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Barefoot Footprint 01 Review (Studio Monitor)

Pearljam5000

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Thank you kindly. I'm guessing the distortion is from the choice of paper cones - which, to be honest, seemed like kind of an odd choice for a studio monitor. But eh.
The Genelec Ones also use paper drivers (unfortunately) but obviously my only concern is about durability not SQ
 

H-713

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Thank you kindly. I'm guessing the distortion is from the choice of paper cones - which, to be honest, seemed like kind of an odd choice for a studio monitor. But eh.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with paper cones- there are lots of excellent paper-cone drivers from the likes of Volt, Seas, Scanspeak, SB Acoustics / Satori and plenty of others. There are some really dumpy paper cone woofers on the market as well. It all depends on how it's designed.

There is no perfect cone material. For example, metal cone drivers tend to have breakup issues that need to be resolved in the crossover, and depending on how it's done it can be problematic. Paper happens to have reasonably good characteristics for a speaker cone.
 

Frank Dernie

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The Genelec Ones also use paper drivers (unfortunately) but obviously my only concern is about durability not SQ
My experience has been the paper part has usually lasted well, the problems have all been with failure of foam surrounds. I am also slightly suspicious that the damping layer painted onto some paper drivers may not keep its properties with age.
 

Ilkless

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My experience has been the paper part has usually lasted well, the problems have all been with failure of foam surrounds. I am also slightly suspicious that the damping layer painted onto some paper drivers may not keep its properties with age.

Also some tacky coatings tend to get lint and dust stuck on it. Will look hideous and aged badly a few years in.
 

BDWoody

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Thanks to @amirm for the review, and to @direstraitsfan98 for generously sending it in!

This site has the best membership...
 
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peniku8

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Thank you kindly. I'm guessing the distortion is from the choice of paper cones - which, to be honest, seemed like kind of an odd choice for a studio monitor. But eh.
Distortion can have a lot of sources and the cone material would be one of the least of my worries. Reinforced/treated paper cones are technically one of the best widely used materials at absorbing distortion (well damped), whereas hard cones exhibit much higer distortion spikes (but also much narrower), but push those way out of their operating range, which means in the end you might end up with overall lower distortion.
In addition to that, the mid looks like a Dayton RS midwoofer to me, which have aluminum cones.
 

mrmoizy

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This tweeter: https://www.parts-express.com/Peerless-XT25SC90-04-1-Dual-Ring-Radiator-Tweeter-264-1014

This mid-range: https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-RS100-8-4-Reference-Full-Range-Driver-295-352

I can't quite peg the woofers though. Overall, the retail cost seems very expensive, likely the cost is due to the low sales volumes and low manufacturing scale. I would expect these to be priced at $1000/pair, if not less.

In DIY land, it's become a lot easier to get a microphone and take some measurements and start building a speaker. I imagine there are some who spend time at it, get good, and then think they can market a product. This site has taught me that good sound, especially in far-field, at-home audiophile settings, isn't so easily achieved.

I don't know a thing about this company, just my impressions from looking at the product and seeing the review.
 

Francis Vaughan

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Paper is a very big subject. There is so much that can be done with paper. Control of stiffness, density, internal damping, possible geometries and the like are very wide. Some of the best drivers made at any price are paper. In pro sound it is ubiquitous. The JBL M2 is a good start. The cone material itself doesn't add much to the distortion profile, it is more important for resonances and final breakup of the cone. Distortion tends to be controlled by non-linearities in the motor and suspension. If we called it random mat composite would that help?

Tooling for paper is however expensive. Tools cope with much heat and pressure. Formed plastic and even metals are cheaper to tool up for. So you want to be making a lot of drivers if you go paper.

Like I wrote earlier, the drivers chosen are not poor drivers. They are generally considered class leaders in the value for money arena, and see use in a lot of speakers. What I find odd is that the Neumann KH-310 is only about 10% more expensive (street) and whilst it also pillages the Tymphany catalogue, it uses drivers that cost about double. Of course it only has one woofer, so perhaps that is even. This speaker seems to be a generation behind in things like directivity control. It would be hard to imagine choosing it over a KH-310.
 

Pearljam5000

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Also some tacky coatings tend to get lint and dust stuck on it. Will look hideous and aged badly a few years in.
I wish ge
This tweeter: https://www.parts-express.com/Peerless-XT25SC90-04-1-Dual-Ring-Radiator-Tweeter-264-1014

This mid-range: https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-RS100-8-4-Reference-Full-Range-Driver-295-352

I can't quite peg the woofers though. Overall, the retail cost seems very expensive, likely the cost is due to the low sales volumes and low manufacturing scale. I would expect these to be priced at $1000/pair, if not less.

In DIY land, it's become a lot easier to get a microphone and take some measurements and start building a speaker. I imagine there are some who spend time at it, get good, and then think they can market a product. This site has taught me that good sound, especially in far-field, at-home audiophile settings, isn't so easily achieved.

I don't know a thing about this company, just my impressions from looking at the product and seeing the review.
Now* that's * expensive :cool:
Screenshot_20210519-153602.jpg
 

617

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Meh. Seem a bit pricey for the performance (yes, nearfield use).

I agree. Shrug panther for sure. Not broken but meh.

The directivity doesn't matter as much in the near field but the axial response is pretty mediocre for this segment. The chief appeal of this speaker seems to be that it is a cheap way to get barefoot speakers, which otherwise cost $$$ and are somewhat fashionable in the recording industry these days.

I will say it is impressive how conventional the speaker's response is given the side mounted woofers.

Regarding the drivers...using off the shelf drivers in an odd product like this is not an ideal choice. They're not bad drivers really, maybe a bit cheap for how much the speaker costs, but this is an unusual speaker and to use off the shelf parts and then minimal dsp is sort of a compromise.

Also can we dispense with the myth of paper cones being cheap or undesirable? Paper composites are used by every pro sound woofer in existence playing at 200db outdoors for years. Scanspeak makes paper cones which set the bar for distortion and controlled break up and have been doing so for many decades.
 

Somafunk

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Hmm?, and there was myself seriously considering the footprint 02's for my desktop use, think I can strike them from my list and go with my first choice of Dynaudio LYD 48's instead.
 

Mosquito

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This is a review and detailed measurements of the Barefoot Footprint 01 powered studio monitor (speaker). It is on kind loan from a member in Canada who sent it to me as fair bit of expense. The Footprint 01 costs US $3,950 a pair. Seems likes distribution is a bit limited as I did not find it at some of the major online retailers.

The Footprint 01 differs from its competitors in a number of ways starting with the "PA" enclosure material:

View attachment 130597

It is super dense material though so other than looking industrial, it seems like a decent choice.

Another departure is dual side-mounted woofers which are crossed at 250 Hz:
View attachment 130599

This is a common technique in subwoofers and larger tower speakers to take advantage of vibration cancellation. It worked as combined with the dense cabinet, I could only feel some vibration at the center of the cabinet and the back metal side only.

Note that despite being an active DSP speaker, that only applies to the woofer to mid-range transition (and bass response). The midrange and tweeter are driven by one amplifier so the crossover is passive! Seems like the wrong tradeoff to me as I rather get the midrange to tweeter right than the woofers which get messed with in the room anyway (so need external DSP for correction). But maybe they know something we don't.

Here is the back panel which departs yet again from the norm:
View attachment 130600

Notice the absence of universal dip switches to tailor the tonality of the speaker. It is replaced with a rotary control (not shown) that mimics a few other speakers/target responses (including distortion???). We also lack digital inputs which at this price range should probably be there.

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Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of around 1% except for around 4 kHz where it reached about 2% error.

Testing temperature was around 65 degrees F.

Reference axis for measurements was the LED light just above the tweeter as the manual instructs. I actually ran it both at this setting and center of the tweeter and there was no difference to speak of in the measurements.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

Barefoot Footprint 01 Measurements
As usual we start with our spin frequency response measurements:

View attachment 130601

As we see, the passive crossover is not optimal with a prominent resonance at 1.3 khz surrounded by other roughness. Company literature from what I recall talks about uniformity of dispersion but that clearly is not the case with the tweeter getting beamy proportional to frequency to far greater level than I have seen in many speakers much less monitors. This directivity loss is seen in company measurements as well but an entirely different view is shown of the on-axis response:

index.php


Their vertical scale is zoomed in even more than mine yet they show a remarkably flat response. The explanation may be them using a warehouse with a speaker raised from the floor for measurements which most likely includes some manual tweaks.

Our early window reflections (for far field listening) shows the impact of the drooping side radiation from the tweeter:
View attachment 130603

Combining both, far-field predicted in-room response doesn't look good:

View attachment 130604

Result will be somewhat boomy sound with some strangeness around 1 to 3 kHz.

Beamwidth plot shows how the woofer is getting directional at 250 Hz before hand off to the mid-range which is not:

View attachment 130606

And of course the tweeter's beam width gets narrower with frequency in textbook manner:
View attachment 130605

The vertical directivity is no better or worse than any other:

View attachment 130607

Near-field response of each driver shows a mid-range that doesn't have a flat response which a DSP could have fixed:

View attachment 130608

I was surprised bass distortion was not better than it is:

View attachment 130612

View attachment 130613

Waterfall shows some resonances:

View attachment 130609

Barefoot Footprint 01 Listening Tests
I assumed the inclusion of the dual beefy woofers would make for a good far-field listening so I placed the Footprint 01 on my usual stand in my 2-channel listening setup and started to listen. I was mistaken. There was little that I liked about the sound. It was somewhat boomy and I did not like the sound in mid-range. I brought out EQ tools and corrected what I could but the end, I was not satisfied at all. I was also surprised that I could get the clipping light to come on before a level that I thought was too high. Fortunately it was not indicative of massive distortion so more loudness could be had.

A couple of times I heard some spatial effects that were unusual. Hard to describe but the background male vocals seemed to come from behind the front baffle. My guess is that it may be due to the side woofers playing these notes due to their high crossover point. I put my ear in front of the woofers though and could not confirm this. So take it for what it is as the saying goes.

I brought the speaker to my workstation area but it was too big to put on the side of my monitor. So I put it on top of my test instrument rack to my right. 5 seconds of playback showed remarkably good sound! Track after track was enjoyable to listen to with the EQ I had developed in the fair field:

View attachment 130611

One big difference here was listening level so maybe distortion was playing a role. Another major difference is activation of room modes which would be wildly different in the new setup than old. And maybe he effect of the side-firing woofers was different.

Conclusions
The Barefoot Footprint 01 charts its own way with a studio monitor that is not architected the same as its competitors. Some of these departures are working in their favor, others are not. I suspect some of the flaws here is their improper measurement scheme that is not allowing them to see the flaws in the execution of this speaker. $1000 spent on an NFS measurement would do them wonders instead of using semi-DIY schemes as they seem to be deploying.

Anyway, near-field performance is very good with a bit of EQ. Far-field use is more questionable and likely requires proper in-room measurements to correct for all bass modes and lots of time spent on positioning due to poor directivity.

I am going to put the Barefoot Footprint 01 on my recommended list for near-field listening.

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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
"$1000 spent on an NFS measurement would do them wonders instead of using semi-DIY schemes as they seem to be deploying."
I believe You forgot a couple of zeros on that price tag :))
 

FeddyLost

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It's the cheap solution for wannabes who seen big Barefoots in studio of some star but have only 4 grands.
I see no other reasons to force twin opposite woofers play up to 250 Hz. Also, passive xover could be at least corrected via DSP to get at least exemplary flat on-axis sound.
It's not very bad speaker itself, but in this price and type bracket there are lot of competitors.
 

FrantzM

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An “obvious” competitor:JBL 705p. It has everything this one lacks: DSP, EQ, digital input, Controlled Directivity, etc.
Price is about the same.
 
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