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NHT C3 measurements by SoundStage/NRC

txbdan

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Fantastic! You have the P3s and C1s as well, been wanting to see how they measure. Ok, will stop going off-topic now. Thanks again!

Yep. I returned the P3s, but i still have the C1s because i missed their return window. Wups. Anyone want to buy them? :)
 

Chromatischism

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While the thought didn’t occur to me at the time, given the voiced in leanness and wide even dispersion I bet C3 is a really good candidate for a Lyngdorf style setup: up against the wall to wall to maximize boundary reinforcement, with room correction to clean up the upper bass.
This is a good recommendation for most people with sealed or passive radiator speakers, and even some ported speakers. Don't just blindly follow every "audiophile" recommendation to pull them out into the room. You're avoiding boominess but you're also creating a lot of SBIR. Don't be afraid to push them back closer to the front wall. You will eliminate SBIR and help the speakers punch harder and cleaner - room EQ required to reduce boominess.

Example:

Buchardt S400 near wall and EQ.png


You will be left with a full-sounding speaker with tight, accurate bass, devoid of major room-induced problems. I still have a very narrow cancellation of 100 Hz, but it is only audible between 98-102 Hz so it has limited impact on the sound.

Try it on the C3's ;)

P.S. – I tend to get the best results when I correct to 300 Hz then let the speaker's natural response occur above that.
 
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whazzup

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Yep. I returned the P3s, but i still have the C1s because i missed their return window. Wups. Anyone want to buy them? :)

Probably not, as we're probably on opposite ends of the pacific pond. Great that you settled on a C3 in your thread!
Though did you do an in room measurement of the C1? Skipped chunks of the thread, haha.... Where does the roll off start roughly?
 

txbdan

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This is a good recommendation for most people with sealed or passive radiator speakers, and even some ported speakers. Don't just blindly follow every "audiophile" recommendation to pull them out into the room. You're avoiding boominess but you're also creating a lot of SBIR. Don't be afraid to push them back closer to the front wall. You will eliminate SBIR and help the speakers punch harder and cleaner - room EQ required to reduce boominess.

Example:

View attachment 70749

You will be left with a full-sounding speaker with tight, accurate bass, devoid of major room-induced problems. I still have a very narrow cancellation of 100 Hz, but it is only audible between 98-102 Hz so it has limited impact on the sound.

Try it on the C3's ;)

P.S. – I tend to get the best results when I correct to 300 Hz then let the speaker's natural response occur above that.

Because my office is rather small (12x12x8.5ft), i need to place speakers fairly close to the front wall. When i compared several sets of bookshelves, i played with rear-ported speakers from 2-8" from the wall and further the better. With the sealed C1s and C3s, i couldn't tell much difference. The C1s and C3s certainly sounded much more clear and accurate in the midbass. This is probably due to sealed vs ported design, but also in part to their sensitivities to wall distance in that relatively close position. Currently i have the C3s only a couple inches from the wall and they sound great.

Fwiw, i also compared all the speakers down in my big basement with them all 2-3ft from the front wall to give the ported speakers a proper chance. Based on this sample set at least, i really prefer sealed speakers.
 

txbdan

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Probably not, as we're probably on opposite ends of the pacific pond. Great that you settled on a C3 in your thread!
Though did you do an in room measurement of the C1? Skipped chunks of the thread, haha.... Where does the roll off start roughly?

I think i did, but lost track of the data. I can do a comparison (in room C1 vs C3) next weekend. My room is a mess acoustically, but maybe a direct comparison would be informative.
 

whazzup

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I think i did, but lost track of the data. I can do a comparison (in room C1 vs C3) next weekend. My room is a mess acoustically, but maybe a direct comparison would be informative.

That will be great~
No worries, my room's not winning any awards either. :D
 

spacevector

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I have a pair of NHT Classic 3 speakers being used in nearfield in my office. Incredible neutral speakers IMO. I prefer these against the JBL Studio 530 in the same room.

@amirm, do you have the NHT C3 or C4 in for review? If not, do you mind if I drop them a note asking for review sample(s) on your behalf?
 

ehabheikal

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I am not as well versed in measurements as you guys, does this speaker measure close to the revel m106 reviewed here or is that still a lot better?
 

KaiserSoze

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Keep in mind the NHT speakers are sealed so if used without a sub, the Revels would definitely sound better.

Really? Acoustic suspension speakers necessarily sound worse than ported speakers? I doubt that the people at NHT would agree with that. They might say it's subjective, and they might point out that an octave or so below the port tuning frequency, the sound with a ported speaker is much more distorted than with an acoustic suspension speaker at the same low frequency.
 

Chromatischism

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Really? Acoustic suspension speakers necessarily sound worse than ported speakers? I doubt that the people at NHT would agree with that. They might say it's subjective, and they might point out that an octave or so below the port tuning frequency, the sound with a ported speaker is much more distorted than with an acoustic suspension speaker at the same low frequency.
A large portion of subjective sound preference comes from bass. The Revels have more bass; therefore more people will prefer them. That's really all I was speaking to.

I don't really understand your point about output an octave below the tuning frequency. That would necessarily be 24 decibels down and not very important. That assumes you aren't trying to push the LFE track through them.
 
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KaiserSoze

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A large portion of subjective sound preference comes from bass. The Revels have more bass; therefore more people will prefer them. That's really all I was speaking to.

I don't really understand your point about output an octave below the tuning frequency. That would necessarily be 24 decibels down and not very important.

Certainly it is true that subjective preference depends greatly on the perceived amount of bass. However the notion of "more bass" is not sufficiently well-defined to be useful in an objective sense, beyond subjective perceptions. As you certainly know, the bass rolloff in a sealed speaker is less steep than in a ported speaker. With ported speakers, the mechanism by which the -3 dB point moves lower in frequency is that the "knee" of the rolloff becomes sharper when the Q of the rolloff is increased.

You wrote, "I don't really understand your point about output an octave below the tuning frequency. That would necessarily be 24 decibels down and not very important." After reading this several times, my sense is that it is not sufficiently precise to warrant serious consideration. I will however say that on a great many occasions I have heard extremely high levels of distortion from ported speakers, subwoofers especially, the likes of which I have never heard from any acoustic suspension speaker. While it is difficult be entirely certain that the frequencies in question (the fundamental frequencies) are below the port tuning frequency, I don't think there is sufficient good reason to assume that all of it was driven by fundamental frequencies at or above the port tuning frequency.

The mechanisms are reasonably well understood. In the vicinity of the port tuning frequency, power compression occurs in connection with the fact that the resistance to air flow in the port increases as the square of velocity. This is typically a strong contributing source of distortion, roughly par with distortion caused by the trailing end of the coil leaving the gap at high excursion. Below the port tuning frequency, driver excursion is barely controlled. Theoretical output is derived in consideration of the fact that the output of the driver and the port are increasingly out of phase as frequency decreases further below the port tuning frequency. This theoretically derived output is far removed from a theoretical estimate of the level of distortion generated with fundamental frequencies below the port tuning frequency.

All that said, I do not think your express intent was to say that ported speakers are "better" in an objective sense. Your intent was perfectly within reason. People very often say and write things that seem perfectly innocuous, in web forums especially, but without giving a lot thought to how what they write will influence how other people think. You wrote something that seemed perfectly innocuous and reasonable, but it encourages other people to adopt the dogmatic belief that ported speakers sound better than acoustic suspension speakers, in an absolute, objective way.
 

Chromatischism

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Certainly it is true that subjective preference depends greatly on the perceived amount of bass. However the notion of "more bass" is not sufficiently well-defined to be useful in an objective sense, beyond subjective perceptions. As you certainly know, the bass rolloff in a sealed speaker is less steep than in a ported speaker. With ported speakers, the mechanism by which the -3 dB point moves lower in frequency is that the "knee" of the rolloff becomes sharper when the Q of the rolloff is increased.

You wrote, "I don't really understand your point about output an octave below the tuning frequency. That would necessarily be 24 decibels down and not very important." After reading this several times, my sense is that it is not sufficiently precise to warrant serious consideration. I will however say that on a great many occasions I have heard extremely high levels of distortion from ported speakers, subwoofers especially, the likes of which I have never heard from any acoustic suspension speaker. While it is difficult be entirely certain that the frequencies in question (the fundamental frequencies) are below the port tuning frequency, I don't think there is sufficient good reason to assume that all of it was driven by fundamental frequencies at or above the port tuning frequency.

The mechanisms are reasonably well understood. In the vicinity of the port tuning frequency, power compression occurs in connection with the fact that the resistance to air flow in the port increases as the square of velocity. This is typically a strong contributing source of distortion, roughly par with distortion caused by the trailing end of the coil leaving the gap at high excursion. Below the port tuning frequency, driver excursion is barely controlled. Theoretical output is derived in consideration of the fact that the output of the driver and the port are increasingly out of phase as frequency decreases further below the port tuning frequency. This theoretically derived output is far removed from a theoretical estimate of the level of distortion generated with fundamental frequencies below the port tuning frequency.

All that said, I do not think your express intent was to say that ported speakers are "better" in an objective sense. Your intent was perfectly within reason. People very often say and write things that seem perfectly innocuous, in web forums especially, but without giving a lot thought to how what they write will influence how other people think. You wrote something that seemed perfectly innocuous and reasonable, but it encourages other people to adopt the dogmatic belief that ported speakers sound better than acoustic suspension speakers, in an absolute, objective way.
That is certainly not what I meant. My reply was in the context of this specific example. Of course if you go finding other speakers to compare, the variables change.

With that said, I did want to point out bass preference as a major contributing factor to why I believe most people would prefer, between these two speakers, the vented design.
 

ElNino

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With that said, I did want to point out bass preference as a major contributing factor to why I believe most people would prefer, between these two speakers, the vented design.

I think it would be an interesting thread topic to discuss preferences for sealed vs. ported designs. One thing I've noticed on this forum is that most of the Revel M105 owners (myself included) prefer the speaker with the port bungs in (i.e., converted to basically a sealed alignment). This would seem to suggest that at least in some cases bass distortion is more important than bass extension, but there are a lot of confounding variables, including how a speaker excites room modes.
 

Chromatischism

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I think it would be an interesting thread topic to discuss preferences for sealed vs. ported designs. One thing I've noticed on this forum is that most of the Revel M105 owners (myself included) prefer the speaker with the port bungs in (i.e., converted to basically a sealed alignment). This would seem to suggest that at least in some cases bass distortion is more important than bass extension, but there are a lot of confounding variables, including how a speaker excites room modes.
That is interesting. Could a poll be conducted to collect that data from owners?
 
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