Audiovector M1 Super Spinorama measurements (CTA-2034)

[eddantes]

Well - keeping it simple with that crossover I guess. 2nd order on both drivers. Series resistor n cap and parallel coil and resistor on the tweeter; series coil and parallel cap on the woofer - am I reading that right?

 

[Toni Mas]

Does not look bad. Maybe deserves blind testing... Blind meaning give It a listen without knowing about the measurements...

 

[audioholic63]

Still mulling over the cable speed issue. Maybe there should be an industry rating standard like for tires (temp/traction/speed)? But how do "fast" cables handle slow tempos?

 

[JakeK]

Still mulling over the cable speed issue. Maybe there should be an industry rating standard like for tires (temp/traction/speed)? But how do "fast" cables handle slow tempos?

Maybe that's why you need to tri-wire them for the best all round sound?! One fast pair of cables, one medium speed pair and a slow pair. That should cover most music tempos!

Edit: BTW I used to believe in biwiring before I found ASR. Some of my speakers still are biwired as I've had no reason to change them. Maybe I need to change them for some with the correct speed rating for my preferred styles of music?!!

 

[audioholic63]

Maybe that's why you need to tri-wire them for the best all round sound?! One fast pair of cables, one medium speed pair and a slow pair. That should cover most music tempos!

Edit: BTW I used to believe in biwiring before I found ASR. Some of my speakers still are biwired as I've had no reason to change them. Maybe I need to change them for some with the correct speed rating for my preferred styles of music?!!

I'm having a bad flashback to Monster Cable's marketing of their "time compensated" windings.

 

[jmdesignz2]

What the heck is going on at 4kHz? I was taught very early on that peaks are far more audible in a nasty way than subtle dips and this one couldn't have been at a worse place, where the ear is most sensitive to such things!

I wonder if the bass unit is run wide open and the tweeter has little more than a cap feeding it to stop low frequencies blowing it?

certainly looks like it. seems to be nasty resonance/breakup mode

 

[Phifi]

Here are some measurements of the Audiovector M1 Super bookshelf speaker. The MSRP was ~1000 USD / pair back in 2002.

View attachment 478890

There are three ports at the back, but only two are bass ports. The top one is for the tweeter:

View attachment 478891


Specifications:

Size (WHD): 20 x 35 x 27 cm (7.87 x 13.78 x 10.63 inches)
Weight: 6 kg / speaker
Sensitivity: 88 dB
Impedance: 8 Ohms
Frequency response: 50 Hz - 25 kHz
Recommended distance from rear wall: 15-25 cm
Recommended degrees of toe in: 2-4


My measurements are quasi-anechoic, with nearfield port+woofer (corrected for baffle edge diffraction) merged with gated measurements at 1m distance. 1m vs 2m comparison is attached (I have vertical off-axis comparisons as well. Let me know if you'd like to see them).

I have also attached impulse response, ETC, step response and phase to comply with VituixCAD requirements.


There's no recommendation for listening height in the user manual, but they do provide this info:

Be sure to choose loudspeaker cables, which are fast, clean, open
and musical sounding. (Some cables slow down the sound. This is a
type of distortion). Please consult your Audiovector dealer.

Joking aside, I ended up measuring 30 mm below tweeter axis (smoothest response).


Here's the result:

On-axis response is ok up to ~3 kHz, but then it goes downhill. ER and sound power looks better.

View attachment 478892


Early reflections:

The interesting looking rear wall bounce is caused by the rear tweeter port.

View attachment 478893


Estimated in-room response:

View attachment 478894


Horizontal directivity:

This also looks "interesting" because of the tweeter port:

View attachment 478895

View attachment 478896

View attachment 478897


Vertical directivity:

View attachment 478898

View attachment 478899

View attachment 478900


On-axis response:

Mostly within +/- 1.5 dB up to 3 kHz:

View attachment 478901


Distortion:

View attachment 478902

View attachment 478903


THD is very low, except for something going on with the tweeter at 6 kHz. Still below 1% though.

The peak remains at 76dB / 1m:

View attachment 478904

View attachment 478905


Nearfield:

The two 30mm ports are tuned quite low.

Rear tweeter port looks, well, interesting.

View attachment 478906


Finally, here's a comparison with a measurement by the Swedish magazine Hifi & Musik, from 2003:

I plotted the graph after finishing all my measurements, and was surprised by how similar the tweeter response is. It looks like they measured 30 mm below tweeter axis as well, and it also confirms that my 23 year old speaker is working just fine.

View attachment 478907


Subjective opinion:

It doesn't sound too bad, but it's a bit like two speakers in one. Bass and mids are quite neutral, but there's something going on with the tweeter. It doesn't sound bright, but a bit harsh and sometimes "plastic", or lacking detail.

Midrange separation and detail is ok, and bass/mid distortion is low, even at high volume (no gurgling sound on female vocals when there's a lot of bass in the recording). Soundstage is quite flat. I don't know why, but it made me think of 2D movies converted to 3D.

View attachment 478918

How would you even fix this? I have the same issue with my Audiovector S3 i just picked up for 500$, sounds amazing in every way but the tweeter giving harsh S and TS sounds. Would it be fixable with crossover, closing the tweeter of, changing it to another tweeter or all of the above? (I don't know anything about speaker making)

 

[bytek5]

How would you even fix this? I have the same issue with my Audiovector S3 i just picked up for 500$, sounds amazing in every way but the tweeter giving harsh S and TS sounds. Would it be fixable with crossover, closing the tweeter of, changing it to another tweeter or all of the above? (I don't know anything about speaker making)

I have M3 Signature and just replaced tweeter with melodavid Be28. I am a bit green with crossovers but curiosity won over common sense...
Now trebbles are great, but I can hear misalignment with mid driver...
Currently waiting for proper resistors to match damping with original impedance.

I guess I just found something to study this winter

 

[Phifi]

I have M3 Signature and just replaced tweeter with melodavid Be28. I am a bit green with crossovers but curiosity won over common sense...
Now trebbles are great, but I can hear misalignment with mid driver...
Currently waiting for proper resistors to match damping with original impedance.

I guess I just found something to study this winter

I was thinking of rebuilding the crossover too, but also thought of just changing tweeter to a pair of dayton audio dc28f-8 Maybe I'll switch the tweeter and then see if I need to fix anything in the crossover

 

[bytek5]

I was thinking of rebuilding the crossover too, but also thought of just changing tweeter to a pair of dayton audio dc28f-8 Maybe I'll switch the tweeter and then see if I need to fix anything in the crossover

You may like this one

 

[Ageve]

How would you even fix this? I have the same issue with my Audiovector S3 i just picked up for 500$, sounds amazing in every way but the tweeter giving harsh S and TS sounds. Would it be fixable with crossover, closing the tweeter of, changing it to another tweeter or all of the above? (I don't know anything about speaker making)

I haven't seen any measurements of S3, but if directivity is similar to M1 Super, you could try placing them with no toe-in. This is the 0 vs 25 deg response of M1 Super:

I don't know if it's interesting, but here are measurements of the floorstanding Mi3 and Mi3 Super, from the Swedish magazine Hifi & Musik:

edit: And M1 Super (from the comparison in my first post):

Hifi & Musik testar Audiovector Mi3 | hifi-musik.se

hifi-musik.se

Hifi & Musik testar Audiovector M1 Super | hifi-musik.se

hifi-musik.se

(Mi3 super review not available online)

 

[bytek5]

Thanks.
I own M3 Signature for around 5 years and M3 super before, so I know a bit how they sound. I was blaming tweeters for cold unpleasant sound of these speakers, so I made a change few weeks ago to Melodavid Be28. The change was positive, but after reading this thread i found the distortion of the midwoofer. First thought was to aply more damping material to the chamber. So I glued 2cm of wool around all the interior, and experimented with the amount of original foam. More foam added = less tired ears.
The question arised if I have 28mm tweeter, and distortion above 4-5kHz if I can kill easily this woofer response?

My crossover looks a bit different

I thought about capacitor in parallel to middle coil. Anyone has any idea around what capacity should I try?

Thanks and sorry for my English

 

[Phifi]

Thanks.
I own M3 Signature for around 5 years and M3 super before, so I know a bit how they sound. I was blaming tweeters for cold unpleasant sound of these speakers, so I made a change few weeks ago to Melodavid Be28. The change was positive, but after reading this thread i found the distortion of the midwoofer. First thought was to aply more damping material to the chamber. So I glued 2cm of wool around all the interior, and experimented with the amount of original foam. More foam added = less tired ears.
The question arised if I have 28mm tweeter, and distortion above 4-5kHz if I can kill easily this woofer response?
View attachment 492584
My crossover looks a bit different
View attachment 492652
I thought about capacitor in parallel to middle coil. Anyone has any idea around what capacity should I try?

Thanks and sorry for my English

Do you have measurments for both woofers? With some poor measurments i did i found that only the lower woofer had that bump in the 4-7k region, i was puting the response in VirtuixCad and putting a 22(ish) uF cond seam to make it better but im unsure how this would play out in reality.

 

[Phifi]

Do you have measurments for both woofers? With some poor measurments i did i found that only the lower woofer had that bump in the 4-7k region, i was puting the response in VirtuixCad and putting a 22(ish) uF cond seam to make it better but im unsure how this would play out in reality.

I think this is the driver used in S3 https://doc.soundimports.nl/pdf/brands/Peerless by Tymphany/SDS-P830657/SDS-P830657.pdf
I would say its quite a cheep diver for being in a (at the time) 20k sek(2000 dollar) speaker

 

[bytek5]

I think this is the driver used in S3 https://doc.soundimports.nl/pdf/brands/Peerless by Tymphany/SDS-P830657/SDS-P830657.pdf
I would say its quite a cheep diver for being in a (at the time) 20k sek(2000 dollar) speaker

Nope. it's HDS.
In S3 it looks a lot like this one. I read even in some Audiovector brochures that they don't recomend toeing in over 5°. Now I know why

Peerless by Tymphany HDS-164 / P-830990 Glassfibre

blackdotaudio.eu

 

[bytek5]

For now I think I'll pass crossover manipulation. My results are so far very satisfying. So what I did - changed the tweeter (Melodavid Be28), glued 20mm of wool inside mid and bass chambers and thrown out all original foams from bass chamber (left one behind mid), positioned them almost straight and clogged tweeter port. Even with tweeter enclosure intact there was a lot of noise coming out of the tube
The last two operations were crucial for ear fatigue and mild headaches.

Still that vented tweeter keeps bugging me. They use that in every project I was interested in, even most expensive ones. Maybe I should drill through my new beryllium one when it gets boring... I can always cover open tweeter

There is some work left with them, but there is no fun in obtaining all the pleasures at once. Journey is as important as the goal

 

[Phifi]

Nope. it's HDS.
In S3 it looks a lot like this one. I read even in some Audiovector brochures that they don't recomend toeing in over 5°. Now I know why

Peerless by Tymphany HDS-164 / P-830990 Glassfibre

blackdotaudio.eu

Im verry sure that it is SDS-P830657, the major difference is the frame that is steel stamped in my S3s but with another finnish. As for the fixes, i have tried to fill the tweeter port and have put both dampening material in bass and mid/bass compartments, havent had the time to test the sound fully though. Will install new tweeters if i still gett too much ear fatigue

 

[bytek5]

Im verry sure that it is SDS-P830657, the major difference is the frame that is steel stamped in my S3s but with another finnish. As for the fixes, i have tried to fill the tweeter port and have put both dampening material in bass and mid/bass compartments, havent had the time to test the sound fully though. Will install new tweeters if i still gett too much ear fatigue

I found most likely what cause my and your irritation. You have to replace the resistors in series w tweeter probably 5W.

I installed one more expensive set and then tried some other values on cheapest white ones. Couldn't finish...

 

[Phifi]

I found most likely what cause my and your irritation. You have to replace the resistors in series w tweeter probably 5W.

I installed one more expensive set and then tried some other values on cheapest white ones. Couldn't finish...

5w isnt really the relevant value for the resistor, the ohm is what is relevant. Im going to get som help from my friend that has condensor mic with everything needed to see if it is the tweeter amplitude(fixed with higher ohm resistor) or if it just is an uneven response from the tweeter or something else. But just replacing the resistor blind, just with a higher ohm value probaly would lower the listening fatigue but could also just butcher the whole treble response

 

[bytek5]

No no, I tried to suggest which one on the crossover it is. You must read resistance on your own and replace with the same value. It was the quality of the component that changed the sound. I spend whole 3$ each