Infinity Reference 253 Review (speaker)

[daftcombo]

T

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.


View attachment 96263

That behaviour (flat treble measured close but peak at 12 kHz mid-field, dip at crossover) reminds me a lot of the Epos K3. As a matter of fact, the crossover was bad: the tweeter rolled off with a -6db filter at 3 kHz, and there was no low-pass for the mid. Phase was strange.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

Right, but seems for say genelec GLM they are targeting for a neutral flat response on listening position? So say if one mix in this condition will likely result in a bass heavy and treble light sounding track in our sloping down response?

For near field it should be near flat on listening position, because the room response has minimal influence. For far field, in-room should be sloping down at the listening position.
Good loudspeakers have both flat on-axis anechoic frequency response (near flat when measured in the near-field) and, in the same time, sloped in-room response.

 

[anmpr1]

The problem with warranty work on inexpensive products is the return shipping. Often that can eat up any savings you get from the original sale price. Harman offers 'free returns' (i.e., return shipping label) for the first 30 days. After that it's an out of pocket expense, unless you can convince the call center to give you a break.

 

[A Surfer]

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.

Nice. I have actually owned two pairs of the Energy C5, one pair was made in Canada (Maple finish) and the other (Black finish) was made in China. I sold the black pair to my brother and they are still an amazing speaker I have to say. I know there were a few Veritas versions that were also considered exceptional and if I could get my hands on a pair I think I would. Those C5s I tell you, incredible value for the money. I purchased them new in I think 2005/6 on clearance for $599 and they have been a pleasure since and still going strong.

 

[Jmudrick]

My R263 purchased a few months ago has issues 100-200hz (exactly as shown in the Butterworth measures) but no treble peaking at all.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Where can I get this for $160?

@Dennis Murphy

crossover or tweeter mod and bam!

Winner winner chicken dinner...

Incredible value. Yes, maybe a simple X-over mod would flatten out that treble.

 

[YSC]

For near field it should be near flat on listening position, because the room response has minimal influence. For far field, in-room should be sloping down at the listening position.
Good loudspeakers have both flat on-axis anechoic frequency response (near flat when measured in the near-field) and, in the same time, sloped in-room response.

IC, I just feel a bit weired, more weired is when I test my speaker setup with pink noise at near field really close to the wall it shows a flat plateau frin 50hz-~500hz, then a 4db lower almost flat platform >500 hz and I feel better than tilting the bass from 300 hz down 4db.

Just wondering in nearfield listening enjoyment which will be better

 

[Bear123]

The sale pricing on this stuff was ridiculous. Someone could have picked up a pair of bookshelves and the excellent 3 way center for under $300 shipped.

 

[Steve Dallas]

The sale pricing on this stuff was ridiculous. Someone could have picked up a pair of bookshelves and the excellent 3 way center for under $300 shipped.

JBL passives are ~60% off as well:

https://www.harmanaudio.com/home-au...ed&prefv3=false&prefn4=isSupport&prefv4=false

 

[ROOSKIE]

I guess they aren’t selling, the timer now says it ends in 46.5hr (Monday 3am EST).
The RS152 bipole surrounds are also somehow back to being available (back ordered) with 682 pairs.

Naw, they are selling big time.
Harman does this all the time with sales.
These have been the Black Friday and Cyber Monday and other holiday sales items for the last couple years along with the JBL Studio line and some other items.

Maybe the sale is for all the speakers fitted with a dodgy tweeter?
Cheaper than scrapping them all.

Highly doubt it. This about the 20th time these have been on sale like this in the USA over the past 3 years or so. None of mine measure poorly (in fact just the opposite) and several others folks have measured various models & multiple copies without issue.
There are forum threads littered around reguarding these speake

T

That behaviour (flat treble measured close but peak at 12 kHz mid-field, dip at crossover) reminds me a lot of the Epos K3. As a matter of fact, the crossover was bad: the tweeter rolled off with a -6db filter at 3 kHz, and there was no low-pass for the mid. Phase was strange.

Yah, but I mean bad as in broken, not bad as in badly designed.

The sale pricing on this stuff was ridiculous. Someone could have picked up a pair of bookshelves and the excellent 3 way center for under $300 shipped.

It is the benefit of true factory direct.
You have a huge company actually passing factory direct pricing to the customer. Take an $800 retail speaker, usually in SPEAKERS past a couple hundred bucks the the typical retail mark-up is 50-70% (yes that is correct, but lets use 50% for ease)
So on a $800 retail the manufacturer sells to vendor for say $400. When there is a sale for that speaker at $600 then the vendor drops the cost to retail to say $300. If they sold to you directly for $300 they would get the same $. This is what is happening here but perhaps even more generous as Harman obviously hopes you will buy than one speaker for this price, thus a package deal. Many will buy a whole lot of stuff at these prices and Harman does just fine.
I used to work in a Audio Shop. This is why the speakers are often discounted heavily and electronics no so much. At the place I worked most speakers were actually 60% marked up but electronics sometime were not. In fact many affordable electronics were sold close to cost.

 

[Bear123]

JBL passives are ~60% off as well:

https://www.harmanaudio.com/home-au...ed&prefv3=false&prefn4=isSupport&prefv4=false

JBL 590 for $450, the 580 is an even better deal at $296. Crazy.

 

[ROOSKIE]

My R263 purchased a few months ago has issues 100-200hz (exactly as shown in the Butterworth measures) but no treble peaking at all.

You are likely experiencing in-room effects.
Completely impossible to measure the speaker's ancheotic response in your room at those frequencies.
Many, many rooms/set ups, have large effects around 100-200 hrz due to the SBIR effects from side walls, floor and front wall all often deeply affecting that region. Even inches matter in one direction or another in terms of how the effects play out.
I recommend studying up on SBIR and playing with placement, however you can really never change the floor & ceiling to driver distance on a floor-stander and so those effects are best dealt with by making sure the distance to side walls and front wall and driver centers is not equal as effects are additive. Multiple woofers helps in a floor-stander and so does adding in subwoofers that emanate from closer to the floor and different distance from the boundaries to spead the effects and fill in dips.

Anyway bellow about 150-400hrz depending on room size (usually about 200) the room and speaker have become one and room effects are very, very, very influential on the sound. The influence of the room above this frequency is much less pronounced.

This screenshot shows what Brent Butterworth went through to get fairly accurate measurements of just the speaker.

He also summed up the R263 (the brother, larger foorstander)speaker as =
*I really don't want folks to pass up these deals due to this test here, I think it is defective and as long as that is the case I find the Infinity R series at these prices are absurdly, silly good. I have tried and own many speakers. Sometimes defects happen. The speakers are ultimately man made and we sometimes make a lemon. I have gotten defective gear that much more expensive than these. Bear in mind this review is a few years old, but never the less Brent had been working in Audio reviews for years by then and still does. Very measurement based tester and used Revel for his reference set.
https://hometheaterreview.com/wp-content/uploads/mt4-popups/2014/07/infinitys-12946.php

 

[Jmudrick]

You are likely experiencing in-room effects.
Completely impossible to measure the speaker's ancheotic response in your room at those frequencies.
Many, many rooms/set ups, have large effects around 100-200 hrz due to the SBIR effects from side walls, floor and front wall all often deeply affecting that region. Even inches matter in one direction or another in terms of how the effects play out.
I recommend studying up on SBIR and playing with placement, however you can really never change the floor & ceiling to driver distance on a floor-stander and so those effects are best dealt with by making sure the distance to side walls and front wall and driver centers is not equal as effects are additive. Multiple woofers helps in a floor-stander and so does adding in subwoofers that emanate from closer to the floor and different distance from the boundaries to spead the effects and fill in dips.

Anyway bellow about 150-400hrz depending on room size (usually about 200) the room and speaker have become one and room effects are very, very, very influential on the sound. The influence of the room above this frequency is much less pronounced.

This screenshot shows what Brent Butterworth went through to get fairly accurate measurements of just the speaker.
View attachment 96325

He also summed up the R263 (the brother, larger foorstander)speaker as =
*I really don't want folks to pass up these deals due to this test here, I think it is defective and as long as that is the case I find the Infinity R series at these prices are absurdly, silly good. I have tried and own many speakers. Sometimes defects happen. The speakers are ultimately man made and we sometimes make a lemon. I have gotten defective gear that much more expensive than these. Bear in mind this review is a few years old, but never the less Brent had been working in Audio reviews for years by then and still does. Very measurement based tester and used Revel for his reference set.
https://hometheaterreview.com/wp-content/uploads/mt4-popups/2014/07/infinitys-12946.php
View attachment 96326

I'm sure you are right about room dimensions in the 100-200 range. I've played with speaker placement a bit and closer to the wall helps somewhat though the dip remains. With room correction I really can't have any complaints .

 

[AudioSceptic]

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.

Would anything but a dead short do that?

 

[MZKM]

I'm sure you are right about room dimensions in the 100-200 range. I've played with speaker placement a bit and closer to the wall helps somewhat though the dip remains. With room correction I really can't have any complaints .

You will always have a dip between 100Hz-200Hz when placing a speaker in front of a wall. It's called Speaker Boundary Interference Response (SBIR).

Unless you have a measurement mic, use a sine sweep generator website (or REW), and manually sweep until you find the center frequency of the dip.

Get out a tape measure and measure the distance from the speaker's baffle to the front wall
Do: 3375 / inches or 858 / centimeters
The resulting quotient should be the cancellation frequency.

 

[Worth Davis]

Weird, I have the rc263 and they measure totally fine in my room, slight sloping downwards with no treble boots like this. They are pretty new and a good value, replaced all my HT with them and the dipole surrounds. I have 3 and they all measure the same in Dirac and audyssey, currently using them off a denon so audyssey applied now as well to the whole room. Measurement comments are pre audyssey.

 

[Worth Davis]

 

[ROOSKIE]

View attachment 96338

Thanks for sharing.
Say looks like you EQ'd for a fairly flat in-room.
Have you tried other curves. Took me awhile but I deff prefer a curve similar to a Harman target.
Mine is
+2 or 2.5db per octave from 150 down to 40hrz.
-0.9db octave from 200 hrz-20k with a slight roll off above 16k on some models of speaker.

Also looks like you have that Audyssy "BBC" dip... just making sure you wanted that there.
Anyway not trying to second guess you just chatting this curve up.

I also have the RC263's as a stereo pair and measure fantastically in my space. My measurements are on a different computer. I need to get all that stuff over to my internet laptop. So can share them next time rather than just talk.

 

[Worth Davis]

Oh that’s the lame audyssey curve default, I use a curve like yours on my linkwitz 521 with Dirac. I plan on changing my projection screen so I didn’t put any effort into the infinity, denon, audyssey side of my room.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Oh that’s the lame audyssey curve default, I use a curve like yours on my linkwitz 521 with Dirac. I plan on changing my projection screen so I didn’t put any effort into the infinity, denon, audyssey side of my room.

I'm getting ready to make my 1st open baffle design.
Those are really cool speakers you have.