Ascilab A6B Speaker Review

[Coltr@ne]

who knows when it will have its bass module, what performances

 

[dfuller]

Would you say Kinda basically like a seudo T-line port ? ?

Nope. Still a plain old helmholtz resonator type.

 

[daniboun]

Another great alternative with Purifi drivers and with 4x amp active DSP is the Aalto 3. For 3999€ paired they offer outstanding measurements.

The Aalto 3 passive is also available

Checkout measurements :

Aalto 3 Active Stream - Aalto Speakers

Aalto 3 tuo huippuluokan akustisen suunnittelun ja ensiluokkaiset komponentit tinkimätöntä äänenlaatua arvostavien musiikin ystävien ulottuville.

aaltospeakers.fi

Measurements for speaker Aalto Speakers Aalto 3 Active Pro

www.spinorama.org

Measurements for speaker Aalto Speakers Aalto 3 Passive

www.spinorama.org

 

[xanalog]

Not without revealing things it took me decades to learn and few people know. It was why I was pretty well paid

Thomas Jefferson's direct quote - to Isaac McPherson, on 1813/08/13- pertaining to Intellectual Property:

“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air … incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”​

[link]​

You may not be able to take all your accumulated knowledge and brain-power to the flip-side.
Fortunately, AI can be the instrument with which it can memorialize immortalize you and your extra-ordinary, 'breathtaking' talent/knowledge/work, for others to follow upon...

 

[Mort]

Thomas Jefferson's direct quote - to Isaac McPherson, on 1813/08/13- pertaining to Intellectual Property:

You may not be able to take all your accumulated knowledge and brain-power to the flip-side.
Fortunately, AI can be the instrument with which it can memorialize immortalize you and your extra-ordinary, 'breathtaking' talent/knowledge/work, for others to follow upon...

This is not the thread for that.

 

[aarons915]

not sure if you saw the the distortion graph i posted on #206? stays on the 1% range down below 30Hz up to 101dB SPL. This is dual 6.5” and a port (straight- bends would not do this). Not all subs can even match this and the integration is hard to do right (my experience from walking hifi shows)

I checked it out now and these are certainly impressive, I was more talking about in general doing a graph with and without the typical high pass filter in place because some speakers will still struggle even with the high pass, like the LS50 that I use. And Amir's graph shows at 101 db these are well above 1% distortion under 100Hz, but it looks like they would be decent with a high pass in place still. This is a ridiculously loud level anyway, I doubt anyone is playing that loud for any length of time.

 

[goat76]

The track list I have is created for testing both speakers and headphone. The specific track for headphone here is one that brings out spatial qualities of the headphone. When I have played it on recent speakers, the bass sounded distorted. The improvement that A6B brought was deeper extension which kind of made up for the quality of the reproduction at higher levels. Here is the track:

I have not played it on my Salon 2 for a long time but I had found it and added it to my playlist due to quality of reproduction on those speakers.

Let me know how it sounds on your speakers.

Sorry for the late response, work and other stuff got in the way.

The track sounds good on my system, and there isn't much to complain about it except for the unnecessary limitation of the dynamics (which isn't that bad). What I find most fun with this track is that it has a great sense of envelopment, which is likely because of the large deviations between the left and the right channels. The bass instrument is pretty loud in the mix, but I don't find it to sound particularly distorted.

Maybe you should start using this track more often when testing loudspeakers, as I think many small speakers with way too "impressive" reach in the bass range are not penalised enough, even when the distortion level shoots through the roof.

The main speakers in my system are 40-liter floorstanders, and are complemented by a pair of subwoofers set up in stereo to reach full-range capacity, with low distortion.

 

[peniku8]

So, something like 40-20.000hz would be more honest

As per CTA-2034 spec (point 7.2):

The level of the transfer function measurement shall be averaged over the frequency range from
100 Hz to 1 kHz. This level shall be the Average Level of the DUT.
The frequency at which the transfer function has a level of no less than the Average Level minus
3 dB shall be the Lower Frequency Limit of the DUT.

Which would be 40Hz indeed, altho -3dB (F3) is a pretty stringent spec and I'd personally find F6 (35Hz) a totally valid figure as well, but certainly not 30Hz (F15?) and absolutely not 20Hz (F30?!).

 

[Lars Risbo]

the question is how the average is defined? averaged in the magnitude, power or log magnitude domain. And is the average integral over the linear or log frequency.

asking for a friend.

 

[Acerun]

This is a review, listening tests and detailed measurements of the Ascilab A6B Stand-mount speaker with Purifi woofer and passive radiators. I purchased this from the company. The US cost is $1,955 each. Price varies in different countries due to tariff, local taxes, etc.
View attachment 515071
Please excuse the tapes. They are holding the magnetic rings in for shipping. I plan to sell these speakers after review so wanted to keep them in as new condition. On that front:

NOTE: My company, testedaudio.com, is the exclusive distributor for Ascilab products in North America. While objective tests remain the same as for any other speaker, subjective remarks may have business bias.

The A6B manages to act serious and stately at the same time. The rounded corners and invisible fasteners give it an elegant look. And the solid weight, an impression of quality.

I am not a fan of the wrinkles in the Purifi woofer surrounds. However, in the A6B when seen in normal lighting, they mostly disappear so were not an issue for me. The review picture however, highlights them to the max.

Speaker has dual Purifi passive radiators on opposing sides and are a nice indicator of when the speaker is being pushed by their excursion.

The bottom of the speaker is lined with some kind of neoprene which I much appreciate as it acts as some level of damping. To wit, I did not have to employ my elastic material for its measurements on top of Klippel Near-field scanner.

Ascilab A6B Speaker Measurements
As usual, we start with our all important, anechoic "CEA/CTA-2034" standardized frequency response and directivity measurements:
View attachment 515074
We have a very nice on-axis response (black). There is a bit of a drop in bass but then again, it extends way below to nearly 30 Hz with reasonable output!

The early window, and for that matter, sound power, track the on-axis extremely well indicating good directivity which we will examine more later.

We can see the bass extension comes from passive radiator tuning being on the low side:
View attachment 515075
The peak is around 40 Hz. As noted, resonances from the woofer is highly controlled. And given the fact that we don't have a port, there is not much to worry about with respect to enclosure resonances bleeding out. You pay a lot more for the radiator as opposed to just a port but this is the benefit it brings.

Early window sum looks very good, encouraging a room without much "treatment:"
View attachment 515076

With the resulting prediction of in-room response being what we look for:
View attachment 515077

Beamwidth is highly controlled, all the way to upper registers, courtesy of computer optimized waveguide:
View attachment 515078
The small penalty there is narrower beam width which translates into more focused imaging and less diffusion. Don't treat the side walls as to let that do its thing to widen the source image.

View attachment 515079

Vertical directivity is what it is for a 2-way speaker:
View attachment 515080

Stay at the tweeter axis.

Let me give you my usual distortion charts and then something new:
View attachment 515081
View attachment 515082

I have been on a mission to better correlate distortion measurements to audibility. Here, I could hear the start of very low frequency distortion at 96 dBSPL and heard the speaker nearly completely run out of excursion at 101 dBSPL. How can we better figure out from the graphs. Check this work in progress:
View attachment 515322
These are THD% levels charted below 200 Hz. That is where I heard the distortion. Above that, we are overdriving the speaker anyway relative to music.

We see a more or less plateau above 100 Hz indicating we have made the right choice regarding cut off at 200 Hz.

Below that we see different slopes in distortion. We see two distinct new distortion sources coming into play which I have marked as secondary and tertiary. I have placed a circle at the knee of those events. What this says is that you can play down to 42 Hz at 96 dBSPL whereas if you crank up to 101 dBSPL, you best stop at 65 Hz! This matches my hearing of the sweeps where I heard slight distortion at the very start of the 96 dBSPL sweeps. Whereas with 101 dBSPL, that lasted quite a lot longer and at much higher levels of audible distortion.

Going the other way, if you are playing at 81 dBSPL, you can essentially take advantage of the full response down to 30 Hz. We will see if this and the above prediction proves to be the case in listening test section.

Assuming above is correct, you don't need a subwoofer for 81 dBSPL and possibly 86 dBSPL. Above that, a subwoofer would be needed for those playback level and the frequency for that crossover is on the chart.

Finishing our measurements, we see some traces of resonances in waterfall graph:
View attachment 515084
Step response of the woofer is very smooth/clean:
View attachment 515085

Edit: impedance and phase:
View attachment 515092

Ascilab A6B Listening Tests
I paired the A6B with Topping LA90 amplifier which has modest amount of power. I did this to see how much power is needed given the fact that the sensitivity of A6B is a couple of dBs lower than average. I was pleasantly surprised that in near and mid-field listening, there was plenty of power available, albeit with one channel being driven.

First impression was quite a surprise: there was impressively clean and deep bass even in tracks that don't sport that spectrum! Research indicates 30% of our enjoyment comes from bass and there is no better example of this. The extra warmth, especially when it is this clean, balances tonality and creates butterflies in your stomach. I am not used to such a compact speaker being able to deliver such a bass.

I quickly skipped to my reference track for deep bass. This sized speakers either faintly reproduce the sub-bass, or distort it at slightly higher levels. The A6B in sharp contrast, reproduced the low energy like it was a full range speaker!!! It is one thing to see frequency response down to nearly 30 Hz, it is another to experience it with real music.

Excited, I cranked up the volume and bam! Massive distortion set it, just like the 101 dBSPL. You hear a static and see the dual radiators try to detach themselves as the fly out left and right! Crank it down a bit and you get a bit of roughness in bass. A bit more and you are back in business.

Note that the above test track has some of the lowest frequency energy track I have. On music with milder version of it, the A6B produced clean and authoritative bass that I could feel in my stomach (from 2 meters/6 to 7 feet away) and feel the air brushing against my face! I could get to mild distortion with cranking up the volume up again but not as bad as my reference track.

With general music tracks, no worries where there whatsoever with bass distortion and frankly any distortion. The high frequency notes would stand out in the midst of bass notes like nobody's business. Even tracks I have that don't sound very good on speakers (I use them for headphone testing), sounded nearly excellent here! The rest, wow, I kept smiling in disbelief! This is the most perfect speaker I have heard in this size. It just can't blast out its beautiful very low frequency beyond medium levels of loudness.

I am stunned....

Of course, at no time did I feel the need to EQ anything.

Nicely so, very little vibration was coupled to my desk where I had it -- unlike many speakers that uncover all kind of resonances in this setup (my far field listening space is down).

Imaging is rather focused as predicted. You hear the sound come from a circle close to the speaker.

As a side effect of my testing in near and mid-field, these speakers will also make an excellent studio monitor. I checked for horizontal directivity and it is excellent across 2 to 3 chair widths. Even after that, the drop off in high frequencies is rather small.

Conclusions
What a shame that I have started to sell these speakers and hence, my personal experience may not be trusted much. If you at all value my ethics, I am telling you, this is a speaker you have to experience. It will easily blow away any expectations you have.

Going into this review, I was kind of depressed. I an not into, "more expensive parts mean more performance" as some of you no doubt know. Those parts have pushed the price of this speaker rather high. What Ascilab has done with its tuning to deliver very low bass response that is ultra clean, is what justifies its cost. Yes, laws of physics can't be broken. It can't shake the house but if you are just a hair less power hungry than I am, you will be fully satisfied without having to mess with subwoofers and such.

As noted, I would give the A6Bs a serious consideration for mixing and mastering in smaller rooms. Pair it up with an ultra quiet amplifier like I did and you don't have none of the hiss issues of active monitors.

Please note that as of this writing, there is no production available of the A6B. Earliest time is May which means we will get them in June. I am going to put up my pair on Tested Audio but I have to say, I am so tempted to just keep them for myself! They are that good.

Needless to say, I am going to recommend the Ascilab A6B speakers. Objectively and subjectively, they have left me without pants.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Same price I paid for Revel F226be, $2000 per speaker. I guess if you have limited space...

 

[dfuller]

I really like the direction of Amir’s new bass distortion graph:View attachment 515655

I did some sweeps on a new box with dual 6.5X alu in 54L and a very special port I designed for high output. I designed a very long (40sec) exponential (Farina type) sweep that goes from 2.4Hz to only 1.5kHz in order to get high resolution and noise suppression in the bass. The mic was on the floor and the speaker besides it in a large hall. The mic was positioned to get equal distance to the port and woofers (ie summing to a flat response).

Three sweeps made to get 86/96/101dB midband SPL. The box has an F3 of 30Hz so there is quite some deep bass output. For each sweep, the 2nd and 3rd harmonics are plotted. the higher harmonics were in the noise floor.

dot=86dB, solid=96dB and dash=101dB

the distortion stays very low until below 30Hz. There are some clear dips around the port tuning at 30Hz where the woofer’s excursion is low and nearly all output is from the port.

Cheers
Lars

View attachment 515656

So this is for 2x6.5"? Still very impressive stuff that that little driver area is behaving itself at 101dB/1m.

 

[Bucking]

I'm hoping for a matching and affordable center channel

 

[amirm]

I'm hoping for a matching and affordable center channel

Would you want a 2-way or 3-way? Former will have narrower horizontal directivity, latter cost more.

 

[Lars Risbo]

So this is for 2x6.5"? Still very impressive stuff that that little driver area is behaving itself at 101dB/1m.

yes 2x6.5”, but keeping up down to below 30Hz at 101dB is crazy (in the 1% range - many are double digit even at 96dB at 30Hz). This is thanks to a novel port design that offers very low distortion.

 

[Bucking]

Would you want a 2-way or 3-way? Former will have narrower horizontal directivity, latter cost more.

3 way would probably be better even if the price increases

 

[amirm]

3 way would probably be better even if the price increases

My feeling as well.

 

[Chaos01]

I doubt that a 3 way purifi mtm, pure Center speaker, with 2 purifi woofers, makes economically sense. Maybe with one woofer and at least one passive Radiator at the Front and maybe one in the Back.
A mtm, that is designed to be a bookshelve or Center and Work both ways well, makes maybe Sense with an eye in the costs. So a User could decide how to use it. But with to purifi woofers there Had to BE more than 2 pr i guess, and that could make it to big.
But i see more people buying a C6B Center, If it would exist, and use a A6B for L/R.

 

[dfuller]

yes 2x6.5”, but keeping up down to below 30Hz at 101dB is crazy (in the 1% range - many are double digit even at 96dB at 30Hz). This is thanks to a novel port design that offers very low distortion.

I'd be interested if you could expand on that.

 

[Lars Risbo]

yes of course but I have to wait some weeks until our clients project is released.

 

[ayane]

the question is how the average is defined? averaged in the magnitude, power or log magnitude domain. And is the average integral over the linear or log frequency.

asking for a friend.

It's pretty shocking to me that this is expressed in such ambiguous terms in the CTA spec of all places. Standards people ought to know better for metrology sake