This is a review and detailed measurements of the Airpulse A100 powered monitor. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $900 on Amazon including free shipping.
The fit and finish on the A100 is definitely a step above the average "computer speaker:"
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The piano, high gloss finish gives it a nice feel. The port is in the back along with a myriad of connectivity:
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I must say those are some of the nicest volume (and tone) controls I have seen on a powered monitor. Connection to the second speaker has high pin count indicating active crossover and dual amplification.
As indicated, speaker was designed by British speaker designer, Phil Jones.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the
Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise.
Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of roughly 1%.
Reference axis for measurements was the center of the tweeter.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Airpulse A100 Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
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This is not bad. We have the usual messiness around crossover but then things look good. A sharp high-pass filter seems to have been designed to keep bass distortion at bay.
There is a resonance around 1.4 kHz which we can easily identify in our near-field measurements:
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Some kind of cabinet/port resonance is existing out of there and interfering with the response during the crossover region.
Early window reflections look messier than I expected:
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Fortunately it sums reasonably well with on-axis to give us this predicted on-axis response:
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Horizontal directivity is a bit narrow but otherwise good:
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Vertically we have a ditch if you go above the axis of the tweeter so don't do that!
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Due to tall tweeter, the vertical window closes as you go up in frequency --- another reason to stay at tweeter height.
Distortion is kept at bay at 86 dBSPL but not at 96:
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During the measurement sweeps, I could hear a distinct modulation/abnormally at 96 dBSPL. Not sure if this is what is peaking between 2 and 5 kHz or is the cabinet resonance.
Finally, our waterfall shows a few resonances:
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Airpulse A100 Listening Tests and Equalization
I listened to the A100 before computing the response. Sound was fine to me except maybe a hair too bright at times. Once I got the measurements and saw the resonance at 1.4 kHz, I decided to correct for that:
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I always here the effect of this type of correction as improved clarity but it is very subtle. Other than the above, I didn't feel the need to fiddle with the response.
As far as dynamics, the A100 can play very loud due to the fact that it filters out all sub-bass. Music with such content plays as if those notes are not there. Interesting trade off that I tend to like but I think there is a bit too much filtering here.
As far as hiss, I developed a way to measure it. I was all happy with it until I went to process the data and found something odd. So I need to go back to drawing board. Subjectively, there is only a bit of hiss that disappears at 4 to 5 inches in front of the tweeter. So really not a problem.
Conclusions
The A100 is expensive for this category of "computer" speaker. But you do get better finish, very nice connectivity (including a remote and nice LEDs in front indicating which input is active), etc. Competing studio monitors have better response but lack the connectivity, remote, etc., forcing you to use a pre-amp (or deal with software controls which I don't like).
Overall, I am happy enough to recommend the Airpulse A100 speakers.
There is now a poll where you can vote what rating this speaker should get. So use that to agree or disagree and let's see what you all's consensus is.
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