Ikea SYMFONISK Picture Frame Speaker Review

[Frgirard]

When I go past Ikea speakers in the store, the sound is always ruined by the too dominant bass. But this is different?

Is this mono? Can two speakers be paired to stereo?

yes. You will see all specs on the ikea website

 

[pjug]

Sonos' TruePlay room correction will also work with these...

@amirm any chance you could try the TruePlay? Sorry to be so late in asking.

 

[tomtoo]

Remember me joking about it. At least partial my worldview is shaked a littel.

 

[WHO23]

 

[AudioSceptic]

I have a Sangean ATS-803A PLL radio like that. It's insanely good for a shortwave radio. Fills a room.

View attachment 142928

Ditto for the Tivoli PAL (FM, not SW). <https://tivoliaudio.co.uk/collections/portables> Ours is the original one without BT. It does have a handy aux-in though.

 

[FrantzM]

So,it's better than the Maggie LRS (??)

It might and I am offering an hypothesis, if it were bind, It would be for a majority of listeners.

This is one of the dirty secrets of High End Audio: Often many High End systems do not sound satisfying. The High End Audio orthodoxic (henceforth HEA) rational is that the system is not "optimized' and "built at a cost" thus the poor results. If we were to measure several expensive HEA systems, not components, we may be very surprised by the poor results. This is good for business: Get the next (read more expensive) upgrade ... A "better" cable, a cable elevator.. An AC power cleaner.. A Quantum Dot... at only $1000 for the pair...

I am sure my experience is not unique: Many HEA systems sounds poorer objectively and subjectively than some car radios.

 

[JohnBooty]

sounds like a cool kitchen speaker, tucked under a cabinet, above the counter.

dt

In a kitchen you'll quickly be really thankful those cloth covers are interchangeable and replaceable.

If you replace the covers ($20) four times per year, you will eventually equal the cost of some Revel Salon2's. Therefore you should simply buy the Revels now. After 200 years, they will essentially have paid for themselves.

Make sure you mention this to your wife when she comes home one day and is surprised to see a pair of Salon2's in the kitchen. "Good news, honey! I just saved us a bunch of money!"

 

[Zek]

Q: Can two speakers be paired to stereo?
yes. You will see all specs on the ikea website

How can you connect two speakers if there is no line input?

 

[Milesian]

Give me a cover with a nice Chagall on it and I’m in. I need music all day long and dont want to fire up my good gear for background listening. I dont need fidelity, soundstaging, bass, detail. Just delightful listenable music to keep me inspired and relaxed. $200? Just shut up and take my money Ikea.

 

[Toslink]

How can you connect two speakers if there is no line input?

There's a 5GHz radio in each speaker exclusively used to link to the other speaker, creating a stereo pair.

 

[JohnBooty]

I am sure my experience is not unique: Many [High End Audio] systems sounds poorer objectively and subjectively than some car radios.

Yeah! As objectivists, we're not surprised, right?

Meanwhile, car audio is surprisingly tolerable these days even in modest cars. Auto makers have realized that, with a very minimal additional investment, they can greatly increase the desirability of their cars by putting decent audio systems in there, properly EQ'd to the car's interior.

In a very real sense that's going to trump "legitimate" hi-fi equipment that hasn't been properly tweaked and dialed in for a given room.

Personally that's why I get excited by things like this Ikea speaker or even the Apple Homepods. There will always be niche audiophile gear for people like us who are willing to do room correction and subwoofer crawls and make our own speaker cables. But ultimately the goal is quality audio reproduction and there's something to be said for Symfonisk/Homepod type products that use clever engineering to give objectively decent sound in any room.

 

[tmtomh]

See that's where you and I are different. A speaker in the bathroom. But that's fine, I get it.

I don't even like any outdoor speakers unless it's a concert. Speakers at a BBQ, the beach or those wretched Bluetooth boom boxes people take to pristine rock pools near us and blast the rainforest.

But I guess you can sing along in the shower.

Well, there's the key - personal preference and use case are individual and vary. Glad you're cool with that - but it also impacts how we look at the objective data. If these were conventional stand-mounted passive speakers priced at $500/pair, then of course Amir would not have recommended them and your assessment that they're hot garbage would be on target. But that's not what these are.

 

[beagleman]

Does this speaker signal a change in reviewing direction @amirm ?

The tests results speak for themselves- it's an absolute unmitigated disaster of a HiFi speaker, but you like it subjectively enough to give it a strong reccommendation because it's a Sonos wall mounted 'lifestyle' speaker? I don't get it.

I assume you are kidding? The objective tests are fairly good. Nothing stands out as a disaster.

 

[beagleman]

Well, there's the key - personal preference and use case are individual and vary. Glad you're cool with that - but it also impacts how we look at the objective data. If these were conventional stand-mounted passive speakers priced at $500/pair, then of course Amir would not have recommended them and your assessment that they're hot garbage would be on target. But that's not what these are.

I have to disagree.

Garbage??
Measurements alone can not predict something is listenable or sounds good.
Having heard these, I can assure you, they sound fairly good. Not just for what they are, but they simply sound GOOD.

And yes, better than MANY lower to mid priced normal "Audiophile" bookshelf speakers.
They are not perfection, but I mean good sound is good sound.

 

[bigjacko]

The measurement looks nice, but I have a few concerns. The sub bass level seems to be nearly the same for 86dB and 96dB distortion measurement, is it because of compression or dsp limited the output? The port noise was not measured so we don;t know the port noise too.

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

These were likely measured/tested in Sonos' anechoic chamber in Santa Barbara. They do take sound quality seriously, within the cost constraints of mass-market products.

https://www.howardelectricco.com/portfolio_page/sonos/

https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-nick-millington-exclusive-interview/

 

[mash]

I have a love/hate prejudice for anything Sonos. Love...as Sonos introduced me to the whole concept of streaming and whole house audio. Hate...due to spending many years struggling with their crappy software. I finally banished all Sonos products from our house 2 years back and couldn't be happier.

This product is a surprise. Looking at the drivers and enclosure, I'm very skeptical but trust the review/measurements. Would be really interesting to hear the speaker and see for myself. Given that I can now drive it from Roon, it would remove the irritation of dealing with Sonos streaming software.
I'm not so sure about the form factor and associated WAF. Maybe its the Neo-modern Swedish geometric design on the cover that is getting me?........anyway, I'm thinking that I should get the picture frame version with the deer staring you in the face and hang it directly opposite our bathroom toilet and tell my wife, "See, I really do care how the audio equipment fits into our interior design!"

 

[MCH]

Question from someone that never used sonos and doesn't have any apple products: can i still use this to play the music in my NAS (not sonos) if i download the sonos app to my phone?
(Currently using bubble upnp and raspbery pi based streamers)

 

[JohnBooty]

If these were conventional stand-mounted passive speakers priced at $500/pair, then of course Amir would not have recommended them and your assessment that they're hot garbage would be on target.

I think he would. Outside of JBL's 3 series studio monitors there are no conventional $500 standmount speakers with such wide and controlled dispersion, right?

I think a lot of folks here are assigning way too much significance to the narrow peaks and dips in the direct on-axis response. In general this does not correlate very well with actual listening experience. While not ideal, I've found those sorts of narrow peaks and dips are not very audible in practice, even when listening to sine sweeps and even less so during actual music. Feel free to disagree but before doing so, I'd strongly suggest performing one's own experiments with sine sweeps, a calibrated microphone, etc.

The estimated in-room response graph produced by the Klippel is a much better proxy for actual listening experience and this shows some good performance. Although that midbass hump might be obnoxious. Or it may be a bit of a calculation/measurement artifact.

Looking at the drivers and enclosure, I'm very skeptical but trust the review/measurements.

Not that we can ever really judge a driver by its looks, but this is doubly true when there's some competent DSP action going on under the hood. My gateway to this hobby was reviews like this one from NoAudiophile, where he transforms a pair of garbage-level $60 fartboxes into respectable performers by taking calibrated measurements and employing DSP corrections. Those cheap puny 3" Micca drivers actually put out some nice sound all the way down to 40hz after DSP correction.

What I'm really curious about is how Sonos/Ikea achieved that nice even dispersion. Unlike frequency response that's not an easy DSP fix.

 

[P_M]

Here are our in-room measurements in near-field as far as distortion:

View attachment 142757

View attachment 142758

Did you do impedance measurements ? I bet that 1.5Khz distortion spike is tweeter impedance resonance (and its either crossed over too early or has a very shallow/low order crossover.