Another recently measured speaker I thought I'd share. It's an impressive showing from Devialet, at least in the frequency response department.
EDIT: Quasi-anechoic spinorama/CTA-2034A in this post.
Horizontal Response:
Note the graph goes down to 10Hz instead of the usual 20. Gated measurements(6.5ms) taken on tweeter axis from 1m away. Nearfield bass spliced below 200hz. Bass is corrected for baffle step, so it seems that bass hump from 150 to 25 Hz or so does actually exist, unless I screwed something up. (Anything different about the Devialet's layout that would dramatically alter the baffle step that I'm missing?).
In any case, impressive as it is to get 20hz out of a pair of 4-inch woofers, bass extension on an active speaker like this doesn't mean much without corresponding to a certain SPL level. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to blast music at crazy volumes to test for this, but my impression is that if you listen in the nearfield, your room is small, or you generally don't listen too loud, a pair of phantoms will have all the bass you need.
As for the vertical response, I've only had the chance to measure a couple points so far, but I suspect it won't be much different from the horizontal response given the trend so far and quasi-spherical design. It still looks very flat out to 30 degrees:
Update: Posted this later in the thread, but figured I'd update the OP too. Here's a graph showing the stereo in-room response at my listening position 9 feet away. The back of the speakers are about 1 and 2 feet from the front wall (my wall is uneven).
I did not take special care in positioning, nor is this response averaged, so don't pay much mind to the overall room curve. This is mainly to show how the bass compresses at higher SPL levels. Purple is max volume, yellow is about 50 percent I believe.
For a pair of tiny speakers, I think this is really impressive. Though I listen from a pretty normal distance, I have a fairly large listening room. I'm in a studio loft, the speakers are basically radiating into the entire apartment. The space the speakers are in is roughly 13x30x16, not counting the hallway. Speakers are about 1-2 feet from the rear wall. So it's likely the SPL levels could be higher in an average room.
Notably, compression seems to only affect the sub-bass at 60 Hz and below, so even at max volume you are getting ample bass thump for a speaker this size, especially considering equal loudness curves suggest you need less bass at higher SPL levels. In any case, even the yellow line is already a fair bit louder than I typically listen, so the reactors still have some headroom for dynamic peaks.
Other thoughts:
It's pretty amazing that you can have a 2-way speaker this small, with a pair of 4-inch woofers, that can genuinely be considered 'full range' -- at least at lower volumes/nearfield. It has very wide dispersion too, with seemingly seamless driver integration.
It seems a really neat little speaker especially if you listen nearfield where compression in the bass isn't an issue. Makes me wonder what might've gone wrong with the bigger Phantom's design, with their weird huge dip at ~3000kHz. The Reactor has a dip there too, but it is much more shallow.
There's some noise when using the line in at higher volumes though not something I noticed until I was measuring. Haven't checked if that hiss happens with the optical input as I don't currently have an optical souce.. Seems the smoothest response is at about 15 degrees off-axis.
Devialet makes a great case for active speakers here. I can't tell you much with regards to distortion as that's not something I'm much experienced in measuring and interpreting, but everything else looks good.
EDIT: Quasi-anechoic spinorama/CTA-2034A in this post.
Horizontal Response:
Note the graph goes down to 10Hz instead of the usual 20. Gated measurements(6.5ms) taken on tweeter axis from 1m away. Nearfield bass spliced below 200hz. Bass is corrected for baffle step, so it seems that bass hump from 150 to 25 Hz or so does actually exist, unless I screwed something up. (Anything different about the Devialet's layout that would dramatically alter the baffle step that I'm missing?).
In any case, impressive as it is to get 20hz out of a pair of 4-inch woofers, bass extension on an active speaker like this doesn't mean much without corresponding to a certain SPL level. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to blast music at crazy volumes to test for this, but my impression is that if you listen in the nearfield, your room is small, or you generally don't listen too loud, a pair of phantoms will have all the bass you need.
As for the vertical response, I've only had the chance to measure a couple points so far, but I suspect it won't be much different from the horizontal response given the trend so far and quasi-spherical design. It still looks very flat out to 30 degrees:
Update: Posted this later in the thread, but figured I'd update the OP too. Here's a graph showing the stereo in-room response at my listening position 9 feet away. The back of the speakers are about 1 and 2 feet from the front wall (my wall is uneven).
I did not take special care in positioning, nor is this response averaged, so don't pay much mind to the overall room curve. This is mainly to show how the bass compresses at higher SPL levels. Purple is max volume, yellow is about 50 percent I believe.
For a pair of tiny speakers, I think this is really impressive. Though I listen from a pretty normal distance, I have a fairly large listening room. I'm in a studio loft, the speakers are basically radiating into the entire apartment. The space the speakers are in is roughly 13x30x16, not counting the hallway. Speakers are about 1-2 feet from the rear wall. So it's likely the SPL levels could be higher in an average room.
Notably, compression seems to only affect the sub-bass at 60 Hz and below, so even at max volume you are getting ample bass thump for a speaker this size, especially considering equal loudness curves suggest you need less bass at higher SPL levels. In any case, even the yellow line is already a fair bit louder than I typically listen, so the reactors still have some headroom for dynamic peaks.
Other thoughts:
It's pretty amazing that you can have a 2-way speaker this small, with a pair of 4-inch woofers, that can genuinely be considered 'full range' -- at least at lower volumes/nearfield. It has very wide dispersion too, with seemingly seamless driver integration.
It seems a really neat little speaker especially if you listen nearfield where compression in the bass isn't an issue. Makes me wonder what might've gone wrong with the bigger Phantom's design, with their weird huge dip at ~3000kHz. The Reactor has a dip there too, but it is much more shallow.
There's some noise when using the line in at higher volumes though not something I noticed until I was measuring. Haven't checked if that hiss happens with the optical input as I don't currently have an optical souce.. Seems the smoothest response is at about 15 degrees off-axis.
Devialet makes a great case for active speakers here. I can't tell you much with regards to distortion as that's not something I'm much experienced in measuring and interpreting, but everything else looks good.
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