Dynaudio LYD 5 Studio Monitor Review

[watchnerd]

They probably are (evolved from a design created by a team headed by Skaaning when he was at Dynaudio, before founding ScanSpeak) and probably aren’t (from Skaaning’s current company).

Sure, from that point of view -- the Danish driver industry is incestuous.

Vifa, too, with their acquisition of Scanspeak.

That being said....

The predecessor BM-series model used an "inside magnet" wide-diameter VC 15 cm driver.

 

[q3cpma]

@amirm, any reason other than time for the multitone IMD measurements to go away? It would have been useful in this specific case. It'd make sense to only do it if the linear distorsion is low enough for nonlinear to maybe matter, that would save some effort in most cases.

 

[tktran303]

Mine are 7" (18cm) from the back wall and I couldn't measure any difference between "Wall" and "Free" setting.

Hi Dan,

The effects are real, just harder to measure without an anechoic chamber (or Klippel NFS)

The "free" and "wall" adjust the level of baffle step compensation.

This technical details of this are beyond the scope of my short reply, but if you'd like to see what it does, put your Umik-1 right up to the woofer (ie. within <10mm), flick the switch, and re-measure to see what the difference is.

 

[NTK]

Hi Amir,
Thanks for the review. Any plan on reviewing the Evoke 20 from this brand?

I don't understand the new graph. What is N, and what does the vertical axis represent?

One important characteristic/definition of far field is that the acoustic particle velocity and acoustic pressure are in phase. It is not so in the nearfield. The graph shows, at the indicated frequency, the calculations to find out where far field begins for the loudspeaker. The vertical scale is sound power. Sound power is the total acoustic power radiated by the loudspeaker in all directions. In the farfield, sound power apparent sound power* does not change with distance. That why you see the curves flatten toward the right. The individual curve shows the contribution to the total sound power by the particular expansion order (n).
[Edit:] * I think I was incorrect in saying sound power changes with distance in the near field. I think it should be apparent sound power instead.

Below is from:
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/klippel/Files/Know_How/Literature/Papers/Holographic Nearfield Measurement of Loudspeaker Directivity.pdf
The text gives the mathematical definitions of sound power (the real part of the complex product of pressure and velocity, integrated over a surrounding surface S) and apparent sound power (the product of the magnitudes of pressure and velocity, also integrated over surface S). Please note that both pressure (a scalar) and velocity (a vector) are complex quantities expressed in complex numbers with real and imaginary parts. The integral is performed with the velocity component normal (perpendicular) to the local surface dS (i.e. the inner product of the velocity vector and the unit surface normal vector of dS).

 

[Robbo99999]

One important characteristic/definition of far field is that the acoustic particle velocity and acoustic pressure are in phase. It is not so in the nearfield. The graph shows, at the indicated frequency, the calculations to find out where far field begins for the loudspeaker. The vertical scale is sound power. Sound power is the total acoustic power radiated by the loudspeaker in all directions. In the farfield, sound power does not change with distance. That why you see the curves flatten toward the right. The individual curve shows the contribution to the total sound power by the particular expansion order (n).

Below is from:
https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/klippel/Files/Know_How/Literature/Papers/Holographic Nearfield Measurement of Loudspeaker Directivity.pdf
The text gives the mathematical definitions of sound power (the real part of the complex product of pressure and velocity, integrated over a surrounding surface S) and apparent sound power (the product of the magnitudes of pressure and velocity, also integrated over surface S). Please note that both pressure (a scalar) and velocity (a vector) are complex quantities expressed in complex numbers with real and imaginary parts. The integral is performed with the velocity component normal (perpendicular) to the local surface dS (i.e. the inner product of the velocity vector and the unit surface normal vector of dS).
View attachment 82815 View attachment 82816

Are there any other simpler ways of describing what is happening in that graph boiled down into a few sentences that describes in a "visual" way what is happening with varied distance from the speaker in terms of near field / far field? (and it's relevance) Because my intuition is telling me this has something to do with reflections and the speaker geometry in terms of woofer & tweeter arrangement / relationship, but I still don't really understand that graph and what nearfield & farfield really means (and on a practical level).

 

[NTK]

Are there any other simpler ways of describing what is happening in that graph boiled down into a few sentences that describes in a "visual" way what is happening with varied distance from the speaker in terms of near field / far field? Because my intuition is telling me this has something to do with reflections and the speaker geometry in terms of woofer & tweeter arrangement / relationship, but I still don't really understand that graph and what nearfield & farfield really means.

I think the simplest way to understand it is that, when it is in the far field, the sounds from all the individual drivers will integrate well.

 

[Robbo99999]

I think the simplest way to understand it is that, when it is in the far field, the sounds from all the individual drivers will integrate well.

Yes, this was my intuition on it. So tall tower speakers with many speakers arranged over a long vertical distance will take longer to integrate their individual sounds into a cohesive (& intended) mass.....so the distance at which they become farfield will be greater than say a small 2 way bookshelf speaker?

What other variables/properties of the speaker influences how quickly a speaker becomes farfield?

 

[watchnerd]

I think the simplest way to understand it is that, when it is in the far field, the sounds from all the individual drivers will integrate well.

Which is why I actually like the abnormally-high crossover of the LYD 5 in the nearfield -- it's all one driver up to 5.2 kHz.

Sitting <1 m, I'm definitely in the nearfield, which helps reduce room factors when I'm mixing, and the beaming doesn't matter much when I'm sitting that close.

I'm actually not even sure traditional Toole-derived thoughts on directivity are the right framing in the nearfield.

 

[NTK]

Yes, this was my intuition on it. So tall tower speakers with many speakers arranged over a long vertical distance will take longer to integrate their individual sounds into a cohesive (& intended) mass.....so the distance at which they become farfield will be greater than say a small 2 way bookshelf speaker?

What other variables/properties of the speaker influences how quickly a speaker becomes farfield?

The simple criteria given by Klippel (from the same reference I gave above) are:

1. The listening distance must be larger than the largest dimension of the speaker -- pretty easy.
2. The listening distance must be larger than the wavelength -- difficult/impossible to achieve at low frequencies.
3. The ratio of the listening distance to largest speaker dimension must be larger than the ratio of the largest speaker dimension to wavelength -- may be difficult to achieve at high frequencies.

[Edit:] But as Klippel said in the first sentence in section 5.4, these are just "vague" criteria, and the calculations are much more precise.

 

[NTK]

Which is why I actually like the abnormally-high crossover of the LYD 5 in the nearfield -- it's all one driver up to 5.2 kHz.

Sitting <1 m, I'm definitely in the nearfield, which helps reduce room factors when I'm mixing, and the beaming doesn't matter much when I'm sitting that close.

I'm actually not even sure traditional Toole-derived thoughts on directivity are the right framing in the nearfield.

It is interesting that I have the Focus 110A. The cross-over is 1300 Hz from the 1.1" dome to the 5.7" mid/bass, with 1st order slopes no less . They are in offsite storage, and when I have the chance, I'll need to measure them.

 

[watchnerd]

It is interesting that I have the Focus 110A. The cross-over is 1300 Hz from the 1.1" dome to the 5.7" mid/bass, with 1st order slopes no less . They are in offsite storage, and when I have the chance, I'll need to measure them.
View attachment 82822

Different woofer, too.

I believe the Focus 110A 15 cm driver is much closer to the inside-magnet driver used on the previous generation BM 5A Compact series monitor.

It had a crossover at 1500 Hz, also 1st order.

https://www.dynaudio.com/professional-audio-discontinued/bm-series/bm5a-compact#tech-specs

 

[NTK]

Different woofer, too.

I believe the Focus 110A 15 cm driver is much closer to the inside-magnet driver used on the previous generation BM 5A Compact series monitor.

It had a crossover at 1500 Hz, also 1st order.

https://www.dynaudio.com/professional-audio-discontinued/bm-series/bm5a-compact#tech-specs

I think they are almost (but not quite) the same.

 

[watchnerd]

I think they are almost (but not quite) the same.

View attachment 82823

Oh, I'm sure there are some subtle differences.

But the inside-magnet era woofers were all designed to be 1st order crossover compatible, a crossover design preference that Dynaudio no longer holds.

As compared to the current era, small-VC long throw woofers with steeper crossovers and higher crossover points.

 

[tktran303]

Oh they're very old designs from Dynaudio, with drivers like the ancient 15W75 (or close derivative) with 3" inset magnet voice coils etc.

Plenty of them are quoted as having 1st order filters. The passive models and active models.

And then when I open them up they have 1 order filter on the woofer and 2nd order on the tweeter...

 

[ROOSKIE]

Those are interesting results. Dynaudio sets a very high crossover frequency to overcome the need for a waveguide for controlled tweeter directivity. That's a dirty trick which comes along with worse vertical directivity and IMD at 2...4 kHz. The estimated in-room response looks so smooth but the vertical directivity is critical. It looks like the listening position must be vertically centered within much less than +-10°. Pink noise and moving your head up and down would easily reveal this weakness.

Yes and unfortunately 10 degrees is not much movement when in near or nearer field. (such as a studio or desk)
For use in a hifi rig sitting 8-12-15 feet away 10 degrees is a bigger sweet zone. Still a bit narrow. I still think these measure very well for use in HiFi, I can't speak to studio recording as I don't do it.

 

[ROOSKIE]

Oh they're very old designs from Dynaudio, with drivers like the ancient 15W75 (or close derivative) with 3" inset magnet voice coils etc.

Plenty of them are quoted as having 1st order filters. The passive models and active models.

And then when I open them up they have 1 order filter on the woofer and 2nd order on the tweeter...

Yah but you have to measure them.
All you can see is the electrical components. The actual crossover takes into account the acoustic response of the drivers.

A 1st order electrical matched with a particular driver might actually create a 1st order, or a 2nd order, or a 3rd order or even in an extreme bizarre case where a 1st order electrical ends up a 4th order acoustic or any other sort of in between that you can imagine.
It could actually be acoustically boosted, IE, the driver has a severe peak and the 1st order can not bring it down.

Anyway I'd bet many of those speakers are at least 2nd order actual roll-offs on woofer and 3rd or 4th on tweeter.

 

[DSJR]

Forgive another possibly silly question, but what's the difference between the LYD actives and the BM range, say here, a BM5A III? Are the LYDs supposed to be the next range up? I believe the BBC and other broadcasters seem to use BM5's for a lot of their general purpose broadcast studio use these days.

 

[temps]

LYD 5s might have less bass but its a difference in philosophy compared to the KH80/8030. Both the 80 and 8030 are permitted to play much deeper than they probably should be.. they are overwhelmed with distortion in the low bass and unusable for music studio use as a result (imo). The 5s roll off early and stay cleaner. That said, they didn't have enough extension for me so I went with LYD 7s and then paired them with a sub.

The -10hz/0/+10hz settings change output. -10hz you get -5dB less output, +10hz you get 5dB more.

I'd like to see the LYD 5 checked with the +10hz setting, that levels off the low bass hump, presumably reduces distortion, and would move it up the chart even further in the preference rating w/subwoofer. The dark/bright switches are interesting too, it's a tilt EQ as opposed to the shelfing EQs common on these types of speaker.

IMD test would have been nice too. Really nice. It's a key concern for studio monitors.

 

[temps]

Hi Dan,

The effects are real, just harder to measure without an anechoic chamber (or Klippel NFS)

The "free" and "wall" adjust the level of baffle step compensation.

This technical details of this are beyond the scope of my short reply, but if you'd like to see what it does, put your Umik-1 right up to the woofer (ie. within <10mm), flick the switch, and re-measure to see what the difference is.

Wall setting vs. Free on LYD 7s

 

[amirm]

I don't understand the new graph. What is N, and what does the vertical axis represent?

N represents the expansion order. It is not important to pay attention to it in the specific. The important bit is where it levels off and doesn't change more with distance. Here is the very brief description from Klippel:

"The graph of the power from distance visualizes the power transfer from the near field to the far field. The near field is characterized by a high amount of reactive power represented by high order Hankel functions. As seen in the plot, the near field effects decrease with the distance. In the far field, the sound power is constant over distance because velocity and sound pressure are in phase."​