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Do affordable far field dsp speakers exist?

raistlin65

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Abdo123, I forgot to mention that it is a small to medium room where I am roughly 8 to 9 feet from the speakers. I have heard that Kalis 'might' be good for the volume I need, but have yet to find anyone with an actual setup like this for home theater that can verify. Since my Denon does not have preouts, it will have to be upgraded also, so I want to be a little more sure about it before spending a bunch of money and then being disappointed because they sound like tiny computer speakers that would sound amazing if I put my head up to them lol

You might want to share your whole budget, the make and model of any equipment you currently have, such as your Denon receiver and any subwoofers. It could be the best budget allocation would be for you to stick with your current receiver.
 

LTig

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Abdo123, I forgot to mention that it is a small to medium room where I am roughly 8 to 9 feet from the speakersl
I think as long as you add subs to your HT setup, having 5 or more active speakers with 8" woofers in this room at this distance should give more loudness than might be healthy for your ears in the long run.

As a comparison: I use 2 x K&H O300D (small 3-way with 8" woofer, but more power in the amps) and 1 x Genelec 7060b sub (10" sub with correspondingly rather bigger ported housing) in a 50 sqm living room at about 3.5 m distance and have not yet reached their clipping point.
 
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Frank Dernie

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Wow those Phantom speakers are "different" looking
I have had a pair of Phantoms for around 6 years now and like everything about them apart from needing an app to control volume, I have them connected to my streaming and home file library, a TV and a CD transport.
I don't use them as much as my conventional system since i don't stream much. I don't know how they would get on in a HT system but lack of loudness is unlikely to be a problem.
The Cabasse Pearl is another similar type of product which may well be better.
 

Frgirard

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I think as long as you add subs to your HT setup, having 5 or more active speakers with 8" woofers in this room at this distance should give more loudness than might be healthy for your ears in the long run.

As a comparison: I use 2 x K&H O300D (small 3-way with 8" woofer, but more power in the amps) and 1 x Genelec 7060b sub (0" sub with correspondingly rather bigger ported housing) in a 50 sqm living room at about 3.5 m distance and have not yet reached their clipping point.
I used a k+h 0300. At 2.5 meters without sub in a treated room with pop, hip hop or rock, i have activated the protection very often.
Now i migrated the o300 in my office and replace them by a kh 420.
 

Dialectic

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@giraffejumper, you have put your finger on a real problem, and I don't know what the answer is. I use the Dutch & Dutch speakers and love them, but I realize that they are outside most sensible home audio budgets. (I still think they are a good value for what they are.)

Is someone from JBL Pro reading this? Can you folks please make some 5 series monitors and price them from $900-$1500 per pair? Use bigger chip amps than we find in the 3 series monitors, reduce the tweeter hiss a little bit, add some DSP configurability, and lose the shiny plastic finish.

If JBL Pro made such a product, I wager it would sell well and, for most users, would form the sweet spot in JBL's lineup of monitors.
 

LTig

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I used a k+h 0300. At 2.5 meters without sub in a treated room with pop, hip hop or rock, i have activated the protection very often.
Now i migrated the o300 in my office and replace them by a kh 420.
The O300 definitely needs a sub to play loud. The woofer starts to distort at higher volumes and I've read or heard somewhere from Neumann that the woofer of its successor, the Neumann KH310, is 7 dB better in this regard. Still I would use a sub with both in my room. Both bass and mids improved significantly after I added the sub to my O300s.
 

LTig

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Is someone from JBL Pro reading this? Can you folks please make some 5 series monitors and price them from $900-$1500 per pair? Use bigger chip amps than we find in the 3 series monitors, reduce the tweeter hiss a little bit, add some DSP configurability, and lose the shiny plastic finish.
I think you ask too much. Keep the outer finish and improve the innards only, to keep the price low.
 

Rick Sykora

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I think you ask too much. Keep the outer finish and improve the innards only, to keep the price low.

Lol. You are on the right track, but thinking a large corporation is going to significantly improve price/performance is wishful thinking. As a product manager, you have to show a major threat to existing business or a major increase in volume to get on the radar. Projections like those often have wide error band and are inherently risky. Often you might as well be asking management to chew a limb off!

IME, it is going to take a smaller company or one with less to lose (a disruptor) before we will see a major improvement in the value proposition for a higher sound quality speaker. :)
 

MrPeabody

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But porting reduces distortion when everything else (especially extension) is equal, that's the entire point. The problem is the same whether it's sealed or ported: don't try to push extension via EQ too much. The Genelec 8341A/8351B reviews here show extremey good distortion values, and these are arguably "small" ported speakers.

Porting reduces distortion in certain respects but also increases distortion in certain respects. At the frequency where the port output is near its peak and the driver is practically motionless, distortion will typically be reduced due to the reduced driver excursion. But there is also a power compression effect that applies to the port, so it isn't true in an absolute sense that the port reduces distortion. It probably does, but this isn't a universal, absolute truth. And if high-pass filtering is not applied to the speaker, such that it is allowed to operate at frequency a couple octaves below the port tuning frequency, the driver motion goes wildly uncontrolled, which is related to the fact that the port and the driver will be operating out of phase at frequency this far below the port tuning frequency. The acoustic output of the port and the driver mutually cancel, so all you are left with is the distortion from each.

The true point of the port is simpler than many people seem to realize. It is simply to increase the efficiency of the speaker within a narrow frequency band, by adding a resonance. By virtue of the increase in efficiency, there is also an increase in sensitivity (naturally) within this same frequency band. As such, if the ported speaker is properly designed, the salient effect will be that the -3 dB point will move slightly lower in frequency. However, because the improvement in efficiency applies only to a narrow frequency band, and because the two acoustic outputs are out of phase at frequency an octave or two below the tuning frequency, the overall response ends up with a "knee", whereas with a sealed speaker the rolloff is smoother, more gradual, and the -10 dB point will typically be lower in frequency. In my individual opinion, it makes good sense to use a port or a passive radiator with a subwoofer where the port or PR radiator will be tuned very low, at 20 Hz or nearly as low as 20 Hz. But as for small speakers with ports or passive radiators, I have never had a smidgen of appreciation for this practice. With every such speaker that I have ever heard, the resonance was clearly audible and completely ruined the sound of the speaker so far as I am concerned. The only exception is when this resonance is suppressed due to the addition of a high-pass filter. This is what generally happens with a subwoofer is used with small ported speakers. You don't notice the resonance because at the frequency where it occurs, the SPL from the small speaker is so far below the SPL of the subwoofer that you don't hear the small speaker at the frequency of its port resonance. This is the only circumstance where the resonance at the port tuning frequency has not been obvious and annoying to me. And it this circumstance, where the small speaker is not going to operate at the frequency at which the port is tuned, what is the point of the port? Obviously there isn't any. For me personally, the application of ports and passive radiators to small speakers makes no sense at all and it is easily the most annoying practice that is common with loudspeaker manufacturers. I wish they would just stop doing this.
 

MrPeabody

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There are other major advantages to porting beyond low hz extension. It makes the speaker MUCH more efficient. Also, the much greater air pressure (positive and negative) on the midrange/woofer can cause distortion and damping. I don't think it's marketing. I think it's just easier to design a good speaker with a port.

Though, I should qualify. I have unported bookshelves with a sub myself :) But I'm thinking of jumping to a Genelec or maybe a revel or maybe an R3... or...

The speaker is made more efficient only at frequency very close to the tuning frequency of the port (which is a resonance, by the way). And this is not a separate advantage from the supposed advantage of bass extension - it is the same advantage, because the increase in efficiency in this narrow frequency range is the reason that the -3 dB point moves lower in frequency. Whether this is truly a low bass extension depends on how you define low bass extension; if you define it using the -10 dB point instead of the -3 dB point, the port does not improve the low bass extension. I'm not really sure exactly what you mean when you say that the "much greater air pressure .. on the midrange/woofer can cause distortion and damping."
 

MrPeabody

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Yes. For $3k each you get a great performing ported speaker. The majority of tested bookshelf speakers with ports resonate causing mid range distortion reducing performance in a critical area of their performance window. A more cost effective solution for $6k would be to get a nice sub and cross the small speakers over and let the sub do the low work.

A agree with what you are saying but have a minor nitpick. The resonance you are referring to is presumably a resonance occurring due to standing waves that set up within the port/pipe. The nitpick is that the primary, intended output of the port, at low frequency, is also very much a resonance, which is to say, an oscillation. In fact it is an oscillation with weak damping, which is why it is an efficient oscillation, which is why the efficiency of the speaker increases over the very narrow frequency range very close to the primary port resonance. As determined by the mass of the air within the port and the strength of the spring effect of the air inside the enclosure.
 

MrPeabody

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As for the OP's original question ... it is unfortunate that the terms "near field" and "far field" are commonly used to mean two different things that are closely related. It creates lots of confusion. What "near field" really means, or should mean, is the region where the acoustic outputs of the two drivers do not properly blend into a virtual single source. "Far field" implies a distance great enough for the acoustic blending to properly occur. Thus, if I correctly understand the quest, it has to do with finding affordable speakers where you can sit very close to the speakers and still be in the far field. Which is what nearly everyone refers to as "near field" monitors, in the most confusing practice imaginable. Anyway, if this is what is sought, the most important thing is for the vertical separation between the tweeter and the mid-woofer to be exceptionally small. This generally implies that the speaker can't use a waveguide on the tweeter. The consequence is that if the mid-woofer is on the big side of mid-woofer, there will most likely be a directivity mismatch. However if the speaker is only ever going to be listened to at close distance this won't much matter, and if the mid-woofer is on the small side of mid-woofers, it won't matter regardless. If a compromise is deemed appropriate, the compromise will be for the speaker to use a small waveguide that permits the tweeter to be placed very close to the mid-woofer notwithstanding the waveguide. There are a number of small bookshelf speakers designed this way. Several by Elac come to mind, and this is a brand where the more affordable models still give high sound quality. Since the total system cost seems to be the sticky thing, the answer is probably to give up the idea of self-powered monitors and to select some high-quality high-value passive bookshelf speakers.
 

Music1969

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i wish no speaker in the world would be rear ported for home cinema purposes.

Actually with all the speakers @amirm has measured, I often see him write that he wishes no speaker would be front ported.

Front port resonances shows up in measurements from the speaker front but rear port resonances don't show up in measurements from the front.

Unless you mean you wish all speakers were bottom ported?

For home cinema just put a foam bung or sock in the rear port and 'problem' solved ?
 

Digital_Thor

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Pheewww... I felt so alone, when not liking all the smaller ported speakers :) I personally really enjoy good closed and maybe some with a passive membrane. Always build closed boxes here :cool:
To OP.... are you only looking at someting done - or would you DIY?
 
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giraffejumper

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I guess when I put "far field", I meant something I could set up like my Elac speakers across the room from me around 9 feet or however many meters that is and enjoy my movies and it seems most studio monitors are not made for this.
I have no idea what regular listening speakers are called in that aspect, so I just called it the opposite of near field.
I have recently found other posts (On avsforum) that say using even the highly rated and expensive Neumann KH 120s was fatiguing when used like a normal home theater and not sitting with them on a desk right in their face.
I really don't care if it's front or rear ported or if it even has them at all, at long as it sounds good and had good measurements.
But I'm starting to find that what I want simply doesn't exist yet, and maybe never will, at least at a decent price range.
And I don't have enough winning lottery tickets to get the others lol.

Maybe I'm asking for a Ferrari on a Honda budget.

As for DIY, my skills are beyond horrible.
I'll definitely burn something down or cut off some appendage.
 

abdo123

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I guess when I put "far field", I meant something I could set up like my Elac speakers across the room from me around 9 feet or however many meters that is and enjoy my movies and it seems most studio monitors are not made for this.
I have no idea what regular listening speakers are called in that aspect, so I just called it the opposite of near field.
I have recently found other posts (On avsforum) that say using even the highly rated and expensive Neumann KH 120s was fatiguing when used like a normal home theater and not sitting with them on a desk right in their face.
I really don't care if it's front or rear ported or if it even has them at all, at long as it sounds good and had good measurements.
But I'm starting to find that what I want simply doesn't exist yet, and maybe never will, at least at a decent price range.
And I don't have enough winning lottery tickets to get the others lol.

Maybe I'm asking for a Ferrari on a Honda budget.

As for DIY, my skills are beyond horrible.
I'll definitely burn something down or cut off some appendage.

the KH 120 will definitely fatigue without a subwoofer.

Infact every speaker without a 12” to 15” inch driver will fatigue without a subwoofer in home cinema applications.

Even the dutch & dutch 8C has like 10% THD at 100Hz and below @ 96 db.

subwoofers are simply not optional for home cinema use imo.
 
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giraffejumper

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I plan on running it with the same two subwoofers that I'm currently using that cover my area nicely.
Perhaps that would help, even with studio monitors?
 

abdo123

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I plan on running it with the same two subwoofers that I'm currently using that cover my area nicely.
Perhaps that would help, even with studio monitors?

For sure. like I said above 100 Hz the KH120 can produce 100 dB @ 1 meter, but it plummets quickly below 100 Hz like all small speakers do.

1622389372301.png
 

HooStat

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Depending on your speakers and placement, you can go with a higher cross-over (100-150 Hz). This might free up some headroom for more loudness. I know people are afraid of being able to localize bass, but that depends on where your sub is. Whether you can perceive this seems to vary by person too. I cross my KEF Q300s at 150 Hz now (sub on the same wall) and it seems fine. YMMV, of course.
 
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