping charge? If I'm not mistaken, the listed price doesn't include shipping, so I want to make my spreadsheets accurate.

Also, Dennis, Salk splits their speakers into 4 categories: floorstanding, bookshelf/surround, monitor, center

I see no differentiation for what constitutes being a bookshelf/surround or a monitor. Do you happen to know the reasoning?

Jim can comment if he wishes. I don't think there are any accepted definitions for monitor vs. bookshelf, and Jim doesn't have a dedicated surround speaker (in the sense that it's specifically designed to go on a wall), so I assume he means speakers in this category can be used as a regular bookshelf or a surround.

 

[amirm]

Here is a quick in-room experiment with the port. The main frequency response measurements were made at about 30 inches from the speaker (solid lines). The port measurements are made point blank (half inch from the port).

Measurements of the port (dashed lines) clearly show the dip going away. Impact on the main measurements (solid lines) is there but room interactions complicate it some.

Edit: fixed typo on the graph.

 

[DDF]

Plugging the port results in an over-damped sealed box. Not a good idea, especially with this woofer.

Its unfortunately quite common for many small designs to hope for too much using a port. The woofer unloads too easily and early. To be fair to Salk, that's not the WoWs mission, its clearly a near field/small room/lower level intent so its being unfairly judged for a mission beyond its mandate.

However, the port is an obvious problem and at power it will go non linear quickly. You can only get so much non turbulent airflow out of a small aperture at low frequencies. I would suspect it measures better at lower SPLs.

If there's one thing the NFS and amir's now wide ranging tests have shown is that ports more often than not cause response aberrations in the mid range due to their slow low pass roll off and/or port resonances not very far below the driver lower mid output. Getting ports to exhibit a clean low pass is very difficult: geomtery, placement and cabinet volume coupling all need careful attention way beyond Thiele/Small. Expensive trial and error or advanced CAD are needed.

 

[Selah Audio]

Rick,

Well obviously, for crying out loud.
But the point is just to confirm the port issue.....as you mentioned.

However, I understand why Amir is reluctant to spend the time doing this.
Regardless, it is what it is, and if operating correctly this IS the performance of the system, as designed.

Dave.

I wasn't thinking of your post as I knew that you were just suggesting a quick check of the port to verify the source of the problem. It's not Amir's job to fix the problem.

 

[amirm]

Has the review been fed back to them?

I have not but someone else has.

 

[Selah Audio]

I'm not a speaker designer by any means but just to clarify are you saying it's not a good idea because the woofer wouldn't be controlled well enough with the motor alone or would the bass just be way too anemic without a port? Would a rear port fix the cancellation?

It creates an oversized low "Q" box which changes the bass output (see Amir's new curves) and increases the excursion of the woofer.

 

[TankTop]

Wow, tough crowd. Sounds like small monitors are very difficult to design.

 

[Ilkless]

SEAS magnesium Excel is honestly incomprehensible to me. None of the drivers are as usable as the Prestige drivers, due to the awful break-up. It needs supremely low XOs at LR4+ and even a notch, while nonlinear distortion is at that price class average at best with ok-to-good excursion. Ascend speccing a Curv woven polyprop cone on an Excel motor is something SEAS should have come up with themselves a long time ago. And a massive phase plug (reducing radiating surface) on a 12cm driver strikes as a form-above-function choice.

With Revelators, C-Quenze, Satori and now Purifi in that price class (all more usable FR-wise, with at least competitive distortion, build quality and reputation) - the Excel is a dinosaur.

 

[Mudjock]

Interesting review. Thank you as usual, Amirm for your professionalism and diligence. I’ve heard other Salk models at shows and have spoken with Jim over the years. His solid reputation is well earned and I’ve never met a person who was unsatisfied with Salk’s customer service. Poor performance aside (and that’s asking a lot, I understand), Salk can’t be making much money on these. The driver and crossover component costs are very high and the cabinets are beautifully hand made. I’m not saying this is an excuse for the performance and I have never heard this model. I’ve heard other models that used the same tweeter (Ellis 1801, etc. ) and thought they had a nice airy top end. Maybe a little bright for my liking but overall, the Hiquphon (sp?) sounded good.

This one really shocked me! I expected bad performance from Tannoy, PMC and even ATC but Salk has a solid reputation and the workmanship is always first rate. Sad to see this type of performance but I trust Amirm’s measurements. Curious to see how the other speaker measures but I understand if it’s too much trouble to unpack and measure another speaker.

I am a little surprised and not surprised at the same time.

I first met Jim Salk over 15 years ago at a DIY event and my impression has always been that he is as kind and classy as anyone I have ever met in the audio business.

I owned Ellis 1801's (Seas Excel W18 and Hiquphon OW1) before I started to design my own speakers and used them as a reference until I was confident enough to stand on my own with respect to voicing and measuring. As I designed more speakers, I began to realize that, although the Hiquphons and Seas Excel Magnesium cone drivers do some things very well (Hiquphon has noticeably wide dispersion and tolerates a pretty low crossover point for a 3/4" dome, Seas Excel does micro detail very well), there are some pretty clear limitations. Getting the Hiquphon to integrate with a midwoofer without a big off axis flare just above the crossover point is just plain tough and the Seas Magnesium cones have wicked breakup resonances that limit how they can be crossed over. Dennis Murphy did the crossover for the Ellis 1801's and went second order at around 2.4 kHz, which was a stretch for both drivers but about as good as could be done. With drivers that were more forgiving, and certainly small 3 way designs, I could voice the midrange to be more prominent, but at the same time less harsh primarily due to better directivity matching between drivers.

I see some of the same characteristics and issues in this review. It makes me think the WOW1 could use a refresh.

 

[aarons915]

It creates an oversized low "Q" box which changes the bass output (see Amir's new curves) and increases the excursion of the woofer.

Yeah that's all understandable but it seems sealing the port and crossing to a sub in the 120-150Hz range would make a decent system and should limit excursion. Of course that assumes someone is ok using a sub and in a desktop setup they may not want to go that route.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

@Dennis Murphy
Do you see anything here that would indicate that they were made out of accordance with the design? Wondering if these are fixable.

I don't want to say much until Jim has a chance to read and digest this. From a frequency response and crossover standpoint, everything is in spec except for the problems around 500 Hz. That does appear to be a port issue, since there's nothing in the inherent response of the woofer or the design of the crossover that could account for it. Other than that, the response is quite smooth, and arguably smoother than my Pioneer BS22 mod that Amir liked so much. I certainly preferred the WOW1 to the mod when I compared them many years ago. The biggest mystery to me is the measured sensitivity. If you look at the Praxis plot, you'll see "Offset = 9 dB" at the top. That's the setting Praxis specifies to replicate the standard one meter sensitivity measurement, and my results have almost always been reasonable given the usual discrepancies expected with factory driver sensitivity ratings. If sensitivity really is closer to 78 dB, that would probably explain why distortion is registering so high at high SPL's, but I also would have picked up on it when I tested the speaker against other designs using my volume-compensated switching preamp. I just don't know what's going on here.

 

[CDMC]

Amir, you couldn't wait a few more days until the pair I had sold?!!!!!

Seriously though, I purchased a pair and my listening position measurements (desktop near field) show the same response sag in the lower midrange. The Song Surrounds which are cheaper measure better in my listening position. And yes, the WOW1 is power hungry with much lower sensitivity than the Song or Dynaudio X12, but for me was not an issue as I am using a Hypex MC252 amp.

I should add that Jim was a pleasure to deal with and had suggested for my listening preference the surround one would be a better choice. The speakers are beautiful and I would gladly purchase another model from him.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I am a little surprised and not surprised at the same time.

I first met Jim Salk over 15 years ago at a DIY event and my impression has always been that he is as kind and classy as anyone I have ever met in the audio business.

I owned Ellis 1801's (Seas Excel W18 and Hiquphon OW1) before I started to design my own speakers and used them as a reference until I was confident enough to stand on my own with respect to voicing and measuring. As I designed more speakers, I began to realize that, although the Hiquphons and Seas Excel Magnesium cone drivers do some things very well (Hiquphon has noticeably wide dispersion and tolerates a pretty low crossover point for a 3/4" dome, Seas Excel does micro detail very well), there are some pretty clear limitations. Getting the Hiquphon to integrate with a midwoofer without a big off axis flare just above the crossover point is just plain tough and the Seas Magnesium cones have wicked breakup resonances that limit how they can be crossed over. Dennis Murphy did the crossover for the Ellis 1801's and went second order at around 2.4 kHz, which was a stretch for both drivers but about as good as could be done. With drivers that were more forgiving, and certainly small 3 way designs, I could voice the midrange to be more prominent, but at the same time less harsh primarily due to better directivity matching between drivers.

I see some of the same characteristics and issues in this review. It makes me think the WOW1 could use a refresh.

Well, it looks like I would want to refresh this particular pair. For the record, the Ellis 1801 used 4th order acoustic slopes, not second. The WOW1 also uses 4th order slopes, but it's crossed a little lower at 2,100 Hz. Given that the WOW1's woofer is 2" smaller than the 1801's, and that it's crossed a little lower, its directivity should be more even, although about the same at higher frequencies. For me, this is just another example of why I find wide dispersion more important than carefully controlled dispersion, since the 1801 is still one of my favorite speakers.

 

[Beave]

I don't think that would be fair. This is the only mini speaker that Salk makes.

Not to mention that they make speakers with different drivers, some bookshelf speakers, some towers, some two-ways, some three-ways, some with front ports, some with rear ports, some with slot ports, some with round ports, some bass-reflex, some transmission line...

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I almost wonder if Salk mixed up crossovers from a different speaker model or something.
Every speaker I have heard from Salk has been a good listen.

There's nothing wrong with the crossover that I could see. The problem is way below the crossover point.

 

[b1daly]

Ouch. Bummer. I have heard varous Salk speakers at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest on numerous occasions over many years of shows, and I thorougly enjoyed most of them. I have followed their creation and designs on the DIY networks. They get lots of positive feedback. I wonder if this was a bad apple or just a bad design? As to their cabinetry, as you mention, it is second to none.

I hope negative reviews like this don’t bias people who own the gear to dislike it. There really is no right and wrong when it comes to subjective experience.

I think ‘good enough’ plays a big role in audio playback. That’s all I care about. Unfortunately for the old pocket book my ‘good enough’ has proved elusive on speakers.

On amps, phhft, I’ve been happily using random junk I picked up for cheap or free. I swear I do hear differences in how they sound, but until I blind test I not worry about it. (I have a couple of old Yamaha RX450s that I swear sound sublime that had been junked by past owners!)

But I don’t feel the need to have the best, if I’m listening I just want to enjoy myself!