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Infinity Reference 253 Review (speaker)

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amirm

amirm

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On the brighter side, amir seems to have fixed the klippel isaue with multiple bass drivers and multiple ports.
Yeh, I threw every tweak at it that I could.
 
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amirm

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Maybe a silly question, but I wonder if it would be of any interest (or value) to re-run the the Klippel tests after you've applied EQ?
It is not easy to replicate the EQ that way.
 

Beave

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@amirm Does the tweeter and its 'bowtie' appear normal, aligned properly, etc? Can you take a close-up photo and post it here?
 

ROOSKIE

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Interestingly the nearfield measurement does not seem to show that peak. In fact it is quite smooth.
I guess that tweeter is not padded down at all (never would be designed that way on purpose)and is out of phase with the mid. That would explain both the dip before crossover and the insane peak.
In other words bad crossover. That would also explain the shutdown. Though I would think the issues would have been shutting down the testing amps as well and showing in the impedance plots.


1606539737581.png
 
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amirm

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@amirm Does the tweeter and its 'bowtie' appear normal, aligned properly, etc? Can you take a close-up photo and post it here?
Here you go:
Infinity Reference 253 Review zoomed.jpg
 

Beave

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Looks ok to me, but maybe people who own these speakers can comment on the bowtie & ring and how close to the tweeter it should be.

Looking at the impedance plots vs the impedance plots posted for the R263, I don't see anything that looks wrong or suspicious there. The impedance magnitude and phase from Amir's speaker and for the R263 match pretty well at the mid-to-tweeter crossover and above (in the tweeter range).
 

valerianf

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Regarding the amp that goes into protection, could it be a capacitor from the crossover that starts leaking when voltage goes up?
Regarding the 4 khz peak could it be the (plastic?) diffuser that start self resonate in front of the tweeter?

Remembering the vintage Infinity speakers it is very sad to see a so bad behavior.
A lot of famous old brands are going down in quality as they do not make any more money.
Cabasse has been bought by a cable manufacturer and at one moment B&W was own by a wifi blackbox manufacturer!
Thank you Amir to show us the real performance of the products.
 

Guddu

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Thank you Amir for this timely review, I ordered my second pair of R162 yesterday and today plan was to order R253 and cancel R162 but now I won’t!!!
 

lloyd84

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When things go wrong, a sample size of of One makes it hard to figure out what’s going on.

Whether it's broken by design or not is irrelevant. The point of Amir's testing is to expose the performance of a product - and he's done just that. Given that none of us have access to the kind of testing equipment that he does, we are reliant on products matching their claims. Or perhaps you wouldn't mind taking a chance on a pair of these? Maybe you'll get a pair that sounds nice, maybe you'll get a pair that puts an insanely powerful amplifier into shutdown.
 

Doodski

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Regarding the amp that goes into protection, could it be a capacitor from the crossover that starts leaking when voltage goes up?
In my experience I've replaced many woofers that cause shorting but it could be the crossover. I've never had a bad crossover that was not fried and smoky. But stuff happens for sure. I serviced Energy and KEF for some years in warranty and handled a lot of blown, baked and mechanically broken speakers.
 

March Audio

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Conclusions
The Infinity Reference 253 is one hell of a package. You couldn't build one quarter of it for what they are selling it for right now. If it performed to Harman spin data, it would have been a killer, giving you "almost Revel sound" but at far lower cost. This was not meant to be though with that sharply rising highs. Distortion is livable for sure but definitely not Revel like there. Finally, sending my amplifier into protection -- while needing more investigation -- does not make for a good experience for this reviewer.

As is, I can't recommend the Infinity R253. Company needs to provide an answer why retail units are not matching their measurements. Or show where my measurements are wrong. On the other hand, if you can EQ these, then you could have a very nice speaker that provides very good performance.

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Whilst I would be surprised if this sent your amp into protection, so its unlikely IMO as a cause, when the phase angle is around -45 deg its going to double the power dissipation in the amp. So it will be seeing more like an equivalent 2.5 to 3 ohm load between 100Hz to 150hz

1606544164151.png
 

March Audio

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Whether it's broken by design or not is irrelevant. The point of Amir's testing is to expose the performance of a product - and he's done just that. Given that none of us have access to the kind of testing equipment that he does, we are reliant on products matching their claims. Or perhaps you wouldn't mind taking a chance on a pair of these? Maybe you'll get a pair that sounds nice, maybe you'll get a pair that puts an insanely powerful amplifier into shutdown.
Well I think you need to put this into context. *ALL* electronic products have a potential for and will have failures. There appears an issue here. Whether its an uncontrolled design/component change or failure I would hope that the level of HF deviation would be readily noticeable to anyone getting hold of a pair.
 

Cahudson42

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@amirm

After shutdown, did you give the R253 a 'sniff test' at a port?

Perhaps the xo is behind the terminal strip - which looks like it can easily be unscrewed to allow observation?

Sure would be easier for Harmon to ship you a new xo if that's the problem - rather than shipping the 40lb (?) Speaker back and forth..
 
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McFly

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Yeah there’s definitely a problem in the crossover for the tweeter here. That would be a painful speaker to live with.
 

YSC

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despite the crazy treble spike, I kind of wonders why the tower speakers usually have a mid-low bass shelf compared to good studio monitors?? I always have a perception that the towers with multiple woofer should have more bass extension?
 

ROOSKIE

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But if there's definitely a problem in the crossover, why does the impedance measurement look normal (and consistent with the impedance for the R263)?
My guess is the impedance sweep is at a low voltage.
It is weird.
As I said earlier the Tweeter is measuring flat in the individual driver measurement.
It is however 8-10db to hot and summing oddly as well. No other model in the line measures like this. The Rc263,R162 and R263 all measure quite well with no super hot tweet - have assume defective on this.
Additionally here is the R152 according to average Joe.
That's 4 speakers without this crazy trebble peak.
http://averagejoeaudiophile.blogspot.com/2015/12/infinity-reference-r152-infinitys-high.html?m=1
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