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Arendal Sound 1961 Tower review (by Erin)

Sancus

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@Sancus The R200 was measured here, and spins for the R263 are available from Harmann. Not sure what you mean by proper spins...
no, the R200 was *not* measured by Amir. It was measured by a forum member/reviewer using a manual process.

I explained what I meant. What's hard to understand? The Klippel machine that Amir and Erin use for measurements produces much higher resolution measurements than other methods. That means the dats reveal more flaws. t's very simple: speakers score lower when measured by Amir or Erin than other sources. And when more measurement points are used.

Harman's spins are not the same resolution either especially not for their older speakers...Again, the Infinity RC263 scored 5.4 based on the vendor spin and 4.7 in the Klippel. This is easy to see on Pierre's site.

It's important to understand these details if you're gonna use the score for comparing individual speakers, which is something that it's not good for.
 

RMW_NJ

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@Sancus The R200 was measured here, and spins for the R263 are available from Harmann. Not sure what you mean by proper spins...

@Steve Dallas Price is not irrelevant when price was the question asked...

In any case, I've stated the case for anyone researching and comes across these speakers.

As far as I’ve seen, Amir has not measured the R200 with his NFS. Erin has measured the R100 with his.
 

sdiver68

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As far as I’ve seen, Amir has not measured the R200 with his NFS. Erin has measured the R100 with his.

Nice qualifier "by Amir"
 

Steve Dallas

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@Sancus The R200 was measured here, and spins for the R263 are available from Harmann. Not sure what you mean by proper spins...

@Steve Dallas Price is not irrelevant when price was the question asked...

In any case, I've stated the case for anyone researching and comes across these speakers.

Again, you are comparing a tiny speaker to a huge speaker with different design specifications. It is an invalid comparison at best.
 

sdiver68

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no, the R200 was *not* measured by Amir. It was measured by a forum member/reviewer using a manual process.

I explained what I meant. What's hard to understand? The Klippel machine that Amir and Erin use for measurements produces much higher resolution measurements than other methods. That means the dats reveal more flaws. t's very simple: speakers score lower when measured by Amir or Erin than other sources. And when more measurement points are used.

Harman's spins are not the same resolution either especially not for their older speakers...Again, the Infinity RC263 scored 5.4 based on the vendor spin and 4.7 in the Klippel. This is easy to see on Pierre's site.

It's important to understand these details if you're gonna use the score for comparing individual speakers, which is something that it's not good for.
R263 not RC263. Its important to read.

Im not sure which part of proxy you missed, stated specifically to avoid all these spinorama qualifiers that have been covered in 1,000 posts across various forums
 

RMW_NJ

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Nice qualifier "by Amir"

Nothing against the reviewer or those measurements, but you realize they were not done on an NFS, right?
 

TurtlePaul

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Nice qualifier "by Amir"
We mean that it wasnt with a Klippel Nearfield Scanner. Mr Lopez did the best he could with what he has. He is using time gating manually to avoid room interaction and measuring various on and off axis perameters.

This method requires using smoothing on all of your frequency sweeps and depending on how much time you have to reposition the mic, you may take a couple dozen measurements.

The Klippel actually uses a similar method with almost the same limitations. The difference is since it is automated, the Klippel would gladly measure thousands of sweeps. When you increase the number of sweeps by two orders of magnitude you also increase the resolution that much. That is why Klippel spins have all of those +/- 0.5 dB wobbles while manual spins dont.

Preference score is based on smoothness of on-axis response and predicted in-room response, so having higher resolution responses plus more angles factored into the PIR always hurts the computed score.
 

sdiver68

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Again, you are comparing a tiny speaker to a huge speaker with different design specifications. It is an invalid comparison at best.

You make the rules by which all speakers are judged? This is the second time you've made up the parameters under which speakers are compared.
 

beaRA

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R263 not RC263. Its important to read.

Im not sure which part of proxy you missed, stated specifically to avoid all these spinorama qualifiers that have been covered in 1,000 posts across various forums
You're not even trying to understand what other members are saying. They are simply providing the RC263 as an example of how the preference score calculation can come out differently for the same speaker based on Klippel NFS vs Non Klippel NFS spins.
 

sdiver68

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You're not even trying to understand what other members are saying. They are simply providing the RC263 as an example of how the preference score calculation can come out differently for the same speaker based on Klippel NFS vs Non Klippel NFS spins.

Fair point you are right I did miss that. I will amend my response and note what Amir said on the topic of which measurement is better

"As long as speaker samples are different, no conclusion can be drawn about measurement protocol."
 
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beaRA

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Fair point you are right I did miss that. I will amend my response and note what Amir said on the topic of which measurement is better

"As long as speaker samples are different, no conclusion can be drawn about measurement protocol."
Also a fair point. We sometimes see different samples measured by the Klippel NFS produce different scores:

SpeakerPS AmirPS Erin
Sony SS-CS54.54.1
Emotiva B1+4.75.2
Kef R36.56.5

Whether by sample or measurement variance, we just have to be careful comparing preference scores to a decimal place.
 

Raffi

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A large part of Arendal’s low pref scores is the lack of bass. It is more interesting to compare the pref with sub scores vs the competitors as that is there intended use. On the other hand, shocking that a speaker with no less than four 5.25” woofers has abhorrently anemic bass. Why not just use two woofs if you are going to tune it that high? Competing solutions with this many 5.25” drivers in a tower are able to do so much more in the 40-70 hz range.
Honestly, I think the bass is one of the best traits of the speaker because the deep tuning frequency combines the advantages of both ported and closed:
1. 6db rolloff matches room gain and avoids excessive excitation of room modes
2. much lower excursion at the frequencies where excursion becomes problematic
3. excursion rises dramatically below port tuning this is not much of a problem with this design in contrast to high tuning frequency
4. group delay of the port pushed to frequencies were it probably does not matter

So it gives you the dynamic capability of a ported design (since dynamics is restricted by excursion) while keeping the behavior of a closed one. Altough it does not look good anechoically it should give a more or less flat response in room
 

TurtlePaul

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Altough it does not look good anechoically it should give a more or less flat response in room
Looking at the response of the speaker vs what is needed to keep a flat slope to the first reflections rolloff, you would need +6 dB room gain at 70 hz for this roll off to hook up to the room.

Room gain comes in at half the lowest node of the room, so unless you cant stand up without hitting your head and the room is more narrow than it is tall, the highest room gain can come in is 40 hz. Most rooms have gain somewhere in the 30s for medium rooms or 20s for large rooms.

There are some bookshelf speakers with 50 hz -6 dB points, and while not flat bass, those can hook up to the room gain of small rooms for satisfying bass. These Atendals need subs. They arent catching flat room gain unless you have a room for ants (smaller than a six foot cube).
 
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Raffi

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Looking at the response of the speaker vs what is needed to keep a flat slope to the first reflections rolloff, you would need +6 dB room gain at 70 hz for this roll off to hook up to the room.

Room gain comes in at half the lowest node of the room, so unless you cant stand up without hitting your head and the room is more narrow than it is tall, the highest room gain can come in is 40 hz. Most rooms have gain somewhere in the 30s for medium rooms or 20s for large rooms.

There are some bookshelf speakers with 50 hz -6 dB points, and while not flat bass, those can hook up to the room gain of small rooms for satisfying bass. These Atendals need subs. They arent catching flat room gain unless you have a room for ants (smaller than a six foot cube).
Thanks for the correction, it seems that I overestimated the effect of room gain a bit :)
 

Thomas_A

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There is also boundary gain in the equation.
 

Head_Unit

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Does nobody else think the Arendal response looks unusual?
I sure do. Something seriously wrong, like the port is blocked or tuned to 5 Hz or the measurements are off for some reason. How exactly were they measured "sealed"? How was the port blocked? (Sorry I haven't watched the video)
 

kolestonin

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The choice of words in their website can be a deal breaker for me.
I leave the sexism effect on the side, but 'babies'??? 'sexy'??? to describe speakers?
I would have choose these words only if my product and my company were more marketing and less engineering orientated.
I know both are needed, but each consumer has its own perspective and this is my criticism.
 

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muad

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Does anyone know if it's possible to adjust the spin measurements to be perpendicular to the tweeter axis considering how low to the ground the towers sit? I want to compare them directly to the bookshelf 1961s.

My new townhome will not accommodate my Linton's easily and the ls50 metas are too exposed with my crazy toddler throwing stuff. I love both of these speakers, and I've read the ls50s and 1961s are fairly comparable. Considering either the 1961 tower/bookshelf or the R3 metas.
 

sasmarso0

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Are you factoring in price there? Note that the 1961 series are Arendal's cheaper range, not their best.
1000€ (Germany) is not that cheap range for Sub with that Power especially unit finished in China. Those prices could be justified if the product was really made in Norway.
 
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