This is a review and detailed measurements of the Dynaudio LYD 5 powered studio/professional monitor (speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $499 each.
There is not much bothersome or unique about the look of the LYD 5:
The backside is perhaps more unique with slot port:
As you see, there are a few settings. I used the following for testing and listening:
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used over 800 measurement point which was enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.
Temperature was 77 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. The manual is confusing as it says the acoustic center is between the rim of the tweeter and woofer but the picture doesn't match the actual speaker with the overlapped drivers. Nevertheless, I also computed the response at 1.25 inches below tweeter reference to get to the rim of the woofer near it. Alas, it made essentially no difference so I went with the tweeter axis below.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
For a studio monitor, we want essentially flat on-axis response. Here, we kind of have it but with some deviations. The biggest one is the peaking in upper bass, then a dip around 1.64 kHz, and somewhat elevated treble energy. Listening axis solves the latter (dashed green) so perhaps you want to ignore the manual and point the speaker a few degrees above/below or left or right of your ears.
This speaker has an unusually high crossover frequency of 5.2 kHz although my measurements show that to be somewhat lower. That aside, the woofer beams a bit as indicated by the increase in directivity index (red solid line).
To see the cause of the dip around 1.6 kHz, let's measure the drivers and port very close to their center:
The dip seems to be a property of the woofer. So perhaps having had a crossover at the usual 1 to 2 kHz would have remedied that. While the response of the tweeter is cut off that low it appears to trend correctly. Maybe the higher crossover point was picked so that the monitor could play louder?
Anyway, back to our spinorama, early window reflections nicely sum to a smooth response showing pretty clever design:
So be careful in absorbing some and not the others as that can mess with this balance.
Using a hypothetical average room in far-field listening we get this response:
Seems fairly accurate with the exception of problems noted earlier in bass.
Before I show you the directivity plots, let me post a new measurement I have not shown before which indicates at what distance the speaker acts as if it is in far field:
This says that above 400 Hz, that distance is 1.5 meters (where the circles is on blue line) Lower frequencies take forever to get this way so I have excluded them. Let me know if you like to see this display for future near-field monitors.
For the following, I picked 1 meter distance as that is how far away the speakers are on my workstation:
So unlike the Genelec or Neumann speakers, we have a directivity that keeps getting narrower.
Relative distortion shows what we usually see: the woofer getting unhappy as levels go up:
But, there is some interesting design here that keeps the bass frequency distortion very much under control, perhaps with both filtering and compression:
On some budget speaker the distortion actually shoots above the fundamental itself (over 100% THD+N). Not so here thankfully. On not so good news front, distortion in bass exceeds my threshold of 50 dB up to 1 kHz so best to play the LYD 5 at lower levels than 96 dBSPL @ 1 meter.
Finally the waterfall:
Monitor Listening Tests
I placed the LYD 5 to the left of my monitor at around 1 meter to my ear and pointed at them. Comparing them to JBL LSR305 MK II, there was just no deep bass. And what was there was a bit tubby. As a result, the sound was rather flat in a rather unattractive way. The tubbiness is mild mind you, but when it is there, combined with lack of deeper bass it stands out.
I swapped out the JBL for Neumann KH80 DSP and the differential remained. Despite its small woofer, the KH80 maned to produce clean and natural bass.
On the positive front, the LYD 5 took my "speaker killer" tracks and spit them out! No amount of deep, deep bass would upset it and as a result, it could play very loud without getting distorted or fall apart.
Please note that I am being very picky here as the application for a studio monitor is in a picky environment. On a more relaxed basis, the sound was good.
And oh, there is tweeter hiss that is a bit lower than JBL LSR305. Like that, I could not hear it from my seating location and certainly during music playback. Once sensitized though and in a more quiet space, you may hear and be bothered by it.
Conclusions
Objectively, the Dynaudio LYD 5 does well with near flat frequency response, good directivity and great control of low frequency distortion. Where it misses is in lower bass energy which it attempts to make up for by boosting the upper bass. This is a fine trick in low end budget speakers but for a monitor, I don't think it is a good trade off. I would be interested to test its larger brothers to see how well they do with their increased bass response.
Overall, the LYD 5 is a good attempt. It just doesn't fit what I am looking for however and my preference for a studio monitor would be that of JBL LSR305P MKII or Neumann KH80 DSP.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Before I started ASR, I thought it would be a great get rich quick scheme. I make up a bunch of fancy graphs, add some technical buzzwords and you all would throw thousands of dollars at me per day. Well, it has not worked out this way. My hopes and dreams of private jets and islands have gone out the window. Still, I hope you support me by donating what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
There is not much bothersome or unique about the look of the LYD 5:
The backside is perhaps more unique with slot port:
As you see, there are a few settings. I used the following for testing and listening:
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
I used over 800 measurement point which was enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.
Temperature was 77 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. The manual is confusing as it says the acoustic center is between the rim of the tweeter and woofer but the picture doesn't match the actual speaker with the overlapped drivers. Nevertheless, I also computed the response at 1.25 inches below tweeter reference to get to the rim of the woofer near it. Alas, it made essentially no difference so I went with the tweeter axis below.
Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
For a studio monitor, we want essentially flat on-axis response. Here, we kind of have it but with some deviations. The biggest one is the peaking in upper bass, then a dip around 1.64 kHz, and somewhat elevated treble energy. Listening axis solves the latter (dashed green) so perhaps you want to ignore the manual and point the speaker a few degrees above/below or left or right of your ears.
This speaker has an unusually high crossover frequency of 5.2 kHz although my measurements show that to be somewhat lower. That aside, the woofer beams a bit as indicated by the increase in directivity index (red solid line).
To see the cause of the dip around 1.6 kHz, let's measure the drivers and port very close to their center:
The dip seems to be a property of the woofer. So perhaps having had a crossover at the usual 1 to 2 kHz would have remedied that. While the response of the tweeter is cut off that low it appears to trend correctly. Maybe the higher crossover point was picked so that the monitor could play louder?
Anyway, back to our spinorama, early window reflections nicely sum to a smooth response showing pretty clever design:
So be careful in absorbing some and not the others as that can mess with this balance.
Using a hypothetical average room in far-field listening we get this response:
Seems fairly accurate with the exception of problems noted earlier in bass.
Before I show you the directivity plots, let me post a new measurement I have not shown before which indicates at what distance the speaker acts as if it is in far field:
This says that above 400 Hz, that distance is 1.5 meters (where the circles is on blue line) Lower frequencies take forever to get this way so I have excluded them. Let me know if you like to see this display for future near-field monitors.
For the following, I picked 1 meter distance as that is how far away the speakers are on my workstation:
So unlike the Genelec or Neumann speakers, we have a directivity that keeps getting narrower.
Relative distortion shows what we usually see: the woofer getting unhappy as levels go up:
But, there is some interesting design here that keeps the bass frequency distortion very much under control, perhaps with both filtering and compression:
On some budget speaker the distortion actually shoots above the fundamental itself (over 100% THD+N). Not so here thankfully. On not so good news front, distortion in bass exceeds my threshold of 50 dB up to 1 kHz so best to play the LYD 5 at lower levels than 96 dBSPL @ 1 meter.
Finally the waterfall:
Monitor Listening Tests
I placed the LYD 5 to the left of my monitor at around 1 meter to my ear and pointed at them. Comparing them to JBL LSR305 MK II, there was just no deep bass. And what was there was a bit tubby. As a result, the sound was rather flat in a rather unattractive way. The tubbiness is mild mind you, but when it is there, combined with lack of deeper bass it stands out.
I swapped out the JBL for Neumann KH80 DSP and the differential remained. Despite its small woofer, the KH80 maned to produce clean and natural bass.
On the positive front, the LYD 5 took my "speaker killer" tracks and spit them out! No amount of deep, deep bass would upset it and as a result, it could play very loud without getting distorted or fall apart.
Please note that I am being very picky here as the application for a studio monitor is in a picky environment. On a more relaxed basis, the sound was good.
And oh, there is tweeter hiss that is a bit lower than JBL LSR305. Like that, I could not hear it from my seating location and certainly during music playback. Once sensitized though and in a more quiet space, you may hear and be bothered by it.
Conclusions
Objectively, the Dynaudio LYD 5 does well with near flat frequency response, good directivity and great control of low frequency distortion. Where it misses is in lower bass energy which it attempts to make up for by boosting the upper bass. This is a fine trick in low end budget speakers but for a monitor, I don't think it is a good trade off. I would be interested to test its larger brothers to see how well they do with their increased bass response.
Overall, the LYD 5 is a good attempt. It just doesn't fit what I am looking for however and my preference for a studio monitor would be that of JBL LSR305P MKII or Neumann KH80 DSP.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Before I started ASR, I thought it would be a great get rich quick scheme. I make up a bunch of fancy graphs, add some technical buzzwords and you all would throw thousands of dollars at me per day. Well, it has not worked out this way. My hopes and dreams of private jets and islands have gone out the window. Still, I hope you support me by donating what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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