This is a review and detailed measurements of the Diapason Emera 2-way speaker. It is on kind loan from a member. It is an older design dating back to 2002 from the bit of research I have done. I can't find the pricing.
The fit and finish is very good:
The grill is screwed in. I took that as a signal to use the speaker that way so I tested it with it. Just the same, the speaker is titled back good but and that is how I measured and listened to it.
The back panel is simple but further shows the elegance in the design:
I believe the claim to fame on the design of this speaker is that the woofer is directly driven with no crossover. Reminds me of the same approach by Totem Acoustics. If so, this should present an interesting set of measurements.
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.
I used over 800 measurement point which was enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.
Temperature was 76 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. And per above, I let the speaker be raked back as designed.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
And flaws is what we have. Clearly this is a strong equalization applied to everything you play. Bass is attenuated and then we have peaking and dips everywhere.
Around the crossover point of 4.8 kHz directivity gets shot with on-axis response dipping even below reflected sounds although the listening window is better.
Strangely, the of-axis early reflections look more even:
That tames our predicted in-room response:
We want tilting down response which we don't have here so likely the sound will be bright especially given the lack of bass.
To investigate what is going on, I measured the individual drivers at close distance and this is the composite:
The woofer is breaking up/resonating around crossover frequencies. We also have peaking from the port around 800 Hz. The tweeter also is not linear showing a few peaks.
Horizontal beamwidth is chewed up:
Same is true of full directivity map:
Vertical directivity is interesting:
It seems that you are better off being above my measured axis (center of the tweeter). In which case, why tilt up the speaker by design? As you see the black reference line goes to through lower energy region around 2 to 6 kHz the way it is.
Distortion is reasonable at 86 dBSPL but gets bad at 96:
Finally here is impedance and phase:
Speaker Subjective Listening Tests
The sound out of the box was disappointing. It was somewhat bright, with no bass and dull. The Genesis track I played as the first one was not listenable. Performance improved a bit with other content but was still problematic as described. So instead of continuing, I quickly threw in an EQ:
This made a dramatic difference. Bass was there now due to my inverse correction in the entire region sans the peaking around 1 kHz. Detail was much improved. It was still a bit too bright but a bit more effort would make a difference there. This clearly demonstrate that whatever idea there was behind that frequency response was not correct.
Conclusions
Objective measurements clearly show a flawed design which was then backed in subjective listening. The science here is quite intuitive and strong: we don't want the speaker to drastically vary the frequency response of the music we listen to. The lack of bass may have been perceived as having "lower distortion" but such was not the case. Distortion was there without sufficient bass energy which is highly desirable by listeners.
Fortunately Equalization was very effective to turn this speaker from terrible to usable.
Needless to say, I can't recommend the Diapason Emera speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
You all may remember be attempting to make raisins out of our overflow of red grapes. After 31 hours of being in the dehydrator and heaven knows how much in electricity cost this is what I was left with:
They look like raisins alright but are very sour. Somehow I thought drying them would make them sweeter but it did not. Fortunately I like tart dried fruit and might go well with curries and such so won't go to waste.
Since you are learning both about audio and preserving food, how about reaching deep into your pocket and donating money using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The fit and finish is very good:
The grill is screwed in. I took that as a signal to use the speaker that way so I tested it with it. Just the same, the speaker is titled back good but and that is how I measured and listened to it.
The back panel is simple but further shows the elegance in the design:
I believe the claim to fame on the design of this speaker is that the woofer is directly driven with no crossover. Reminds me of the same approach by Totem Acoustics. If so, this should present an interesting set of measurements.
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.
I used over 800 measurement point which was enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.
Temperature was 76 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. And per above, I let the speaker be raked back as designed.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
And flaws is what we have. Clearly this is a strong equalization applied to everything you play. Bass is attenuated and then we have peaking and dips everywhere.
Around the crossover point of 4.8 kHz directivity gets shot with on-axis response dipping even below reflected sounds although the listening window is better.
Strangely, the of-axis early reflections look more even:
That tames our predicted in-room response:
We want tilting down response which we don't have here so likely the sound will be bright especially given the lack of bass.
To investigate what is going on, I measured the individual drivers at close distance and this is the composite:
The woofer is breaking up/resonating around crossover frequencies. We also have peaking from the port around 800 Hz. The tweeter also is not linear showing a few peaks.
Horizontal beamwidth is chewed up:
Same is true of full directivity map:
Vertical directivity is interesting:
It seems that you are better off being above my measured axis (center of the tweeter). In which case, why tilt up the speaker by design? As you see the black reference line goes to through lower energy region around 2 to 6 kHz the way it is.
Distortion is reasonable at 86 dBSPL but gets bad at 96:
Finally here is impedance and phase:
Speaker Subjective Listening Tests
The sound out of the box was disappointing. It was somewhat bright, with no bass and dull. The Genesis track I played as the first one was not listenable. Performance improved a bit with other content but was still problematic as described. So instead of continuing, I quickly threw in an EQ:
This made a dramatic difference. Bass was there now due to my inverse correction in the entire region sans the peaking around 1 kHz. Detail was much improved. It was still a bit too bright but a bit more effort would make a difference there. This clearly demonstrate that whatever idea there was behind that frequency response was not correct.
Conclusions
Objective measurements clearly show a flawed design which was then backed in subjective listening. The science here is quite intuitive and strong: we don't want the speaker to drastically vary the frequency response of the music we listen to. The lack of bass may have been perceived as having "lower distortion" but such was not the case. Distortion was there without sufficient bass energy which is highly desirable by listeners.
Fortunately Equalization was very effective to turn this speaker from terrible to usable.
Needless to say, I can't recommend the Diapason Emera speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
You all may remember be attempting to make raisins out of our overflow of red grapes. After 31 hours of being in the dehydrator and heaven knows how much in electricity cost this is what I was left with:
They look like raisins alright but are very sour. Somehow I thought drying them would make them sweeter but it did not. Fortunately I like tart dried fruit and might go well with curries and such so won't go to waste.
Since you are learning both about audio and preserving food, how about reaching deep into your pocket and donating money using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/