Neumann KH 310A Review (Powered Monitor)

[tktran303]

I was wondering why or how this speaker has the same preference rating as the KH80DSP.
(6.2)

But sounds far better. To me, to Armin, and of course to Neumann.

is it greater maximum SPL (less restrictions from dynamic compression); less harmonic or IM distortion? is it the the way the larger and/or
more drivers radiate/combine sound?

Are we getting closer to understanding some of the limitations of the “preference” rating?

And can preference ratings be used to compared 2 ways, to 3 ways, to 4 ways?

Is it possible for 2 way speaker with 83dB/2.83V sensitivity and F3 35Hz with the same preference rating be compared to

a 3 way speaker with 93dB/2.83V sensitivity and 15” woofer and F3 of “only” 50Hz? With the same preference rating?

 

[infinitesymphony]

Nice! I love a 3 way with dome midrage.

Yeah, I've always found these speakers to be very aesthetically pleasing ever since the O300D. For mastering speakers, they look friendly and approachable. You can picture vocals coming out of that midrange dome. That being said, I would be deathly afraid of accidentally touching it. Looks like that happened here:

 

[Helicopter]

Fantastic speaker... great performance.

Final nail in the coffin for preference scores, for me. This gets a 6.2, top 5 speaker... fantastic, you'd think. That's only 0.03 ahead of a 4" monitor, 0.11 behind a 5" monitor, both of which roll off an octave higher, with the next third of an octave heavily degraded by distortion.

If the score is so heavily weighted towards directivity over response, rename it to something else. Time to go back to "Olive score" or "directivity rating" - preference score sounds far too empirical and definitive for a measure with such enormous flaws

That is not really fair when active and passive speakers are on the same scale. Sometimes you can do a lot for FR but directivity is built in.

Active speakers with built in DSP should be expected to nail FR. so that leaves distortion and directivity to show excellence. Actives with any FR issues are normally a result of making a good choice when facing a trade-off with FR and distortion.

If a passive speaker ripped this speaker up in directivity and slightly beat it in distortion, giving some.room for EQ, it would have a lot of potential for superior performance with EQ in the signal path.

Edit: also, there is way too much absorpsion of and controversy over preference rating, which is a mathematical approximation and not endorsed by ASR, as well as panthers, which are an indication of the overall evaluation from one perspective, albiet my favorite perspective for audio.

 

[amirm]

@amirm how did the bass on this speaker compare to the bass on the F328Be? Going by your listening tests, it's hard to tell which you preferred(maybe slight edge to Neumann?).

It is a very different experience. The F328Be is tall and portrays a very large image as a result (depending on what you listen to, this can make things more real, or less). It can also get much, much louder with zero strain as you turn up the volume. Perceptually I thought the F328Be sounded a bit less integrated than the KH310A. This may be an optical illusion of seeing all the drivers, or real based on large distance between them versus the point source that the 310A is relative to it.

Overall, I would want the KH310A on my desk and F328Be in a large room.

 

[okok]

beware kh310 must place horizontally
and must not vertically, there's no vertical mode

 

[amirm]

I was wondering why or how this speaker has the same preference rating as the KH80DSP.
(6.2)

But sounds far better. To me, to Armin, and of course to Neumann.

is it greater maximum SPL (less restrictions from dynamic compression); less harmonic or IMD?
is it the the way the driver(radiate sound?

Are we getting closer to understanding some of the limitations of the preference rating?

Can preference ratings be Used to compared between a 2 ways, to 3 ways, to 4 ways?

All good questions. I think the Olive score is the hour hand in a clock. The minute hand is not there and we have to apply that judgement. With so much objective data, once the pandemic is behind us, I hope various groups of audiophiles get together and do some controlled testing to see what their subjective scores are.

 

[Nango]

As good as expected from a reputable company like Neumann.

It does belong to Sennheiser Group, isn't it?

 

[richard12511]

That's the real takeaway. The KH310A puts you in the same ballpark at almost half the price. Granted, you will have to handle DSP outside the box, but I believe you can DSP most if not all of the KH speaker line if you add the KH750DSP subwoofer. Or handle it like @auralux and use a miniDSP, or Equalizer APO, Sonarworks, etc.

Something like Dirac might be a better solution, anyway.

 

[richard12511]

All good questions. I think the Olive score is the hour hand in a clock. The minute hand is not there and we have to apply that judgement. With so much objective data, once the pandemic is behind us, I hope various groups of audiophiles get together and do some controlled testing to see what their subjective scores are.

That’s a good analogy, and I agree.

 

[MZKM]

That’s a good analogy, and I agree.

As seen in Olive’s paper:

Due to the small sample size of excellent speakers, once you get above a 6, it’ll start to be under-predicting the values. The best speaker, ~8.2, is actually only predicted as a ~6.6.

As discussed elsewhere, the issue is mainly that SM_PIR favors narrow directivity.
Since we have the Spins for the original 13 bookshelves used in the study, and since I have all of Thanksgiving week off, I’m going to try to replace the SM_PIR score with NBD on the PIR normalized to it’s own slope, and then alter the weightings until I can closely match the human scores.

Another issue is that even though we have the Spins of the 13 OG speakers, it looked like the scores I and others calculated were not exactly the same as what Olive calculated for the IL10.

 

[LTig]

Yeah, I've always found these speakers to be very aesthetically pleasing ever since the O300D. For mastering speakers, they look friendly and approachable. You can picture vocals coming out of that midrange dome. That being said, I would be deathly afraid of accidentally touching it. Looks like that happened here:

You can buy the GKH 310 grills (at a price), they extremely rigid - you could use a hammer on them without touching the drivers.

 

[LTig]

I was wondering why or how this speaker has the same preference rating as the KH80DSP.
(6.2)

But sounds far better. To me, to Armin, and of course to Neumann.

I think it's the better low bass - we know that @amirm likes bass.

 

[LTig]

It does belong to Sennheiser Group, isn't it?

Yes.

 

[Xyrium]

Wowzers, these looked good even before you rescaled the graph!

I wish you still had the 8341's for a subjective comparison, even though I suppose the '51's are more in line with these output wise.

Another great one for the record books!

 

[Ilkless]

There should be a vertical version for home listening. ADAM did it right with an S3H and S3V.

 

[Newman]

Thanks for all this work, AGAIN, Amir!

As soon as a saw this review posted, I was intrigued to see if the lateral placement of the woofer had any impact on off-axis behaviour. And I think it has. Looking at the above chart, I get the impression that the woofer and the mid-range driver are summing subtractively at around 700 Hz, and additively at around 900 to 1000 Hz. A one-toothed ‘comb’.

I can’t help thinking that if the units have been vertically aligned, as they are with a KH 410 loudspeaker, this would not have happened.

cheers

 

[Pio]

Awesome!! Amir, we gotta get a JBL Pro 708P in there.. I am ready when you are.

 

[BYRTT]

.....Not to say there can't be something wrong with the KH310 measurements -- each new speaker is a new set of measurements after all -- but the ground plane method has been shown to be as accurate as the NFS (with at least one speaker).

Cant see its a problem if Amir miss 1dB or so shelf in the low end and if he do its because DUT really perform as that under the present temperature, ground plane method wont help Amir because if its cold in garage its also cold outside, can be i'm wrong but in DUT has one plane that physical sits on the ground for ground plane method and for NFS DUT is lifted above ground must give a kind of acoustic impedance difference plus blocked plane and maybe what the noice is about when Amir's analyzes looks less bassy but anechoic right at the current temperature than what readers is used to see published elsewhere, from KH 80 sample 3 review Amir started report and comment on temperature number so how big is this problem really other than we probably see some more precise low end curves relative to temperature than usual because NFS can extract higher anechoic precision than used to.

 

[amirm]

Since we have the Spins for the original 13 bookshelves used in the study, and since I have all of Thanksgiving week off, I’m going to try to replace the SM_PIR score with NBD on the PIR normalized to it’s own slope, and then alter the weightings until I can closely match the human scores.

This reminds me that I also bought the Bose speakers in that study. Remind me if I forget to measure them.

 

[Vintage57]

Really good to see Neumann published data verified 2 for 2, or 100% of the time.

Looking forward to the KH420 being placed on the stand.