Diapason Emera Italian Speaker Review

[Rick Sykora]

What a shame to sculpt such a nice cabinet but not tune it properly.

Could have avoided the nasty port resonance and made it roll off nicer too. Seems like an incomplete effort.

Should be helped by adding some damping material and/or changing the port length...

 

[lashto]

3. There's a cult of fans of moderately esoteric Italian loudspeakers

Not sure if old school SonusFaber qualifies as esoteric but they surely have a cult following. And they don't only look great, here are measurements of my favourite Electa Amator. Not exactly top10 measurements but much better than these things

 

[mhardy6647]

Not sure if old school SonusFaber qualifies as esoteric but they surely have a cult following. And they don't only look great, here are measurements of my favourite Electa Amator. Not top10 measurements but much better than these things

Good point - I forgot about Sonus Faber (?!).
I am particularly interested in the aforementioned "Rosso" products -- as they seem to be relatively new to the arena (at least in the US?).

 

[Rick Sykora]

What a shame to sculpt such a nice cabinet but not tune it properly.

Could have avoided the nasty port resonance and made it roll off nicer too. Seems like an incomplete effort.

Might be helped by adding some damping material and/or changing the port length...

Looks salvageable with a real crossover too.

 

[lashto]

Good point - I forgot about Sonus Faber (?!). .

That's inexcusable
Classic Sonus Fabers might just be the biggest speaker-cult. Some sell for bigger-than-original prices nowadays, kinda like collector Ferrari's

 

[ex audiophile]

This Parametric EQ is from Roon or some other program?

View attachment 84577

I would love to see a thread on how to use Roon DSP. I have an Element P and no easy way to do room correction but I do have Roon so maybe there's hope

 

[Soniclife]

I would love to see a thread on how to use Roon DSP. I have an Element P and no easy way to do room correction but I do have Roon so maybe there's hope

https://kb.roonlabs.com/DSP_Engine

If you are asking about what filters to create, or how to measure there are plenty of existing threads on that. EQ that REW suggests can be typed into roon, there is also a large thread on the roon forum that's worth looking at.

 

[Count Arthur]

The Genesis track I played as the first one was not listenable.

Are there any that are one anything?

 

[ex audiophile]

https://kb.roonlabs.com/DSP_Engine

If you are asking about what filters to create, or how to measure there are plenty of existing threads on that. EQ that REW suggests can be typed into roon, there is also a large thread on the roon forum that's worth looking at.

Thanks! I find all my great ideas are about 2 years behind lol

 

[ex audiophile]

Thanks! I find all my great ideas are about 2 years behind lol

Part of my issue is that with the Element P I can’t measure so I have to use Roon exclusively

 

[HerbertWest]

If software is happy read one txt-file per 10º step find Amir's spindata tilted vertical -5º attached in below attached zip-folder ..

This should compensate for the absence of the leveling foot in the back of the speaker.

 

[BYRTT]

Part of my issue is that with the Element P I can’t measure so I have to use Roon exclusively

Sorry i dont know what Element P is for a function or unit, but will say if your audio system can play digital files it can then also be set to play a REW offline measurement sweep that you can create in REW's "Generator" for whatever bit depth and samle rate , then one records that playback sweep with a microphone and drag recorded wav-file into REW window "File/Import/Import sweep recordings" and you have a nice neat offline response analyze, else look up in help menu or online for more info.

This should compensate for the absence of the leveling foot in the back of the speaker.

Cant know that for shure but can tell Amir's spindata is set to output the 2 meter distance CTA2034 standard, then in software one can tilt per 1º at a time for speaker transducer (spindata) and when it reached up to the 5º number XO region lobe looks best and point strait forward plus listening window also benefit most there, also software can dial on microphone (2 meters distance) X/Y axis relative to spindata and think remember around a +160-170mm heigher position of microphone gave same output as tilt speaker transducer (spindata) -5º downwards, hope info helps ....

 

[Soniclife]

Sorry i dont know what Element P is for a function or unit, but will say if your audio system can play digital files it can then also be set to play a REW offline measurement sweep that you can create in REW's "Generator" for whatever bit depth and samle rate , then one records that playback sweep with a microphone and drag recorded wav-file into REW window "File/Import/Import sweep recordings" and you have a nice neat offline response analyze, else look up in help menu or online for more info.

If you export the REW sweep with the timing ref signal you can use REW to measure in the normal way as it's played back, just set REW to wait for the timing signal, and turn the vol down on the laptop or whatever you are running REW on so it does not make noise.

 

[Ron Texas]

Headless panther alert! Thank you @amirm . Every review adds to the database so the bad ones are as important as the great ones. Hopefully, this knowledge will filter through the industry and improve everything.

 

[mhardy6647]

That's inexcusable
Classic Sonus Fabers might just be the biggest speaker-cult. Some sell for bigger-than-original prices nowadays, kinda like collector Ferrari's

And Altecs (and JBLs), too, thankfully

 

[FeddyLost]

Very strange tuning.
Anyway, i've found one review of Emera 2, mentioning "rich timbres". So, now we know what does this term mean...

Maybe, they are made for different placement, like main axis at middle of woofer? Like fullrange with time aligned tweeter to get better phase?
There must be some recommendations in manuals.

 

[Maiky76]

If software is happy read one txt-file per 10º step find Amir's spindata tilted vertical -5º attached in below attached zip-folder ..
View attachment 84595

Hi,

Thanks for that.
here is the new LW

Here is the rotated Spinorama:
the new score is 2.84

I ran the EQ optimizer as usual.
What is interesting is that the speaker has an obvious directivity error around 3k so I was interested to see how the EQ would go.
Starting from the usual flattish LW the optimizer really move the poles/zeros to something rather not flat.

The LF is significantly boosted to caution to avoid bottoming/destruction of the speaker at high SPL.

EQ initial, score 5.33
Type         Freq       Gain     Q
HP            50.5,    -0.00,   1.00,...   
LowShelf     357.3,     3.00,   1.00,...
PEQ          900.3,    -2.50,   3.23,...
PEQ         2000.0,    -1.35,   2.92,...
PEQ         2590.0,     2.90,   7.18,...
PEQ         4400.0,     2.50,   5.74,...
PEQ        10479.0,     1.50,   3.96,...

EQ optimized, score 6.06
Type         Freq       Gain     Q
HP            43.0,    -0.00,   1.10,...   
LowShelf     425.0,     3.30,   0.85,...
PEQ          923.0,    -1.67,   3.35,...
PEQ         3000.0,    -0.95,   2.62,...
PEQ         2590.0,     3.68,   5.34,...
PEQ         3522.0,     1.80,   4.60,...
PEQ        11020.0,     1.17,   4.52,...

The optimized Spinorama

Regression Tonal:
the ON looks now reasonably flat

and zoom on the PIR-LW-ON with no EQ, the starting EQ and the optimized EQ

 

[Vuki]

If placed closer to the wall it seems it wouldn't be too bad.
Having some expirience with Diapason speakers, they usually sounded quite good.

 

[Mnyb]

This is interesting, it’s telling about how many small audiophile brands operate and operated. With incomplete knowledge for various reasons a strong one being thier story and believes. In this case “crossover is evil”.

Today even our small business forum members that run small speaker companies can do an almost complete assessment of thier design via simulation even if they have to hire resources for a final complete measurement.
But cost of getting correct data must have been slashed by 1/100 in the last 20 years.

And the discussion about different curves like PIR and power response ( even if they fly over my head sometimes ) indicates that knowledge had by Harman Genelec KEF B&W eat al is readily available if you want it nowadays .
( there where always pioneers 30 years ago to like Gradient and others but I describe a general trend ).

Makes me wonder how many high end speakers from 30 years ago really where developed

 

[ex audiophile]

If you export the REW sweep with the timing ref signal you can use REW to measure in the normal way as it's played back, just set REW to wait for the timing signal, and turn the vol down on the laptop or whatever you are running REW on so it does not make noise.

I can understand running REW with a laptop/mic/and a miniDSP device, however it is my understanding that the DSP device has to be "inserted" in between the source (streamer) and the device. The Element P has a built in streamer so once I had the results of the measurement I don't see how I could modify the output of the Element P. Wrong?