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March Audio Sointuva

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Mutsu

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I am really interested in possible addition of Sointuba in my audio system, hopefully to be physically set on the sub-woofer YAMAHA YST-SW1000.

By the way, if it's just for music then I think the Sointuva goes deep enough without a sub :)

If you get a pair, what color or wood option do you think you would go for?
 

restorer-john

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Many well built modern tweeters will be able to handle a 1500 Hz crossover.Plenty of mainstream makers cross over their tweeters that low.JBL in their Studio 590/580 series for example.Many of the Satori tweeters can be crossed at 1500hz .

Rubbish. It's not about whether a 'tweeter' can be crossed at 1500Hz, but more about how much power it can absorb "if" it is crossed that low.

The power goes somewhere and there is no handwaving or "guru-talking" that can change the laws of physics.
 

echopraxia

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I don’t understand why attacking the power handling spec is such a hugely important issue for @restorer-john to keep bringing up again and again. I’ve never seen such passionate debate about power handling specs of any other speaker, so why the focus on this one all of a sudden?

For the record, this speaker interests me also (I have March Audio’s power amps, and they’re excellent well-made products), but I do not care at all about the power handling spec. I do care about distortion vs SPL, linearity, compression measurements, and fortunately @hardisj publishes these.

In an ideal world, it would be really amazing if Amir or Erin could figure out how to do “maximum SPL at X% distortion” vs frequency plots, like we see sometimes posted from Sound & Recording reviews. But I’ll take what I can get :)
 
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dualazmak

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Is it relatively quick and easy to do? I took a scan through your linked article but couldn't tell exactly how to do this.
Should I just do this the same way as the MMM but instead of pink noise, use white noise?
Your FQ response at your listening position looks impressive btw.
Thanks

It is well known that nicely prepared pink noise would be rather "gentle" for tweeters and super-tweeters for their burn-in and Fq response (relative SLP) measurements.

As shared in my post here, typical well-prepared flat pink noise, however, has gradual elevation of acoustic response (energy) in dB scale from high towards low frequency while typical white noise has actually flat response through 20 Hz - 20 kHz, as shown here analyzed by MusicScope 2.1.0;
WS001808.JPG


I very carefully compared "cumulative pink noise averaging" and "cumulative white noise averaging" for Fq response measurements in my multichannel system as shared from here to here, and I found/confirmed the latter is better for Fq response measurement in actual room acoustics at the listening position.

The "cumulative white noise averaging" for Fq response measurements is really straightforward to perform and very simple for understanding the results, since there is no "black-box" like signal manupirations (such as psychoacoustic smoothing in REW) with softwares.

Just for reference, according to the manual of REW;
"Psychoacoustic smoothing uses 1/3 octave below 100Hz, 1/6 octave above 1 kHz and varies from 1/3 octave to 1/6 octave between 100 Hz and 1 kHz. It also applies more weighting to peaks by using a cubic mean (cube root of the average of the cubed values) to produce a plot that more closely corresponds to the perceived frequency response."
I feel that "psychoacoustic smoothing" seems to give the frequency response curve that best corresponds (matches) to our auditory sensation.

On the other hand, I also would like to establish "my own routine procedure/method" of Fq response measurements which should be reliable, reproducible as well as flexibly re-analyzable, and also should be well understandable regarding the internal processing and validity.

The measurement procedure is very simple; you may just "record" the white noise sound by Adobe Audition for ca. 1 minute using your measurement microphone at listening position, and then you would select the ca. 50 second middle area of the recorded sound (without the starting and ending portion) for spectrum analysis. This means you are automatically averaging the white noise sound over 50 second while all the SP drivers were singing all together in full range, i.e. 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

As shared/summarized in my post here, throughout my careful measurements/experiments, I confirmed and validated that this primitive "cumulative (recorded) white noise averaging method" is really powerful and reliable in terms of;

1. the method is universally applicable in the stages of digital out of crossover software (EKIO), DAC's analog out, amplifier SP out, and of course in the actual room SP sound,

2. the method is accurate, sensitive and reproducible, having little or no statistical fluctuation, because of the FFT averaging analysis on the "rich cumulative data" of the recorded sound,

3. the recorded "white noise tracks" can be re-analyzed any way, anytime, afterwards,

4. flexible mix-paste (sound mixing) can be done to virtually simulate any combination of the channels, especially in amplifiers' SP out signals before going into SP drivers,

5. if needed, the environmental "continuous room background noise" can be reduced/removed by the Adobe Audition's "noise capture - noise reduction" function,

6. if needed, suitable gain/level adjustment can be applied for "level matched comparison" of Fq response shapes between the different series of the recorded data,

7. flexible and suitable FFT size (as smoothing intensity) can be selected depending on the frequency zone of interest.
 

dualazmak

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By the way, if it's just for music then I think the Sointuva goes deep enough without a sub :)
If you get a pair, what color or wood option do you think you would go for?

In color matching with my adjacent YAMAHA NS-1000 (not NS-1000M), I would prefer Sointuva of Natural Wood finish (or black finish if available) sitting on the sub-woofers YAMAHA YST-SW1000, in case if I would decide to purchase Sointuva...
WS001679.JPG
 

richard12511

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You are the reviewer, not me. You are posting otherwise excellent content, apart for the most important part: Do they meet their rated specifications?

And, if a speaker fails when you review it, call it out, have it repaired/replaced by the manufacturer as they are required to do and write about the experience. That's the way proper reviewing has been done for many decades. How often have you read about an amplifier that blew up when being tested and a second sample was sought which blew up too? Quite often.

Be brave. Test your speakers in accordance with their rated power. :)

If I'm sending Erin one of my own speakers, I definitely don't want him doing a test like this :D.
 
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Mutsu

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It is well known that nicely prepared pink noise would be rather "gentle" for tweeters and super-tweeters for their burn-in and Fq response (relative SLP) measurements.

As shared in my post here, typical well-prepared flat pink noise, however, has gradual elevation of acoustic response (energy) in dB scale from high towards low frequency while typical white noise has actually flat response through 20 Hz - 20 kHz, as shown here analyzed by MusicScope 2.1.0;
View attachment 151620

I very carefully compared "cumulative pink noise averaging" and "cumulative white noise averaging" for Fq response measurements in my multichannel system as shared from here to here, and I found/confirmed the latter is better for Fq response measurement in actual room acoustics at the listening position.

The "cumulative white noise averaging" for Fq response measurements is really straightforward to perform and very simple for understanding the results, since there is no "black-box" like signal manupirations (such as psychoacoustic smoothing in REW) with softwares.

Just for reference, according to the manual of REW;
"Psychoacoustic smoothing uses 1/3 octave below 100Hz, 1/6 octave above 1 kHz and varies from 1/3 octave to 1/6 octave between 100 Hz and 1 kHz. It also applies more weighting to peaks by using a cubic mean (cube root of the average of the cubed values) to produce a plot that more closely corresponds to the perceived frequency response."
I feel that "psychoacoustic smoothing" seems to give the frequency response curve that best corresponds (matches) to our auditory sensation.

On the other hand, I also would like to establish "my own routine procedure/method" of Fq response measurements which should be reliable, reproducible as well as flexibly re-analyzable, and also should be well understandable regarding the internal processing and validity.

The measurement procedure is very simple; you may just "record" the white noise sound by Adobe Audition for ca. 1 minute using your measurement microphone at listening position, and then you would select the ca. 50 second middle area of the recorded sound (without the starting and ending portion) for spectrum analysis. This means you are automatically averaging the white noise sound over 50 second while all the SP drivers were singing all together in full range, i.e. 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

As shared/summarized in my post here, throughout my careful measurements/experiments, I confirmed and validated that this primitive "cumulative (recorded) white noise averaging method" is really powerful and reliable in terms of;

1. the method is universally applicable in the stages of digital out of crossover software (EKIO), DAC's analog out, amplifier SP out, and of course in the actual room SP sound,

2. the method is accurate, sensitive and reproducible, having little or no statistical fluctuation, because of the FFT averaging analysis on the "rich cumulative data" of the recorded sound,

3. the recorded "white noise tracks" can be re-analyzed any way, anytime, afterwards,

4. flexible mix-paste (sound mixing) can be done to virtually simulate any combination of the channels, especially in amplifiers' SP out signals before going into SP drivers,

5. if needed, the environmental "continuous room background noise" can be reduced/removed by the Adobe Audition's "noise capture - noise reduction" function,

6. if needed, suitable gain/level adjustment can be applied for "level matched comparison" of Fq response shapes between the different series of the recorded data,

7. flexible and suitable FFT size (as smoothing intensity) can be selected depending on the frequency zone of interest.

Thanks for the detailed response.

Would you be ok if I just used REW MMM but using white noise instead of pink?

I'm fairly new to making measurements, so anything I do takes a lot more time than it should (and I plan for). And given that I have extremely limited windows or opportunity to do measurements, I'm finding myself not able to do everything I wanted to in the allotted time.
 
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Mutsu

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In color matching with my adjacent YAMAHA NS-1000 (not NS-1000M), I would prefer Sointuva of Natural Wood finish (or black finish if available) sitting on the sub-woofers YAMAHA YST-SW1000, in case if I would decide to purchase Sointuva...
View attachment 151625

Nice - black or some sort of dark wood would look great!
 
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Mutsu

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I feel that "psychoacoustic smoothing" seems to give the frequency response curve that best corresponds (matches) to our auditory sensation.

I forgot to mention that I completely agree with this. I don't really hear the bumps and troughs in the lower frequencies to the extent shown with something like 1/6th smoothing. Psychoacoustic smoothing far more closely matches what I hear in the low end.
 

restorer-john

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@Mutsu Be very careful with white noise and your new speakers. It contains an equal intensity at different frequencies. A constant power spectral density. High levels could easily damage your tweeters.

Pink noise (1/f) contains equal power per octave (doubling of frequency) and is much safer.

If you fry your tweeters with white noise, I highly doubt you'd have a successful warranty claim.
 

dualazmak

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Thanks for the detailed response.

Would you be ok if I just used REW MMM but using white noise instead of pink?

I'm fairly new to making measurements, so anything I do takes a lot more time than it should (and I plan for). And given that I have extremely limited windows or opportunity to do measurements, I'm finding myself not able to do everything I wanted to in the allotted time.

Edited!!

Thank you so much for your kind consideration.

I do not need, I do not reccomend you, using "white noise" in your MMM challeange. Actually I have no interest on MMM challenge to your Sointuva which would be possiblly harmful to them.

I would highly appreciate if I could see just in room Fq response shapes (L, R, L+R) over 20 Hz to 20 kHz in usual music listening sound volume at your listening position.
 
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dualazmak

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@Mutsu Be very careful with white noise and your new speakers. It contains an equal intensity at different frequencies. A constant power spectral density. High levels could easily damage your tweeters.

Pink noise (1/f) contains equal power per octave (doubling of frequency) and is much safer.

If you fry your tweeters with white noise, I highly doubt you'd have a successful warranty claim.

Yes, I fully agree. I also never apply large volume (very loud) white noise to SPs for Fq measurements, and I limit the period of white noise play in less than 60 sec.
 
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Mutsu

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@Mutsu Be very careful with white noise and your new speakers. It contains an equal intensity at different frequencies. A constant power spectral density. High levels could easily damage your tweeters.

Pink noise (1/f) contains equal power per octave (doubling of frequency) and is much safer.

If you fry your tweeters with white noise, I highly doubt you'd have a successful warranty claim.

Thanks for the heads up. If I do attempt this I'd be careful with volumes and also start with pink noise.
 
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Mutsu

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Thank you so much for your kind consideration, it should be just fine for me.

I'll give it a try when I get chance with pink noise and white noise, being wary of volumes for the white noise. It may not be for a week or 2 that I'm able to do this.
 

dualazmak

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I'll give it a try when I get chance with pink noise and white noise, being wary of volumes for the white noise. It may not be for a week or 2 that I'm able to do this.

Thank you so much, I am not in a hurry. You would please move forward very carefully and steadily!
 
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March Audio wanted to let me know that measuring using white noise won't be an issue if using SPL at the sensitivity of the speaker. It's "just more unpleasant to listen to".

The overall speaker sensitivity is about 85dB/2.83v/m. If you play white noise at this SPL, which is adequate for the test the power being applied to the speaker being 4 ohms is 2 watts. The tweeter is padded down by 12dB so the power being applied to it is only 0.125 watts. It will not break.

Based on what he said I have no problem running the test when I get a chance.
 
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Quick question regarding doing the MMM.

Should I do this for the L and R speakers independently, then another measurement of them both? Or with this method should I just do both?
 

ctrl

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Quick question regarding doing the MMM.
Should I do this for the L and R speakers independently, then another measurement of them both? Or with this method should I just do both?
L and R speakers independently. This gives you more options when analyzing the data.
 
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So I had a go at the MMM in a really small window of opportunity today and wasn't able to configure it correctly for some reason, the results just didn't make any sense whatsoever and I just didn't have the time to troubleshoot.

Sorry guys, but looks like I'm not going to be able to do any more measurements for the foreseeable future as it really emotionally distresses my dog like nothing I've seen before (last time it took him 2 days to become his normal self, and now he's back to how he was the first time). And it's extremely rare that I'm home without my dog.

Sound wise I'm happy already - it would be nice to see if there is anything I can EQ to improve things, and my first measurement is probably enough for what I personally need. But I'll probably just have to try an EQ curve based on the first result and blind test it with and without to see which I prefer.

Whenever I do get some time without the dog at home then I'll give this whole thing a try again - but probably by that point there will be some proper reviews of the speaker out there :)
 
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