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BIC America DV62si Bookshelf Speaker Review

AndrewDavis

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There used to be “a guy” who used to modify these speakers for a small fee who had quite a following. I’m not sure of the details, but the sizzling highs were apparently tamed. Not sure there would have been much hope for directivity issues. If anyone out there has a pair of the modded ones, it would make for an interesting comparison.
I .

That's very cool. Like the T50rp of the speaker category.
 

b1daly

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Thanks for the review as always and yes, those customers review are mostly useless and just confuses you :)

And you may have missed something here... You can't have a warm sounding speaker here considering the ferrofuild cooled tweeter ;P
Really, is harshness a known attribute of ferrofluid tweeters? I’ve been rambling on about how much I like ADS speakers which do have ferrofluid tweeters. I’ve been getting the drivers rebuilt with new ferrofluid which smoothed then out a lot. (With the original tweeters the high end sounded almost distorted. ) They are a bit bright to my ear though, so I usually roll the highs off a bit, or notch filter if I have the EQ.

My experience with these drivers has convinced me that old tweeters with original ferrofluid a probably compromised.
 

Dennis Murphy

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Yeah I just found that double checking. Terrible.

The quality of the drivers is usually more important than the number of crossover components, at least up to a point. I had trouble making out what was on this Xover board, but it looks like it has an air core woofer inductor, a resistor, and probably a tweeter capacitor hiding in there someplace. That's better than DynAudi;o uses on their $800/pr Emit M10 monitor, which has only an iron core inductor on the woofer, and just a cap and resistor on the tweeter. The resulting frequency response is quite smooth, however, since the drivers are top grade. The classic Large Advent and Dynaco A25 speakers didn't even have a high pass filter on the woofer.
 
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The quality of the drivers is usually more important than the number of crossover components, at least up to a point. I had trouble making out what was on this Xover board, but it looks like it has an air core woofer inductor, a resistor, and probably a tweeter capacitor hiding in there someplace. That's better than DynAudi;o uses on their $800/pr Emit M10 monitor, which has only an iron core inductor on the woofer, and just a cap and resistor on the tweeter. The resulting frequency response is quite smooth, however, since the drivers are top grade. The classic Large Advent and Dynaco A25 speakers didn't even have a high pass filter on the woofer.

As always, great points.
 

Robbo99999

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I have added the BIC Venturi DV62si to Loudspeaker Explorer where it can be compared to other speakers.

Listening window consistency is spectacularly bad, perhaps the worst among all ASR reviews thus far. Just moving from -30° horizontal to +10° vertical will result in a mind-boggling +17 dB difference at 4 kHz:

View attachment 75160

Good luck trying to EQ this! Any correction you come up with will require you put your head in a vice.
Your advice you give in each review re Listening Window and speaker placement/angling is very useful, it means people don't have to fully understand or interpret the graphs to work out how to get the best out of their speakers, thanks!
 

whazzup

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Always find it irritating that 'experts' claim a product isn't good when they're using it in the wrong way. The speakers are clearly designed to fire into the walls. :D
 

solderdude

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There is a whole ear canal/ear shape attribute to headphone measurements that isn't there with speakers.

The graphs of equally enjoyed speakers and headphones will look nothing alike.

Unless the plots already take this into account (are compensated) which is the case for the linked plots.
You certainly can't compare raw HATS measurements or Tyll's plots to Klippel measurements though.
HRTF differs from person to person in a bigger way with speakers, room and positioning than with headphones.
This is discussed in other threads though and has no place here.
 

QMuse

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Good luck trying to EQ this! Any correction you come up with will require you put your head in a vice.

Here.. What do you think of it? :)

Corrected estimated in-room response:
Capture.JPG


Corrected LW, ER and SP:
Capture1.JPG


Original estimated in-room response vs corrected:

Capture2.JPG


P.S. filter requires 3dB of attenuation
 

edechamps

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Here.. What do you think of it? :)

My point was, no matter how much EQ you do, you can't get around the fact that just changing the listening angle slightly will result in extreme variations in the direct sound frequency response. The speaker's response is highly inconsistent even within the listening window.
 

QMuse

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My point was, no matter how much EQ you do, you can't get around the fact that just changing the listening angle slightly will result in extreme variations in the direct sound frequency response. The speaker's response is highly inconsistent even within the listening window.

Well sure. But on the other hand they are small speakers made for near field listening. In the scenario where they are sitting at your working table, say 1m from your ears pointed directly at them listening angle won't change much as long as you're sitting in the chair without moving around too much. In that scenario this kind of EQ would help a great deal compared to the original.
 

maty

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You can modify the frequency response but not the drivers / loudspeaker distortion. At 86 dB ...

index.php


If it is to listen to modern recordings, so badly produced in their majority (commercial music), nothing to object about the distortion.
 

QMuse

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You can modify the frequency response but not the drivers / loudspeaker distortion. At 86 dB ...

index.php


If it is to listen to modern recordings, so badly produced in their majority (commercial music), nothing to object about the distortion.

This is a $120 dekstop speaker and this kind of distortion, which doesn't even raise significantly at 96dB, is not problematic. Neither is directivity.

Main problem of this speaker is uneven frequency response which results in horribly bright tonality and that can be fixed with EQ.
 

maty

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It was intended to be a general comment, for those who believe that with just EQ almost everything is solved.
 

QMuse

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Corrected horizontal reflections:

Capture.JPG


Horizontal reflections, corrected vs original:

Capture1.JPG
 

wwenze

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Really, is harshness a known attribute of ferrofluid tweeters? I’ve been rambling on about how much I like ADS speakers which do have ferrofluid tweeters. I’ve been getting the drivers rebuilt with new ferrofluid which smoothed then out a lot. (With the original tweeters the high end sounded almost distorted. ) They are a bit bright to my ear though, so I usually roll the highs off a bit, or notch filter if I have the EQ.

My experience with these drivers has convinced me that old tweeters with original ferrofluid a probably compromised.

I though most tweeters are ferrofluid nowadays
 

anmpr1

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Well, I learned something. Not about the speaker, but about BIC. I didn't think they were still around. I recall the splash they made with their turntables in the '70s. Belt drive record changers designed using about half the parts of the typical Garrard idlers. And what a name--British Industries Corp selling US made record players. Now it's BIC America selling loudspeakers made in the Orient.
 

DSJR

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I can't wait for the inevitable annihilation of the 'BBC' LS3/5A should Amir ever get a pair to test! They make these (very) cheapies look smooth! Check the Stereophile tests of the current Falcon version with re-manufactured 'original drivers' as evidence ;)
 
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