This is a review and detailed measurements of the Dynaudio Excite X14 bookshelf speaker. It was kindly sent in by a member for review. It came out in 2014 and has been discontinued. It cost US $1,500 then. I see used ones at almost that price.
While somewhat plain due to black finish, there is still some style in this Danish speaker:
The cabinet feels dense and there is good bit of weight to the X14. Here is the back panel:
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 performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% up to about 3 kHz but then climbed up to 2% or so.
Temperature was 58 degrees F. 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.
Reference axis was the tweeter center.
Dynaudio X14 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:
On-axis response is not as flat as I like to see from a company like Dynaudio. Due to lack of waveguide to control the width of the tweeter beam at its lowest crossover setting, it doesn't match the woofer's causing that dip in the index.
Individual driver and port response shows some of the reasons for the uneven response:
Looks to me like that port resonance is boosting the lower midrange between 500 and 100 Hz. Crossover matching is not perfect either. Tweeter has a nice flat response until it doesn't above 10 kHz.
Early window reflections show the problem we already know about:
Highly suggest having a thick carpet to absorb the floor reflections around 2 kHz as I do. Needs to be about 2 inches or so to be effective there.
Predicted in-room response is such:
Depending on where you draw the regression line, there is too much energy in the lower and upper treble which can make the speaker sound bright.
Beamwidth shows the lack of directivity control:
See how the laws of physics control the directivity of the tweeter, narrowing its beamwidth as frequencies go up. We want this to be horizontal so that the off-axis response matches on-axis and we don't have a lot of room dependency.
Distortion is good for this type of speaker:
Horizontal contour map shows our issue with directivity again:
Seems like the speaker was not fully aligned horizontally so the on-axis response may be a bit worse or better than what the spin shows.
Here is our vertical which is not bad:
You have good bit of leeway on how high you place the speaker relative to your ears.
Edit: forgot the impedance graph:
Dynaudio X14 Speaker Listening Tests
First impression was good. I could enjoy my female reference tracks which is where I always start. But I thought I make some corrections in the response and see how much better it gets:
Ignore the one at 102 Hz as that is for room mode. The rest helped a lot and nicely transformed the speaker. The bit of brightness was gone and clarity was improved with the boost in 2 kHz. The dip around 800 Hz also helped with clarity which could be due to reduction of port resonance.
With EQ in place, the X14 produce very good dynamics with surprising clarity. Distortion would only gradually set it as I pumped a ton of power into it. Indeed I felt no need to test its limits as it was already doing better than it should be.
Conclusions
Our of the box, the objective performance of the Dynaudio X14 is not that great. Despite its rather high price, there is no waveguide to control directivity. And response is not as good as it should be on axis. Mild equalization helped transform it to a capable speaker. Having been discontinued and expensive, The X14 is not a speaker that I recommend. But if you can find a cheap pair and use EQ, it can be a very satisfying speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
While somewhat plain due to black finish, there is still some style in this Danish speaker:
The cabinet feels dense and there is good bit of weight to the X14. Here is the back panel:
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 performed over 800 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% up to about 3 kHz but then climbed up to 2% or so.
Temperature was 58 degrees F. 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.
Reference axis was the tweeter center.
Dynaudio X14 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:
On-axis response is not as flat as I like to see from a company like Dynaudio. Due to lack of waveguide to control the width of the tweeter beam at its lowest crossover setting, it doesn't match the woofer's causing that dip in the index.
Individual driver and port response shows some of the reasons for the uneven response:
Looks to me like that port resonance is boosting the lower midrange between 500 and 100 Hz. Crossover matching is not perfect either. Tweeter has a nice flat response until it doesn't above 10 kHz.
Early window reflections show the problem we already know about:
Highly suggest having a thick carpet to absorb the floor reflections around 2 kHz as I do. Needs to be about 2 inches or so to be effective there.
Predicted in-room response is such:
Depending on where you draw the regression line, there is too much energy in the lower and upper treble which can make the speaker sound bright.
Beamwidth shows the lack of directivity control:
See how the laws of physics control the directivity of the tweeter, narrowing its beamwidth as frequencies go up. We want this to be horizontal so that the off-axis response matches on-axis and we don't have a lot of room dependency.
Distortion is good for this type of speaker:
Horizontal contour map shows our issue with directivity again:
Seems like the speaker was not fully aligned horizontally so the on-axis response may be a bit worse or better than what the spin shows.
Here is our vertical which is not bad:
You have good bit of leeway on how high you place the speaker relative to your ears.
Edit: forgot the impedance graph:
Dynaudio X14 Speaker Listening Tests
First impression was good. I could enjoy my female reference tracks which is where I always start. But I thought I make some corrections in the response and see how much better it gets:
Ignore the one at 102 Hz as that is for room mode. The rest helped a lot and nicely transformed the speaker. The bit of brightness was gone and clarity was improved with the boost in 2 kHz. The dip around 800 Hz also helped with clarity which could be due to reduction of port resonance.
With EQ in place, the X14 produce very good dynamics with surprising clarity. Distortion would only gradually set it as I pumped a ton of power into it. Indeed I felt no need to test its limits as it was already doing better than it should be.
Conclusions
Our of the box, the objective performance of the Dynaudio X14 is not that great. Despite its rather high price, there is no waveguide to control directivity. And response is not as good as it should be on axis. Mild equalization helped transform it to a capable speaker. Having been discontinued and expensive, The X14 is not a speaker that I recommend. But if you can find a cheap pair and use EQ, it can be a very satisfying speaker.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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