Buchardt S400 Speaker Review

[amirm]

Also, look back at the annotation in the CSD... notice it shifting from 400hz to 500hz (follow the x-axis lines; the mode shifts frequencies)

This is a gate response so low frequency resolution is rather poor. I think what you are seeing is that there are two trails but one finishes sooner than the other and hence the pattern looks to be shifting.

But yes, as you know, I have never been a fan of CSD/waterfall graphs.....

 

[jtwrace]

Dear Amir.

First of all thank you for taking the time to do the review. The results really shocked me as you can imagine. I was pretty confident with this review as, from a science point of view we know the S400 looks very good which is why we dare to share so detailed measurements on our website as well, we are pretty proud of them even though they are not perfect. Why our data look so different to yours needs to be investigated, its especially odd as we both use the Klippel NFS….

Looking past these differences, I think it's very important to the readers to know that using such advanced equipment as the Klippel NFS, really allow all to look deep into the rapid hole here where many manufactures don't want you to look. It starts to show how many “issues” we deal with in speaker designs (especially passive speakers), and showing it like this, pointing at all issues can make nearly all passive speakers look bad. The Klippel NFS which is arguably the most powerful tools in the speakers development business today, it can give us an insane amount of resolution to our work when designing speakers. I think it's fantastic to utilize this to really take speakers under the loop and showcasing all the potential compromises the designer had to make in the given design. Transparency is fantastic so keep that up. What i'm afraid of, is that your review here completely end up being a tunnel vision hunt for issues and flaws, without giving a second thought to what the manufacturer was trying to achieve with the given design.


Could we have designed them to perform better on paper? sure. Are there better measuring options out there? for sure. Price as an indicator that more expensive speakers mesures better is rarely the case. If making a speaker that looks perfect on paper was our goal, we would have done that, and it could be done much cheaper than the S400 as well. But let's take a step back and ask the question on what we wanted to achieve with the S400?

Now as many know, i'm no engineer, and i'm not the guy that does all hard work to make our speakers perform like they do. What I do is to come up with the design concepts which sadly end up giving me a lot of sleepless nights as I just can't stop thinking about speaker designs!! S400 was a personal dream project to make an all in one compact speaker, a speaker that tries to move just slightly on what people would think possible for a speaker of this size. A speaker that can work well in difficult rooms, at difficult placements. Uses all high quality parts (even in the crossover for a product at this price), but again as small as possible and with a minimalistic scandinavian design approach to it. It's aimed for the customer that value visuals and size, but still want something that has performance as its first priority. And a design that can actually stand by its own without the use of a subwoofer (although adding subs can be great!). It's much to ask from a small speaker, not something I have seen been done elsewhere to the same degree as the S400 does it. It's still not perfect, nothing is. But sadly a large chunk of what we tried to achieve is more of less overlooked in this review which I think is a shame. Now you can argue that this is not your area as this is mainly a science based review where measurements is the center of attention which i completely understand.

To the mention on the cabinet. Yeah its correct, there are no bracings, it's a tiny cabinet and we did a lot of testing on this and found it not to be necessary. If the cabinet was larger, then we would have had bracings in there for sure (like the A500). You can knock on them and think they might need it, but in practice they don't, and we have never had a single complaint about audible resonances from the cabinet either. Since we can't replicate these issues you are seeing and hearing, we would need to look for a possible issue that might be related to your pair, or maybe even the single speaker you measured on, I'm currently waiting for the engineer to give me some answers to what these artifacts could be that show up on your measurements but now ours.

I see that many question the break in importance of the S400. The S400 is a rare example on how important break in can be on some speakers. Now i know where you stand in this. But here I have to say that it really comes down to the woofers design especially. When we get samples from our supplier (SB Acoustics in this case) we get measurements with the samples units before and after break in (which they do on samples). For these woofers, there is significant changes in multiple parameters. So yes, for the S400 its important which i think all my customer base can agree on


I can't stop to wonder when i read through the review why there seems to be an unnecessary focus to highlight only the negatives, there is really not much positive in here which is the complete opposite to what nearly all other have to say about the S400 around the world, so what happened? One thing is for sure, this surely will start, and have already started a big debate online, so it's surely a successful review considering the views and attention it gets. We have been so fortunate and lucky to have created a product that have been highly praised to the point of hyped. With hype comes extreme attention to them that goes against the stream. Has the s400 been over hyped? I don’t know, but my job is basically telling interested people to still have realistic expectations from this shoebox sized speaker can do. Luckily they have exceeded many people's expectations, otherwise it would never had become a hyped product in the first place right?. Even though this is not the first negative review, I think it would be the most popular as it's SO negative.

It's clear that the sound signature might not be to your taste, that's completely okay as it's impossible to create something that suits all peoples taste. We aimed for a pretty transparent and neutral tuning, which compared to many other brands does come across as slightly warm as we don't follow the trend of the extra focus on the treble. It's all personal preference of course and clearly your listing test are strongly influenced by your taste which did not fall into the favor of the S400 unfortunately.



Lastly I need to get something off my chest that is a bit more on the human and personal side of things. Please don't take this the wrong way, it's more of a general theme towards many reviewers out there. I personally think that as a reviewer, you do have responsibilities. Reviewers are key in especially the audio business. They can have more power than what a million dollars in advertisement can have so it's an important task, trust me, i would piss my pants sitting an evaluating people's work everyday It's important to remember that there are real people behind these companies, people that have given their lives to creating something that people hopefully like. Many of us are smaller niche companies that rely on reviews and cross their fingers every time a review sample is shipped out the door. It's a huge responsibility to hand over and I think it's VERY important that a reviewer can be subjective in reviews, set aside personal taste in some areas. Only reviewing under what you think and feel is correct for you alone, without any thought to other people's opinions and taste, especially on the subject of sound which is so subjective, then I think there’s an important part missing.

I think most that know, have heard or read anything about Buchardt Audio would find this review unnecessary harsh. I'm not stubborn, or completely ignorant to criticism, in fact I welcome it as it makes our future designs much better which are based very much on the feedback to what we could do better. This is what I love about being so close to the end user and the community. You have way more power than I have in this business, I hope you can take some of my "defence" as positive feedback as well And I hope you would take our next product in for review.

All the best Mads Buchardt
CEO Buchardt Audio

This is by far the BEST response I've ever read from any manufacturer that had a review written that wasn't favorable. Further, I had the S400's in my room next to my JBL M2's and was blown away by them. Not saying that there is something wrong with all the variables but I do agree that this needs to be investigated further since @Mads Buchardt is using the same equipment. Whether it's a setting to the Klippel software/hardware, defective speaker it must be investigated properly as Buchardt is clearly into the science without pulling the wool over our eyes (Mads, don't make me eat these words).

I was a fan before this review and am still based on Mads response. We as an audio group NEED more designers like Mads and his team and less like many others. Support the science from a manufacture who wants to investigate and figure out the delta between tests!

 

[Daverz]

Based on Amir's previous subjective comments in his speaker reviews and my own experience with the S400, I expected that they might be too laid back for his taste. I think some readers may be taking his subjective comments too seriously.

The important thing is having the Klippel data, and on two different axes no less.

 

[jtwrace]

Based on Amir's previous subjective comments in his speaker reviews and my own experience with the S400, I expected that they might be too laid back for his taste. I think some readers may be taking his subjective comments too seriously.

The important thing is having the Klippel data, and on two different axes no less.

Regardless of what I or anyone else thinks subjectively, The data between Buchardt and Amir should match within the repeatability of the unit if they have both been calibrated etc.

 

[xarkkon]

Im not applying that at all and hope it does not come across like that?. That Amir do not like them is what it is. I just hope that we can impress him more with the next mode

That's awesome! My apologies for reading too much into it as well. Forums aren't great for expressing fully oneself, that and cross cultural context can distort meanings. Hence I thought it would be better to ask and understand better

To clarify too, I am a happy owner of a pair of the S400. They aren't perfect by any means (as Amir has shown here), but they fit exactly the use case I needed for that specific room (big sound, good upper bass). Funnily, they were competing against the Revel M16 that Amir likes so much. I did prefer the Revel price to performance, but your speakers won because of my more niche use case... that, and the Revel seller didn't let me take a home pair to test over a month! Heh.

If I've got itchy diy fingers and wanted to improve the cabinet resonance, would it make sense for me to open up the speakers and shove a dowel in there?

 

[MZKM]

Ok. This assumption that the 520hz peak is enclosure resonance doesn't really jive with me. I am not saying that it's incorrect. I'm just saying, based on the data at hand, I don't think that's enough to make the determination.

And the annotation in the CSD result is misleading. Let's look at it:

View attachment 60413


If the 520hz peak in FR (not the CSD) is cabinet resonance as annotated in the CSD then what is the ~340hz trail? What about the ~250hz trail? Where is the dilineation made? Also, look back at the annotation in the CSD... notice it shifting from 400hz to 500hz (follow the x-axis lines; the mode shifts frequencies). And what's the additional, NEW blip showing up at ~ 560hz? And the same shifting of trail shows up in around 600hz. I can't recall the last time I really analyzed a CSD but the shifting of the trail in frequency is really curious, at least to me.

I annotated it to be more clear:
View attachment 60417

Also, I wish it were possible to normalize the CSD, that way any peaks in the response don’t look like ringing (if you look at time 0, those trails have a peak). I too though have never seen trails shift.

 

[richard12511]

not recommending a speaker that looks to measure well seems blasphemous.

I think the recommendation is a more personal take(as if a friend was asking) and thus it's based more on the listening test at the end, and not so much the measurements. From that angle it makes sense, would you recommend a speaker that you didn't like the sound of just because it measures well? Also important to note price, and these are somewhat costly.

These do measure pretty well, though. Even if the measurements are slightly different than the manufacturers, they're still some of the best measurements we've seen from passive speakers.

 

[xarkkon]

Hi Mads. My natural reaction is usually to defend a review but that is usually the case when manufacturers complain about objective measurements. Those are immutable so I don't accept that kind of criticism. Here, my final recommendation and thoughts were motivated fair bit by subjective impressions. Since that data is inherently less reliable, I think I erred as you mentioned. So I updated the review conclusion with this note:

EDIT: on further reflection, I think I did not do a good job of highlighting what the Buchardt S400 does well. And that is excellence in a lot of the objective measurements. Indeed its performance there is better than some speakers I have liked and recommended! As usual, objective data is much more reliable than any subjective impressions I have of a speaker. So I would say put the S400 on your target list of speakers to evaluate as it certainly passes the bar of being objectively good.

Thanks again for the kind loan and participation in the forum.

Great response Amir! You're sticking to your subjective review, which is absolutely the right thing to do. Yet you're clarifying that DESPITE that subjective opinion, there are other things in the data to note. Hat tipped and kudos!

 

[hardisj]

I think the recommendation is a more personal take(as if a friend was asking) and thus it's based more on the listening test at the end, and not so much the measurements. From that angle it makes sense, would you recommend a speaker that you didn't like the sound of just because it measures well? Also important to note price, and these are somewhat costly.

These do measure pretty well, though. Even if the measurements are slightly different than the manufacturers, they're still some of the best measurements we've seen from passive speakers.

Yea, but that really seems counterproductive to the goal of the site and why Amir paid so much money to purchase the NFS.

Essentially, if we take your viewpoint (and I do agree that is how it is received by myself), you can boil it down to:
Friend: I saw you tested the Buchardt S400. What did you think?
Reviewer: Well, objectively, it is really quite good. On par with some of the better items I tested. But, subjectively, meh.
Friend: Wow. So how do you reconcile that difference?
Reviewer: ---
Other Friends: Here's my take...
(insert forum discussion)


And, again, I don't think subjective reviews are bad. It's just a tricky place to position yourself when the main goal is to provide objective data. It almost seems counterproductive. I know how I plan to address my own objective/subjective reviews but I can't say what would be best for this forum or what Amir should do. I think this review is a case where it shows the rather stark difference between "measures good but I didn't like it". Not sure we've run in to that before and thus, why this "should or shouldn't he" consideration is getting so much attention.

 

[wwenze]

I think the recommendation is a more personal take(as if a friend was asking) and thus it's based more on the listening test at the end, and not so much the measurements. From that angle it makes sense, would you recommend a speaker that you didn't like the sound of just because it measures well? Also important to note price, and these are somewhat costly.

These do measure pretty well, though. Even if the measurements are slightly different than the manufacturers, they're still some of the best measurements we've seen from passive speakers.

My ₹0.02 - over the years my position changed from a) measurements don't matter, to b) measurements matter, to c) measurements don't matter. However the first "measurements don't matter" and the second one is different. The latter has accepted the fact that due to room shortcomings and personal preferences, the best sounding speaker is never the one which measures well in b) based on common measurement methods. However at c), you know what the measurements mean, their shortcomings and how to work around it, to get the sound you want that is going to be more awesome than those who do subjective listening at a). And you still need to get pass b) to do that.

So to answer that question, would I recommend a speaker that I didn't like the sound of just because it measures well? I would.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Not sure about Amir’s test rig, but using REW to create impedance graphs is done at a rather low output level. Despite this, from experience, I can tell you it is very good at finding higher Q resonances from drivers, cabinets and ports. Since Amir’s S400 impedance plot appears clean, it does not seem the 500 Hz resonance is inherent in the speaker parts.

@hardisj have you tried dialing up the suspect frequency? Since it is a definitive frequency anomaly, it is usually quite audible when played as a pure tone. Might help us isolate.

One other data point, I created a Bassbox Pro model of the S400 using the stock SB17 and the stock SB passive radiator and I did not replicate the 500 Hz fr fluctuation in the model from @BYRTT Hopefully when they can rejoin us, maybe we can compare notes.

For the larger audience, the S400 appears to be fairly well designed. Excuse us engineers while we work to better understand what Amir’s test might be telling us.

 

[wwenze]

Great response Amir! You're sticking to your subjective review, which is absolutely the right thing to do. Yet you're clarifying that DESPITE that subjective opinion, there are other things in the data to note. Hat tipped and kudos!

Yea, I think that's important, as it maintains consistency in the subjective reviews. Hence allowing the readers to apply their own "subjective offset".

 

[hardisj]

@hardisj have you tried dialing up the suspect frequency?

I should have. I'll use my tone generator app and sweep through the region to see if it lights up when I listen again.

 

[StevenEleven]

If there is a major lesson here, I think F. Toole’s book makes a strong case on-point: unless you are comparing at least three speakers, double-blind, listening impressions are highly problematic, even among people who have designed the speakers themselves! So we are not going to solve which is the”better” speaker among speakers of this caliber at ASR for the time being, particularly to the extent we are getting into speakers of this quality. At this level of quality, double blind testing could well result in a statistical tie and tons of surprises, is what research seems to say.

Differences when viewed from the perspective of this thread are IMHO exaggerated and not always relevant to the big picture—it reminds me of pixel-peeping in photography. Past some point it doesn’t have much bearing on the relevant quality of the output. We don’t have the resources to answer the really big questions, so we knit-pick over a thousand little ones.

Once into this range of quality, in making a choice, I would want to know things people generally can agree on, however—is it forward or recessed in the midrange? Is the treble on the bright or subdued side, or just about neutral? How is the ever-subjective trade-off between bass extension and 100 hz boost? Where does the bass roll off? And even so, with a little tweaking of tone controls, or perhaps more refined EQ for those who really know what they are doing (I think it is easy for us to fool ourselves), and use of subwoofers where desired, all will be well.

I don’t take everything Harman, or Buchardt, or Elac, or KEF, etc., etc., says at face value. The proof will be in the pudding, on a per-speaker basis. But these measurements earn Buchardt a place at the table, IMHO. It’s not a magical-mystical marvel, but it’s in the zone with the big boys.

And for $2k, yes, I would want to know about aesthetics, resonances, and build quality, and whether it goes clean and loud. All fair game. And matters of human preference. And the rebuttal by the manufacturer of ”it measures well,” and you over-looked the positives of this well-measuring speaker, is always a fair one in this context.

Just my thoughts, from a lay perspective, certainly. It’s been a really interesting and engrossing read.

 

[kaka89]

This is definitely one of the most waited review.
The measurement of S400 is good, and the objective comments made by Amir is not all that negative at all.

I think it is the pink panther who cause trouble
Anyway it is Amir's review and I think he is entitle to have his own opinion in any part of the review.

Good job and thank you guys for the speaker and review.

 

[Billy Budapest]

Wow, I'm quite surprised at some peoples' reactions in this thread. I didn't think the review was all that negative. Amir wasn't doing backflips over the speaker as most reviewers do, but objectively he shouldn't have been. It's not like he said it was awful or something.

Exactly. It was an HONEST review. it wasn’t done to please anyone—not Buchardt’s fanboys, not Buchardt’s critics, not Buchardt, and not any other manufacturer. It was done in the same fashion as Amir’s other tests, for the same reason—because the speaker was sent to him to measure and review, he did so. Just because it wasn’t 100% positive doesn’t mean it was negative. This is not a zero-sum game.

 

[hardisj]

Exactly. It was an HONEST review. it wasn’t done to please anyone—not Buchardt’s fanboys, not Buchardt’s critics, not Buchardt, and not any other manufacturer. It was done in the same fashion as Amir’s other tests, for the same reason—because the speaker was sent to him to measure and review, he did so. Just because it wasn’t 100% positive doesn’t mean it was negative. This is not a zero-sum game.

I think the point was more that some people seem to be taking the extreme view that it’s a terrible speaker rather than simply a speaker that didn’t fit Amir’s personal likes.

 

[Voo]

I think the point was more that some people seem to be taking the extreme view that it’s a terrible speaker rather than simply a speaker that didn’t fit Amir’s personal likes.

Well this could lead to a waste of alot of time and klippel system. I understand not liking speakers that measure well. I also am interested to why this is the case. I have been unimpressed with a few speakers that have measured top tier. Responses to my feedback have usually cited the room. So using a top tier measuring system with good results and still not liking the sound interests me.

 

[Tks]

Well this could lead to a waste of alot of time and klippel system. I understand not liking speakers that measure well. I also am interested to why this is the case. I have been unimpressed with a few speakers that have measured top tier. Responses to my feedback have usually cited the room. So using a top tier measuring system with good results and still not liking the sound interests me.

Same reason you have people who don't like the look of Ferrari's, Victoria's Secret models, etc... Or clean measuring DACs/AMPs. Everyone (for whatever reason) has developed their own preferences. No one here should ever espouse the idea that you need to like things that measure well. That would be just insane.

But if for instance you say you value transparency, and then turn around and say you hate the sound of high fidelity solid state products. Then you're just contradicting yourself.

It's perfectly fine to say on the other hand, you simply love the sound of hiss and crackle, or scratch on vinyl, along with the high harmonic distortions present with some tube amplifiers, even if that means these products don't perfom as well as a solid state setup with respect to fidelity. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just your personal preference, and everyone understands even if you can't provide an account for why you hold such preferences

I personally for instance, want my products to be as low distorting as physically possible, because I want my audio transmission chain to produce as close as it can, the audio being sent through it from the source to my speakers/headphones (I don't care about the idiotic and unverifiable desires some that sound like me, but go too far that say they want the sound to be as close to what was being heard in the studio.. That doesn't concern me one bit because I'll never be able to confirm that at all, so I settle just for maintaining what was recorded, whether that's anything resembling what the engineer first heard in his studio, is completely uninteresting to me). Anytime my preferences shift (for instance I regularly like listening to some music I've always enjoyed, in complete Mono), at the press of a button, I can make that happen. Knowing full well I contradict my prior statement, and am violating "fidelity". But this isn't a problem because people's tastes can change (in the same way your taste for food changes throughout the week, where if you ate seafood every single meal, and used to call it your favorite.. It sure wouldn't be your favorite after a week.

Only difference with starting off with high performance/well measuring gear is... I can always introduce through software - distortion, or stereo channel manipulations and even EQ to taste. What I can't do is get rid of that distortion, if I ever get tired of listening to vinyl-like recording quality if I bought gear that inherently provided that experience, so I'd be screwed in that sense.

I think you just have a preference for something, and they don't really align with the notions of established measurement performance metrics.

 

[Voo]

I think you just have a preference for something, and they don't really align with the notions of established measurement performance metrics.

this is whats interesting.