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Donner Dyna 4 Monitor Review
- Thread starter amirm
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SuicideSquid
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I've actually had very good experience with Donner. I bought their Arena2000 multieffects modeling guitar pedal and the pedal sounds great - incredible for under $300, and the build quality seems totally solid. The software, unfortunately, was totally broken at the time the pedal launched, but Donner support staff were highly responsive and a couple weeks after I bought the pedal, they released updated software and firmware that fixed most issues.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #44
Yes, the bit I know about their keyboards and such is that they are ultracheap but done well for the price.
On the price of this speaker, I don't remember but want to say it was $60 or so on their website. Official price as far as I could find was $129.
On the price of this speaker, I don't remember but want to say it was $60 or so on their website. Official price as far as I could find was $129.
JayGilb
Major Contributor
I own the MR4s and agree they are more expensive, but better quality. The Dyna 4s fall into the "I think they sound good, because I have never heard a good speaker" category as well as many sub $200 speakers.
Too cheap, but sadly there is a demand for this, apparently too tempting a demand to say no, i wont sell that crap!
BoycottHiFiScam
Member
I have a noob question. I have seen this "uneven FR but good directivity -> fixed by EQ" statement from multiple reviews. But I still could not quite understand why.
I have seen some discussion about this in the forum as well but was not able to clearly figure out. Could some one please help me walkthrough why EQ won't help fix FR on a speaker with uneven directivity?
SuicideSquid
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I'm not a pro in this regard and will defer to someone with more expertise, but I believe you can still correct issues with frequency response on a speaker with uneven directivity, but it becomes much more complicated, because a speaker with uneven directivity will have different problematic areas in frequency response depending on whether you're on-axis or off-axis, and the way the speaker interacts with the room is less predictable, so dialling in a corrective EQ would require a lot more fine-tuning and a lot of measuring your room, and you may never get it precisely right.
My take on this speaker: that frequency response is messed up, but it's smooth, so it would be very easy to EQ that out to a very smooth & accurate frequency response (if unit to unit variation is low enough) & given the fact the directivity is good as Amir mentioned. I reckon armed with this review from ASR and using some Anechoic EQ and if listening at low volumes in a setup where you're like 1m away from the speaker (maybe used as computer speakers), then these would be some very good value speakers (given the impression that you buy these for almost nothing). I almost wanted to vote them Great because of this, but of course it's not perfect so had to vote them Fine.
As i am wise enough to eq for peanuts such a messy frequency response, i can save money buying dead cheap crappy speakers that i can convert in true giant killers. Is this your point?
JeremyFife
Addicted to Fun and Learning
Try this ... really helped me Thread 'Understanding Speaker Measurements (Video)' https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...derstanding-speaker-measurements-video.44101/
OP
- Thread Starter
- #53
You actually can. But the trick is to a) make sure you have smooth directivity and b) the thing can handle power. EQ, if you have to boost frequencies, stresses the speaker more than it is designed for out of the box.
Conversely, if there are peaks you can pull down, then you get a free lunch in reduced distortion. You will be putting resonances to good use then!
That's definitely not the point I'm making! The caveats are that you'd have to use them close at 1m and at low volumes to avoid distortion and they have no bass - but at least the frequency response would be ruler flat with good directivity after EQ and you would have bought those speakers for peanuts, so as a highly optimisable cheap PC speaker then they would be ideal for someone who likes to tinker with EQ, and not spend much, and have good sound for their PC setup, as long as they don't mind the lack of bass. I suppose you could even combine them with a little subwoofer, but by that point that you're spending more money then you might try to find speakers with lower distortion whilst still having good directivity & a good or EQ'able frequency response.
question: are all reviews/polls going to find cheap speakers as poor, even if they are OK/comparable to most things within a very limited price bracket. Should price be taken into account with these sub $200/250 a pair speakers?
Yes of course you can but you need the know how and some gear to achieve that eq, and both take quite some time (the learning curve) and money (for the gear and the knowledge too) to adquire. Things totally unaffordable for newbies spending their first 100$ on a pair of entre level speakers.
Yes of course but as commented, these improvements are totally out of reach for the customers targetted by this product.
Or if they are experienced enough to improve the performance, It is simply that they like to waste their time and money.
SuicideSquid
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It takes literally 30 seconds to apply an EQ curve on a Windows PC that would make these speakers sound totally decent.
I can think of lots of use cases where an "experienced" listener might find a speaker like these useful. For example, I have a pair of Energy RC-Mini speakers connected to my work PC in my officer, mostly for Zoom use and watching professional education videos, but occasionally when the office is quiet I put music on. If I didn't already have these minis, grabbing a pair of these Donner speakers for less than $100 would be totally appropriate and I'd happily spend the extra 30 seconds applying a bit of EQ to them.
Don't assume that just because you don't have a use for them, that no one does.
We "aficionados" all have piles of abandoned unused gear, most of them bought by pure impulse, lying around the house and like to think that some day might be found a new life... We also all know that this is part of our silly hobby...
BoycottHiFiScam
Member
I see! I am wondering if my following understandings are correct:
For a speaker with smooth DI curve, user could possibly come up with EQ corrections based solely on the on-axis FR curve and this approach is considered as fairly easy.
For a speaker with not so ideal DI curve, it will be harder for user to do EQ corrections since it will be highly dependent on the actual listening position. Different positions require different solutions because of the fact that on-axis/off-axis curves are not similar shapes at different frequencies.
However, I have been always wondering:
If user's listening position is fixed, is it reasonable to say that doing EQ correction should be a fairly easy thing as well? Since the listen position is fixed and won't change, one could just do measurement at that specific position and optimize the in-room response curve to whatever target right? Even though the speaker being used may have uneven DI which indicates on-axis/off-axis may have different trend, but for that specific position, the portion/ratio of on-axis/off-axis is determined.
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