AsciLab F6Bs Speaker Review

[Grenadine]

I am thinking of getting the f6bs for my living room to replace a pair of Lyngdorf wall speakers. The ascilabs would be mounted where the little white speakers are, adjusted for height. There will be wall reinforment of the lower frequencies and dual 10” subs só bass is not a problem. amplifier takes care of room correction and any eq needed. My question is regarding toe in, as I won’t be able to have any and they will be pointing out straight. The lyngdorfs make it feel like the sound is coming from behind the tv and lack the airiness and soundstage.
I could also get a pair of f6b or c6b with stands if that helps with those things.
(don’t mind the big speakers, those are gone)

I think you'd notice the larger driver and cabinet size. I have mine toe'd in with vesa mounts because i listen to them while im working right in front of them. For you room layout, you'll be fine with them mounted flat, I think. I have them in my garage as "near field" but they'll play really loud, and well paired with a 15" sub. They are 15-20% bigger than your Lyn's so plan for that jump in size. hopefully you can use items on the work bench to scale for size. i went with the ascilabs not only because how they measured, but because of the shallow depth without sounding like a wall speaker.

 

[ShadowBoxer]

You can always identify a certified tool guy by the presence of backup fly swatters.

 

[Grenadine]

You can always identify a certified tool guy by the presence of backup fly swatters.

laughed out loud at this!! my contractor cousin said something similar when he came over to help me with a project. he said, "where's your blow dryer? you don't have a blow dryer?" i walked over slowly opened the drawer that contained a blow dryer. i have now moved on to an electric air duster, as pictured next to the fire extinguisher

 

[YouDontHaveEnoughBass]

View attachment 549241

Such a cool setup, you ever able to localise the sub or does it blend well / too fun to care?

For those saying these things aren’t suitable for playing loud, just look at the distortion figures they fair better than the bigger F6B thanks to their sealed design + internal high pass filter; it’s the deep sub bass that becomes an issue playing loud for most speakers and these get around the issue by simply not playing it

 

[Grenadine]

Such a cool setup, you ever able to localise the sub or does it blend well / too fun to care?

For those saying these things aren’t suitable for playing loud, just look at the distortion figures they fair better than the bigger F6B thanks to their sealed design + internal high pass filter; it’s the deep sub bass that becomes an issue playing loud for most speakers and these get around the issue by simply not playing it

It blends surprisingly well. crossed them at 70 hz. the amp i'm using is the integrated Yamaha R-N1000A (reviewed on ASR by Amir). I had to turn the time delay around 5ms on the subs speaker-power htb700 amp, because i believe the YPAO-R.S.C processing speed slowed down the main speaker output ever so slightly. listening to the F6B's within that close of distance, i noticed some reflections/harshness. when i toggle YPAO on/off its a drastic difference, so i'm thankful for that. and i agree, they will play as loud as the CSS 1tdx's i also have running in the garage (speaker "A"), mounted up higher in the garage for when neighbors come over to play "darts/whiskey hour". but man those CSS speakers have some serious bass. no sub needed. lastly, i have the subs 1 meter RCA cable connected to potentiometer, The Solupeak RC11 (also reviewed here on ASR) so if i can adjust bass output manually, highly recommend this little unit for a fun/workshop garage setup.

 

[MASantos]

F6Bs arrived 10 mins ago. The inicial impressions are very good even without proper positioning, subwoofer integration or room correction performed. I will have a full day tomorrow!

 

[MASantos]

I might do some testing with corner placement, having the speakers point to a centerpoint in front of the seating position created a huge sound stage, must play around

 

[Grenadine]

I might do some testing with corner placement, having the speakers point to a centerpoint in front of the seating position created a huge sound stage, must play around
View attachment 549926

Woohoo!!!! What subs you have using? What’s the rest of your system?

 

[MASantos]

Woohoo!!!! What subs you have using? What’s the rest of your system?

I have two lyngdorf bw2. Active 500W 10” sealed subwoofers. They play up to 800hz and are blended using the lyngdorf tdai 3400 amplifier room correction and DSP. When properly set up you can’t distinguish where the sub stops and where the main speaker starts.

 

[Space is the place]

I can understand how a designer working on an active speaker can use some DSP and filters to get a very flat frequency response.
So it's great that passive designs like the Ascilab and similar, all seem to measure superbly and integrated into the listening space because of good directivity, they also have fairly low distortion at reasonable listening levels. Are there any compromises or downsides for speakers like this, ie, does the passive crossover have to be more complex etc?

 

[staticV3]

Are there any compromises or downsides for speakers like this

For 2-way passive bookshelf speakers, the downsides of an analog crossover are:

-no phase correction
-no woofer protection
-unit variation limited by tolerances in driver manufacturing and crossover components

 

[MASantos]

Subwoofer Crossover set at 100hz LR2.
Room correction measured and corrected by the lyngdorf tdai3400.
Looks Nice I would say.

 

[staticV3]

Looks Nice I would say.

Hard not to with 1/3oct smoothing

 

[YouDontHaveEnoughBass]

Subwoofer Crossover set at 100hz LR2.
Room correction measured and corrected by the lyngdorf tdai3400.
Looks Nice I would say.

Lovely

 

[dfuller]

I can understand how a designer working on an active speaker can use some DSP and filters to get a very flat frequency response.
So it's great that passive designs like the Ascilab and similar, all seem to measure superbly and integrated into the listening space because of good directivity, they also have fairly low distortion at reasonable listening levels. Are there any compromises or downsides for speakers like this, ie, does the passive crossover have to be more complex etc?

The biggest limitations of a passive crossover are 1, you can only do subtractive EQ, and 2, a more complex crossover almost invariably means more insertion loss - i.e., power lost in the crossover filters as heat via resistance.

In an active you can do additive and subtractive EQ and you don't meaningfully lose much when attenuating at line level or in DSP.

 

[MarkS]

For 2-way passive bookshelf speakers, the downsides of an analog crossover are:

-no phase correction
-no woofer protection
-unit variation limited by tolerances in driver manufacturing and crossover components

While all of these can potentially be improved by an active design, there is no guarantee that this has been done for any specific active speaker. In particular, correcting for driver unit variation on a sample-by-sample basis is a high-cost process.

 

[ShadowFiend]

I can understand how a designer working on an active speaker can use some DSP and filters to get a very flat frequency response.
So it's great that passive designs like the Ascilab and similar, all seem to measure superbly and integrated into the listening space because of good directivity, they also have fairly low distortion at reasonable listening levels. Are there any compromises or downsides for speakers like this, ie, does the passive crossover have to be more complex etc?

Compromise of this speaker is the woofer.

 

[Space is the place]

Compromise of this speaker is the woofer.

Thanks all for the answers above.

Yes the the model up the A6B with the Purifi woofers seems to have ameliorated the limitations of the drivers in the cheaper speakers. I read the Sound on Sound review of the A6B and they discuss how remarkable and more importantly, how natural and convincing the A6B sounds.
I also like that it's passive (i've had a fair few active speakers and every single one the amps packs have failed).
I looking forward to hearing a speaker with well implemented Purifi drivers and what they bring to the listening experience compared to larger speakers.

 

[amirm]

I read the Sound on Sound review of the A6B and they discuss how remarkable and more importantly, how natural and convincing the A6B sounds.

Hopefully you have read my review as well. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/ascilab-a6b-speaker-review.69864/

 

[Space is the place]

Yes i've read the review thank you Amir, it seems there's a bit of a renaissance of carefully engineered speakers being produced, i'm sure that you and Erin are partly the genesis of this, your work with the Kippel and younger designers picking up the torch and designing speakers based on principles of flat response, low distorsion and controlled drectivity (for use in normal spaces) is excellent.