Kadent
Member
Hello everyone
This is my first review here on ASR and by a somewhat popular interest, I decided to give it a go. The DA-Wave speakers can be Purchaced on Parts-express (Parent company of Dayton Audio) for around 269 when on sale, which it is quite often. Just a disclaimer, I don't have any professional measuring equipment, so the chain is very simple. MacBook pro > Thunderbolt to Asgard DAC, then out to my speaker amp, then calibrated microphone into the soundcard of my MacBook so alot of my opinions will be well...opinions as I can't exactly tell you the degree of distortion it has at 1khz
Enough of that, let's get to some build pics. Here they are on IMGUR:
As you can see it's not rocket science to put it together. If I can do it, at 15, I'm sure any of you can. I'll post some measurements here, and apologies they are not the best quality pictures:
This doesn't look good. Let's zoom in to further see the errors.
Yikes. I knew it was bright, but I didn't know it was this bright. Well, they aren't. After some tinkering to see what the issue was, some setting was on in my reciever that boosts treble. Turning that off, and by bringing them 2 inches further from the wall, I was able to get this:
That's more like the "ideal" measurement on the product page. And of course, my listening area is far from perfect. I also wanted to play around with some room correction, but big flag/warning here: I'm not done with the room correction/calibration/EQ'ing/Positioning of my speakers so this review is far from over But here's the first attempt:
Now for the subjective portion: How does it sound?
I was actually quite pleased. Having listened to everything from Ultra 11 speakers, to small powered 5 inch monitors, I'd say in terms of "value" these cannot be matched. Throw in an 8-10 inch sub and you're good to go. Sure, the bass is lacking, but bass lacks on all speakers of this size unless you spend a considerable amount more. Comparing these to the competition, the Yamaha HS5/JBL305p/Adam T5v, is pretty close. I'd say the Adam is the best of the 3 monitor speakers but the built in amplifier is it's downside. You can hear the rising distortion and dynamics being compressed as you turn the volume up. But if you care about your neighbors and listen at low volumes, just buy the T5V. These on the other hand, you can literally turn them up to 110dB and there is virtually no mechanical distortion coming from them I'm powering them with a Yamaha RX-v995 so plenty of power headroom. One thing to note is that like the KEF LS50 or other similar drivers, they run out of XMAX very quickely on low frequencies. Being sealed helps compensate this by controlling it in a tighter more efficient mannar, but just do keep in mind that. If you run a gentle 60hz low pass filter you'll be good to go, assuming that's where you set the sub to kick in.
Midrange is quite lifelike, and the treble is precise. If you like a warm and bloated/laid back sound then these would not suite your fancy.
More is to come soon, but this is the introductory, any comments questions or concerns are appreciated,
Cheers,
Kaden
This is my first review here on ASR and by a somewhat popular interest, I decided to give it a go. The DA-Wave speakers can be Purchaced on Parts-express (Parent company of Dayton Audio) for around 269 when on sale, which it is quite often. Just a disclaimer, I don't have any professional measuring equipment, so the chain is very simple. MacBook pro > Thunderbolt to Asgard DAC, then out to my speaker amp, then calibrated microphone into the soundcard of my MacBook so alot of my opinions will be well...opinions as I can't exactly tell you the degree of distortion it has at 1khz
Enough of that, let's get to some build pics. Here they are on IMGUR:
As you can see it's not rocket science to put it together. If I can do it, at 15, I'm sure any of you can. I'll post some measurements here, and apologies they are not the best quality pictures:
This doesn't look good. Let's zoom in to further see the errors.
Yikes. I knew it was bright, but I didn't know it was this bright. Well, they aren't. After some tinkering to see what the issue was, some setting was on in my reciever that boosts treble. Turning that off, and by bringing them 2 inches further from the wall, I was able to get this:
That's more like the "ideal" measurement on the product page. And of course, my listening area is far from perfect. I also wanted to play around with some room correction, but big flag/warning here: I'm not done with the room correction/calibration/EQ'ing/Positioning of my speakers so this review is far from over But here's the first attempt:
Now for the subjective portion: How does it sound?
I was actually quite pleased. Having listened to everything from Ultra 11 speakers, to small powered 5 inch monitors, I'd say in terms of "value" these cannot be matched. Throw in an 8-10 inch sub and you're good to go. Sure, the bass is lacking, but bass lacks on all speakers of this size unless you spend a considerable amount more. Comparing these to the competition, the Yamaha HS5/JBL305p/Adam T5v, is pretty close. I'd say the Adam is the best of the 3 monitor speakers but the built in amplifier is it's downside. You can hear the rising distortion and dynamics being compressed as you turn the volume up. But if you care about your neighbors and listen at low volumes, just buy the T5V. These on the other hand, you can literally turn them up to 110dB and there is virtually no mechanical distortion coming from them I'm powering them with a Yamaha RX-v995 so plenty of power headroom. One thing to note is that like the KEF LS50 or other similar drivers, they run out of XMAX very quickely on low frequencies. Being sealed helps compensate this by controlling it in a tighter more efficient mannar, but just do keep in mind that. If you run a gentle 60hz low pass filter you'll be good to go, assuming that's where you set the sub to kick in.
Midrange is quite lifelike, and the treble is precise. If you like a warm and bloated/laid back sound then these would not suite your fancy.
More is to come soon, but this is the introductory, any comments questions or concerns are appreciated,
Cheers,
Kaden