Avantone Pro MixCube Monitor Review

[bennybbbx]

A small note on the discussion of the superior "transient" behavior of the Avantone speaker.

The unbalanced frequency response and the FR in shape of a bandpass filter means that the group delay (as a measure of transient behavior) of the Avantone speaker is not particularly good, especially in the frequency range below 500Hz.

A normal 2-way speaker shows better GD below 500Hz and can keep up well above (both are well below the perception threshold).

2-way speaker (blue curve - FR) versus MixCube (red curve - FR) - FR and normal phase
View attachment 271475

Group delay 2-way speaker (green curve) versus MixCube (black curve)
View attachment 271476


On top of that, the MixCube speaker has a lot of (very likely) slow decaying resonances that ruin any good transient behavior. According to Amir's CSD, the resonance around 5kHz, for example, needs more than twelve oscillation periods until it is damped by 25dB. The 7kHz needs even more oscillation periods...
.

there should know with the phase is the same ( or much more) as with EQ. the lower the change per octave the less can it hear. and the avantone have a smoother slope. the hifi theory say 1 cycle group delay is good enough. Did other not hear very much with 1/3 cycle delay (120 degree pahse shift) the kick sound not good ?. later i paint a slower slope and it sound better. at sec 50 i use 360 degree phase shift(1 cycle ). I hope then can hear even more phase problem . this is video so you can see me paint and hear. a abx compare is not need because the diffrence so much

 

[fineMen]

I don’t speak German but I know absurd when I see it. At least, that’s what I think I’m seeing.

Le Petite isn't as rediculous at it seems to be. The enormous enclosure drives an equally enormous peak in low frequency response. It is only necessary to supplement it with a amplifying room mode at about 60..70Hz to end up with some bass. The very wide baffle amplifies the lower mids which allows to dismiss an electrical filter. And so forth, .. to some but not even close to full success.

The Avatone Cube is as bad as it gets, if one is longing for a full range speaker. There is no bass at all, the mids are shouty, the treble so much irregular that I cannot even speculate about the subjective effect. Even the directivity presents a challenge.

But for specific tasks it may be useful. As some already stated, it mimics a standard embedded speaker (automobile, TV, .. ), mono. The Le Petite mimics a real hifi-speaker.

 

[Hexspa]

I'm sure I remember reading (could be the Roy Allison pages as regards his speaker designs) that a 'cube' is not a good shape for a speaker box, as internal standing waves and so on put ripples into the upper mid response (this may be for a larger cube shape, I don't know). Even with my ears the way they are now, I still dislike a shrill squeaky presentation (starting with LS3/5A's despite the one note bass thump - yech!), so maybe if the rest of the range is bad, any disadvantage in the cuboid shape is irrelevant?

What I know of standing waves comes from room acoustics. A cube shape simply repeats the same patterns of peaks and nulls at the exact same frequencies and makes that single pattern more extreme. This is in contrast with so-called “golden ratios” - the equivalent of an augmented triad is one of them - which evenly distribute the modes so doubling and tripling is minimized or avoided. Toole argues against golden ratios being important but little old me thinks that the more neutral the modal behavior is (in the sense that it’s evenly spaced), the better a foundation you have to build on. You still need to find the right listening position and the rest but I’m of the opinion that deliberately picking a cube room is a terrible idea.

 

[robwpdx]

Thank you for reviewing these. Very good comments from all.

We had the original Auratones in the 1970s in our studio. Auratone is still around - https://www.auratoneaudio.com/about-us. We never actually used them for our mainline work, which was classical and jazz recording. But they were cheap, and we had them available for recording workshop students to understand and do ear training against our main monitors of the time, JBL 431x, 4320, 4350, and the wood horn 4350-Westlake. The biggest improvements we made were acoustically designed control rooms and 1/3 octave room EQ. To me, before that, the JBLs were fatiguing.

Avantone also makes Yamaha NS-10 reproductions. They are a contender in mid-price microphone manufacturing.

(I would love to have ASR-level microphone testing. I study published microphone frequency and polar data. Microphone reviews have similar flowery subjective language to gear measured by ASR)

As others have mentioned, it sounds like the Avantone product managers and marketers are trying to gild poop while increasing the selling price by adding features. The originals had a very light weight cabinet. Speaker drivers have improved since 1958 - the date of the originals.

Barefoot claims a "mix cube" emulation and perhaps others with DSP based professional studio monitor systems speakers have similar.

The use case was to check a mix or master on a standardized across the industry terrible speaker. It was a stand-in for car speakers, tv speakers, popular low-fi consumer equipment which, of course were not standardized. They were small and used as nearfield monitors when mid- and far-field monitors were the norm. Some studios mixing a lot of pop went even further with a chopped car cabin - seats, dashboard, doors, windshield and part of the roof - and the car speakers of the day, to check mixes.

Mixing and mastering engineers are able to translate in their minds between how their track sounds on their monitors and the various end-consumer listening environment. A lot of checking across monitors during a mix is to find and correct problems. That ability may be overstated, but they do get work and people like their hits.

 

[Hexspa]

Thank you for reviewing these. Very good comments from all.

We had the original Auratones in the 1970s in our studio. Auratone is still around - https://www.auratoneaudio.com/about-us. We never actually used them for our mainline work, which was classical and jazz recording. But they were cheap, and we had them available for recording workshop students to understand and do ear training against our main monitors of the time, JBL 431x, 4320, 4350, and the wood horn 4350-Westlake. The biggest improvements we made were acoustically designed control rooms and 1/3 octave room EQ. To me, before that, the JBLs were fatiguing.

Avantone also makes Yamaha NS-10 reproductions. They are a contender in mid-price microphone manufacturing.

(I would love to have ASR-level microphone testing. I study published microphone frequency and polar data. Microphone reviews have similar flowery subjective language to gear measured by ASR)

As others have mentioned, it sounds like the Avantone product managers and marketers are trying to gild poop while increasing the selling price by adding features. The originals had a very light weight cabinet. Speaker drivers have improved since 1958 - the date of the originals.

Barefoot claims a "mix cube" emulation and perhaps others with DSP based professional studio monitor systems speakers have similar.

The use case was to check a mix or master on a standardized across the industry terrible speaker. It was a stand-in for car speakers, tv speakers, popular low-fi consumer equipment which, of course were not standardized. They were small and used as nearfield monitors when mid- and far-field monitors were the norm. Some studios mixing a lot of pop went even further with a chopped car cabin - seats, dashboard, doors, windshield and part of the roof - and the car speakers of the day, to check mixes.

Mixing and mastering engineers are able to translate in their minds between how their track sounds on their monitors and the various end-consumer listening environment. That ability may be overstated, but they do get work and people like their hits.

If you’ve not heard of Audio Test Kitchen, I suggest checking it out. It’s not quite the ASR of microphones but still rather rigorous and useful nonetheless. Perhaps unsurprisingly, both enterprises are related to Harman by one degree or another.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Thank you for reviewing these. Very good comments from all.

We had the original Auratones in the 1970s in our studio. Auratone is still around - https://www.auratoneaudio.com/about-us. We never actually used them for our mainline work, which was classical and jazz recording. But they were cheap, and we had them available for recording workshop students to understand and do ear training against our main monitors of the time, JBL 431x, 4320, 4350, and the wood horn 4350-Westlake. The biggest improvements we made were acoustically designed control rooms and 1/3 octave room EQ. To me, before that, the JBLs were fatiguing.

Avantone also makes Yamaha NS-10 reproductions. They are a contender in mid-price microphone manufacturing.

(I would love to have ASR-level microphone testing. I study published microphone frequency and polar data. Microphone reviews have similar flowery subjective language to gear measured by ASR)

As others have mentioned, it sounds like the Avantone product managers and marketers are trying to gild poop while increasing the selling price by adding features. The originals had a very light weight cabinet. Speaker drivers have improved since 1958 - the date of the originals.

Barefoot claims a "mix cube" emulation and perhaps others with DSP based professional studio monitor systems speakers have similar.

The use case was to check a mix or master on a standardized across the industry terrible speaker. It was a stand-in for car speakers, tv speakers, popular low-fi consumer equipment which, of course were not standardized. They were small and used as nearfield monitors when mid- and far-field monitors were the norm. Some studios mixing a lot of pop went even further with a chopped car cabin - seats, dashboard, doors, windshield and part of the roof - and the car speakers of the day, to check mixes.

Mixing and mastering engineers are able to translate in their minds between how their track sounds on their monitors and the various end-consumer listening environment. A lot of checking across monitors during a mix is to find and correct problems. That ability may be overstated, but they do get work and people like their hits.

The thing I've wondered about the original Auratones is why a sealed cube. The whole list of things they were supposed to stand in for were mostly open backed speakers inside an open back TV or radio cabinet or mounted on a automobile panel so on and so forth. Nearly none of them were sealed. The NS10 I sort of get, because it was fairly similar to common home stereo speakers of no particular distinction if one had a stereo with separate speakers.

Maybe someone has already posted this in this now overly long thread. It is some measurements of a 36 common studio monitors including the Auratone 5C and the Yamaha NS10. The measures are similar to what you could do with REW though done in 2001 with some other software I presume. Also done in an anechoic chamber by the University of Southhampton. This pdf is hosted by Sound On Sound.

https://dt7v1i9vyp3mf.cloudfront.net/assetlibrary/n/ns10m.pdf

 

[tomtoo]

I don’t speak German but I know absurd when I see it. At least, that’s what I think I’m seeing.

Its just how roomy small fullrange speaker sound. Fast transients. Ultra low wight membrane. I dont know? Looks like there are some fans. While i miss some bass?

 

[RobL]

I'm sure I remember reading (could be the Roy Allison pages as regards his speaker designs) that a 'cube' is not a good shape for a speaker box, as internal standing waves and so on put ripples into the upper mid response (this may be for a larger cube shape, I don't know). Even with my ears the way they are now, I still dislike a shrill squeaky presentation (starting with LS3/5A's despite the one note bass thump - yech!), so maybe if the rest of the range is bad, any disadvantage in the cuboid shape is irrelevant?

There is a similarity in the FR to the square box (E) in Olson’s work:

 

[Hexspa]

There is a similarity to the square box (E) in Olson’s work:
View attachment 271651

Is A a sphere? Why don’t we have mixspheres?

 

[dasdoing]

The thing I've wondered about the original Auratones is why a sealed cube. The whole list of things they were supposed to stand in for were mostly open backed speakers inside an open back TV or radio cabinet or mounted on a automobile panel so on and so forth. Nearly none of them were sealed.

As has allready been said a couple of times....the "simulate a crap speaker" thing doesn't make any sense. it really was about the limited frequency range.
why buy a special "simulator" if you could get crap speakers for free (back then everybody had old crap speakers lying around)

 

[mhardy6647]

Is A a sphere? Why don’t we have mixspheres?

We have Soundspheres.

(random internet photo of a Soundsphere)

Omnidirectional Sphere Loudspeaker Systems | Soundsphere

SoundSphere creates advanced omnidirectional speakers in the audio industry. Shop hemispherical and full-range speaker and loudspeaker systems.

soundsphere.mseaudio.com

Our church used one of these for sound reinforcement for quite a while. It was terrible (although in fairness, the sanctuary itself was a master class in really poor design -- both aesthetically and acoustically).

 

[Blumlein 88]

There is a similarity in the FR to the square box (E) in Olson’s work:
View attachment 271651

I was thinking about this illustration yesterday. They should have used an end mounted cylinder. It would have been more badness for more goodness.

 

[mhardy6647]

I was thinking about this illustration yesterday. They should have used an end mounted cylinder. It would have been more badness for more goodness.

There was a time...

(Random eBAY auction images)

or more recently...

Thanks, JVC.

 

[bennybbbx]

there is a german text use google translate to read. he compare availible clones and original. This guy write that the original version sound much better. https://www.amazona.de/vergleichstest-auratone-5c-avantone-mixcubes-behringer-c50a/5/

 

[bennybbbx]

Is A a sphere? Why don’t we have mixspheres?

there is reckon S 300 spehre coaxial and not expensive https://reckhorn.com/en/speaker/speaker/56/s-300-satelliten-speaker-1-piece?c=115

 

[badspeakerdesigner]

now you have to show lol

I will, I was gonna try and clean it up a little more but I came down with something and have been stuck in bed for the past 4 days. My ears just don't work right now.

I would also have asked the vocalist to redo the takes, the more you work on them the more issues you hear, lots of bad splicing and transitions that should at least be separate takes. Believe it or not this is on the better side of what I get sent most of the time.

 

[DSJR]

There is a similarity in the FR to the square box (E) in Olson’s work:
View attachment 271651

Thanks for this post above. I'm sure this may be where I got the idea about cuboid boxes from as it looks so familiar...

 

[dasdoing]

90ies car subwoofers looked like this, too. no clue why

I would also have asked the vocalist to redo the takes, the more you work on them the more issues you hear, lots of bad splicing and transitions that should at least be separate takes.

she probably recorded that at home. maybe using a phone even.

Believe it or not this is on the better side of what I get sent most of the time.

I totaly believe that. but there must be a limit to what you accept, no? else people looking at your work think that it was you that messed up

 

[ctrl]

Please use an online translation program, it is hardly possible for me to understand the meaning of your sentences.

the lower the change per octave the less can it hear. and the avantone have a smoother slope.

A flat frequency response roll-off in the low frequency range is better than a steep drop-off, that is true. But even better is a linear frequency response (constant phase). Best without additional excess phase by filters like for example around a crossover frequency.

The CubeMix speaker shows a high pass behavior below 1kHz and a low pass behavior above 2kHz, so it works like a bandpass around the 1-2kHz frequency range.
This leads to a relatively high group delay in the range 100-500Hz.

A good 2-way loudspeaker has a linear FR in this frequency range and shows only a small off-set in the GD depending on the crossover frequency and filter order. Therefore the GD of a 2-way speaker in the important frequency range 100-500Hz can be better than that of the MixCube - of course the group delay of the 2-way LS is higher below 100Hz, but the MixCube does not reproduce this range at all and in combination with a subwoofer the GD would be similar or higher than with the 2-way LS.

If one would (and could) adjust the FR of the MixCube via EQ, the GD would of course also massively improve.

The only price to pay for this is a higher GD in the lowest low frequency range.

the hifi theory say 1 cycle group delay is good enough. Did other not hear very much with 1/3 cycle delay (120 degree pahse shift) the kick sound not good ?. later i paint a slower slope and it sound better. at sec 50 i use 360 degree phase shift(1 cycle ).

You do realize that you can't just add a delay to a signal and then play or mix that with the original signal.
You have to convolve the original signal with the appropriate filter (for example LR 4th Order at 100Hz) and use these two files in the ABX software.

The differences are audible with some practice, but not so big that you can do without an ABX test - especially when using LS like the MixCube the distinction could be difficult.

 

[badspeakerdesigner]

I totaly believe that. but there must be a limit to what you accept, no? else people looking at your work think that it was you that messed up

The totally unworkable stuff usually never gets sent, because those folks get weeded out pretty quickly just by talking to them.