The other thing is Barefoot could just be saying @direstraitsfan98 pair is defective to cover their asses for how much of a PR nightmare these measurements could give them.
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Barefoot Footprint 01 Review (Studio Monitor)
- Thread starter amirm
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I hope it's the out of spec ones, better still if your new pair and the pair arriving Amirm later both matches, maybe it's just like the Neumann KN120
I believe so
I would imagine there are many fans too deeply-invested, both emotionally/psychologically and financially to care tbh
I hope it's the out of spec ones, better still if your new pair and the pair arriving Amirm later both matches, maybe it's just like the Neumann KH120 or KH80 or the Kali IN-6 incident, defective products or damaged during shipping occurred from time to time, which in those previous cases, another few samples from both the manufacturer and other members are welcomed to verify if the sent for review one by the manufacturer are cherry picked golden sample. And that would make the case if there is QC issue or dishonest.
P.S. if Barefoot did respond in email with all those reasoning or explainations, at least it means themselves don't think the performance of this is ok, so....
Yeah for sure they always beam pretty heavily from what I've seen. My question is whether that beaming is universally/commonly heard as a negative. When you have a woofer beaming and crossover too high, you hear the discontinuity between the drivers. There's a dip, and then there's a rise, and that sounds off.
But pretty much all tweeters beam to some degree, usually after 6-8kHz. So I'm not having more beaming is necessarily a bad thing when you consider that simply listening in a room with more absorptive materials will also absorb many of the same frequencies.
You've clearly heard that beaming as a 'dullness' which is interesting. That's actually how I often feel about deep waveguide-y speakers, but for me I suspect it is due to the narrowing in the upper mids and presence regions. So probably a different kind of dullness.
All that being said, I think maybe more companies could use shallow waveguides, which you don't see as often as the bigger ones. I suppose that's what revel does, and that's what the JBL L82 has going for it.
Probably true, but it would also definitely turn some people off. I remember back during the days of the KH80 debacle (ah, the golden ages of ASR measurement drama), when some members were swearing off or chastising Newman for exaggerating specs and performance. Of course, that turned out to have a very reasonable explanation that no one guessed.
So if we're lucky, this speaker has a very reasonable explanation too, although at this point it seems exceedingly unlikely given how many of the NFS' quirks have been figured out. Would be nice to be wrong though!
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A loudspeaker with good design beams continuously from lower mids which shows in a linearly decreasing angle or power response, such sudden changes of the slope above never sound as right to me.
True, that's indeed a different dullness.
Yes, a good waveguide design often even reduces the directivity on the last octave, making it more continuous.
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Actually, there is a possibility that they will add some filtering for MF-HF channel and call this V2.0 to avoid any bad talks even if this will be less "revealing" than before.
When you have DSP controlled crossovers and filtration, it's much easier to make changes.
Actually, I don't know why didn't they added 1 or 2 more MEME profiles for different monitor sound, like "relaxed arranging" and "bleeding ears detail retreival" ...
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It would be great of them to send another unit in for test if they really believe that to be the case.
Those, I think, would be interesting. They're like 2.5 ways with subs (I think), but they're designed to be mounted vertically and are sort of a quasi-d'appolito design. The side woofers are crossed over much lower too, around 100hz instead of 250 so the directivity flare at that cross should be much better controlled. But, still no waveguide (though their indicated directivity from their graphs, as suspect as they are, appears to be better). Cabinet volume is much much larger - nearly double that of the FP01s - so presumably bass distortion should be lower, as they don't extend substantially lower (F3 is slightly lower, but linear cutoff is identical).
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are the MM26 better then the MM27? Also the way you’re supposed to mount them always confused me, the footers I’ve always seen on the side mounted MM26, are those the same handles you can buy for the MM12? And lastly, could the MM26 be placed vertically?
I've never heard the 26s in person. In theory, yes, and you'll have better directivity behavior between the 2.5" mid and the tweeter sans waveguide than a 5.25" midwoofer and a 1" tweeter. But in practice... I have no idea. They look like a MM27 with a 2.5" midrange tacked on, but that's just from looks. Their graphs, which we have to take with a grain of salt, show that oddly enough the MM27 seems to behave itself better off-axis than the 26.
No idea. The MM27s they say you can mount either way but I'd always go vertical so the drivers are vertically aligned. The 26s again you can mount either way but I'd go horizontal because of the midrange/tweeter arrangement.
Sure, but you run into the problem of horizontal mid/tweeter arrangements.
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I'd really like to see the 4 way Barefoot measured. I still think they have potential.
Reading back through this review again, I think these actually did pretty good. They did really well in the nearfield subjective listen(didn't even need EQ), and the measurements are really fairly good. The Olive score of 6.0, for example, is better than all the Revel speakers measured except for the F328Be, F228Be, and F208. It even beats the equally priced Revel F126Be, and beats the slightly more expensive 708p by an entire point.
Much of that greatness comes from the fantastic extension, so if you've got subs, you can certainly do better. But, if you're looking for a good full range near field monitor, I think these might still offer great value.
The problem here is not bad measurements, but rather that the measurements are suspiciously different from those that the manufacturer provides.
Reading back through this review again, I think these actually did pretty good. They did really well in the nearfield subjective listen(didn't even need EQ), and the measurements are really fairly good. The Olive score of 6.0, for example, is better than all the Revel speakers measured except for the F328Be, F228Be, and F208. It even beats the equally priced Revel F126Be, and beats the slightly more expensive 708p by an entire point.
Much of that greatness comes from the fantastic extension, so if you've got subs, you can certainly do better. But, if you're looking for a good full range near field monitor, I think these might still offer great value.
The problem here is not bad measurements, but rather that the measurements are suspiciously different from those that the manufacturer provides.
Yeah the extension is wild. Probably my favorite part about them. You truly don't need a sub unless you want 20hz rumblies. But in the end having about 20 degrees L-R in the top end was just... Not great for me.
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Just a quick note that I had my call with Barefoot folks. It was extremely friendly and constructive. It is my policy to not disclose my dealings with manufacturers until we get to some conclusion. So for now, please forgive me for not sharing more.
Yeah. There is no doubt that these speakers do some things well, and there is a different take on things that matter. I don’t think any speaker does everything perfectly, all designs seem to pick different trade-offs and designers have different ideas about what matters more. The Footprints put a lot of emphasis on cabinet build which I think the competition is a bit lax on. That is a big tick for me. Similarly going for a sealed bass with dual drivers is another tick from me. These are just my personal prejudices and reflect how I would design something like these. But I’m no professional speaker designer. If tasked with designing a speaker for this use case I would probably end up with a design that isn’t wildly different. Where I think Barefoot missed a trick is going for a waveguide on the tweeter. I don’t know how old the design is, it is using drivers that have been on the market for a very long time, so perhaps it is ready for a refresh.
Use of a passive crossover on the mid/tweeter is not a huge issue either. Component values are not big and it is usually easy to create a satisfactory result. It isn’t as if the Salon-2 is not filled with passive crossover components. Maybe use of a full DSP three way could have improved things, but it would not be the first place I spent more BOM. Choice of midrange once a waveguide was added to the tweeter would be an interesting question. This is really hard. There isn’t a lot of choice. The KH-310 gets away with the Tymphany dome because its bass driver is on the front baffle. Not a choice for the Footprint. You can go for very high end mid-range drivers from Scan-Speak or say Visaton. But these would blow the BOM right out. So the Dayton is a good choice at less money than you would expect for the performance. Two way with waveguide? Very hard to integrate a larger bass driver, especially if you are limited to off the shelf drivers. And the driver needs to be on the front baffle again. And so it goes.
Overall there is no one right answer and the Footprints seem to be a competent design addressing one particular take on the balance of important qualities and challenges.
ETA - will be very interesting to see how things go with Barefoot.
Use of a passive crossover on the mid/tweeter is not a huge issue either. Component values are not big and it is usually easy to create a satisfactory result. It isn’t as if the Salon-2 is not filled with passive crossover components. Maybe use of a full DSP three way could have improved things, but it would not be the first place I spent more BOM. Choice of midrange once a waveguide was added to the tweeter would be an interesting question. This is really hard. There isn’t a lot of choice. The KH-310 gets away with the Tymphany dome because its bass driver is on the front baffle. Not a choice for the Footprint. You can go for very high end mid-range drivers from Scan-Speak or say Visaton. But these would blow the BOM right out. So the Dayton is a good choice at less money than you would expect for the performance. Two way with waveguide? Very hard to integrate a larger bass driver, especially if you are limited to off the shelf drivers. And the driver needs to be on the front baffle again. And so it goes.
Overall there is no one right answer and the Footprints seem to be a competent design addressing one particular take on the balance of important qualities and challenges.
ETA - will be very interesting to see how things go with Barefoot.
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Thanks for this update. Yes I believe with positive interaction the barefoot can either iron out this being a defective unit or they will update their published graph, which IMO even if amirm’s result it’s a good speaker, only it needs to publish more accurate results.
If it’s a defective unit where one of our members have purchased, the chance for barefoot to replace the unit and that they improve anything in their QC line would be a win for all consumers. At this price point I do believe it’s worth the company to do individual unit calibration and check, and maybe put a printed graph of the particular unit
That's really great to hear. Regardless of what happens, that alone adds a lot of respect points for them.
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