This is a review and detailed measurements of the Edifier R1280T Powered Bookshelf (computer) Speakers. I purchased a few weeks ago at a cost of US $99 for a pair including Prime shipping. Yes, a pair of powered speakers for just $99. Incredible value if the performance is there.
I must say I expected a larger speaker than what I saw in person:
The retro look makes one think the speaker is multiple times the size it is. That said, I definitely appreciate the form factor as it is the largest I like to have for computer desktop use. I find the grill very attractive but to be a purist, I measured the R1280 without it and listened to it the same.
Back side shows what you expect in this price range and type of speaker:
The pair of binding posts carry the speaker level signal to the other channel. This of course mandates a passive crossover. Company advertises 20 watts of amplification.
Surprisingly you get a remote and tone/level control on the side:
This eliminates the need for a pre-amp for volume control which is great.
Fit and finish is good although I had to remove some glue "strings" here and there.
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 76 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.
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:
Well, any hope we had of this being a "studio monitor" with flat response is thrown out the window. We clearly have response variations with two resonances where the green arrows are. If we look at the individual driver response (more or less), we see the causes of those:
The woofer seems to be resonating around 5 kHz and the tweeter has peaking near 10 kHz. Hopefully we can correct these with EQ.
Our early window reflection graph is made more for far field response than near-field:
If you are like me, you have many feet behind you so the "front wall" reflection is not going to be as material as normal far field listening. Going with what we have, we more or less have the same issues as on-axis so EQ correction should be rather effective.
Putting the two together we see the same:
Let's look at our standard distortion measurements:
Sweep sounded OK in the measurement room at 86 dBSPL but not at 96. At the higher level speaker did not break up but tonality of the sweep changed altogether.
The jagged frequency response translates into jagged directivity:
Vertically you don't have much margin of error so I suggest pointing the speaker up at you as I did during my listening tests:
Last and least, CSD/waterfall graph:
Subjective Speaker Listening Tests
First impression of the speaker was, "not bad!" A bit bass heavy and after a track or two, somewhat bright. The flaws though were subjectively much less than what you intuit from the measurements. I have found that a lift around 1 kHz is more beneficial than a dip there and that is what we have. I went after pulling that down and the first resonance. The sound was still bright so I put in a quick hack to roll of the highs:
Once there, this was a delightful little speaker! I smashed through my "speaker killer" tracks without falling apart. It has excellent bass that doesn't fall apart even at elevated levels with a single speaker playing. Track after track sounded good no matter what the genre. I have had much more expensive speaker with flatter on-axis response that fail such tests because they run out of power and bottom out/distort heavily. Not the Edifier R1280. That little woofer seems to have good power handling plus proper low frequency tuning.
Conclusions
I went into the listening tests prebiased with good looks and poor measurements of the speaker. What I found was that with a bit of EQ, this becomes a very nice speaker to enjoy on the desktop. It leaves far behind any plastic toy computer speaker. It certainly did justify to any track I threw at it, leaving me wanting to sit there and keep listening to it!
I don't often make dispensation for price but here, it is remarkable how good of a sound one can get from well packages speaker and with some correction per above. Even without EQ, if one turns down the treble control it will likely be quite listenable.
I am happy to put the Edifier R1280T on my recommended list even though I know I am going to get grief on the lack of objective perfection.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
After five years of fruiting very little and what was there, eaten by some varmint, our grape trees all of a sudden started to produce well. With just the two of us in the house, we can't eat them all so this morning's project was getting some in the dehydrator to make rasins:
This was after canning a ton of tomatoes last night with more left as you can see in the back.
What is that? You are sick of my gardening stories and you didn't come here to read stuff like this? Well, donate some money for heaven's sake so I can't have to tell you these things to get inside your pockets!!! Here is the link: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
I must say I expected a larger speaker than what I saw in person:
The retro look makes one think the speaker is multiple times the size it is. That said, I definitely appreciate the form factor as it is the largest I like to have for computer desktop use. I find the grill very attractive but to be a purist, I measured the R1280 without it and listened to it the same.
Back side shows what you expect in this price range and type of speaker:
The pair of binding posts carry the speaker level signal to the other channel. This of course mandates a passive crossover. Company advertises 20 watts of amplification.
Surprisingly you get a remote and tone/level control on the side:
This eliminates the need for a pre-amp for volume control which is great.
Fit and finish is good although I had to remove some glue "strings" here and there.
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 76 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.
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:
Well, any hope we had of this being a "studio monitor" with flat response is thrown out the window. We clearly have response variations with two resonances where the green arrows are. If we look at the individual driver response (more or less), we see the causes of those:
The woofer seems to be resonating around 5 kHz and the tweeter has peaking near 10 kHz. Hopefully we can correct these with EQ.
Our early window reflection graph is made more for far field response than near-field:
If you are like me, you have many feet behind you so the "front wall" reflection is not going to be as material as normal far field listening. Going with what we have, we more or less have the same issues as on-axis so EQ correction should be rather effective.
Putting the two together we see the same:
Let's look at our standard distortion measurements:
Sweep sounded OK in the measurement room at 86 dBSPL but not at 96. At the higher level speaker did not break up but tonality of the sweep changed altogether.
The jagged frequency response translates into jagged directivity:
Vertically you don't have much margin of error so I suggest pointing the speaker up at you as I did during my listening tests:
Last and least, CSD/waterfall graph:
Subjective Speaker Listening Tests
First impression of the speaker was, "not bad!" A bit bass heavy and after a track or two, somewhat bright. The flaws though were subjectively much less than what you intuit from the measurements. I have found that a lift around 1 kHz is more beneficial than a dip there and that is what we have. I went after pulling that down and the first resonance. The sound was still bright so I put in a quick hack to roll of the highs:
Once there, this was a delightful little speaker! I smashed through my "speaker killer" tracks without falling apart. It has excellent bass that doesn't fall apart even at elevated levels with a single speaker playing. Track after track sounded good no matter what the genre. I have had much more expensive speaker with flatter on-axis response that fail such tests because they run out of power and bottom out/distort heavily. Not the Edifier R1280. That little woofer seems to have good power handling plus proper low frequency tuning.
Conclusions
I went into the listening tests prebiased with good looks and poor measurements of the speaker. What I found was that with a bit of EQ, this becomes a very nice speaker to enjoy on the desktop. It leaves far behind any plastic toy computer speaker. It certainly did justify to any track I threw at it, leaving me wanting to sit there and keep listening to it!
I don't often make dispensation for price but here, it is remarkable how good of a sound one can get from well packages speaker and with some correction per above. Even without EQ, if one turns down the treble control it will likely be quite listenable.
I am happy to put the Edifier R1280T on my recommended list even though I know I am going to get grief on the lack of objective perfection.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
After five years of fruiting very little and what was there, eaten by some varmint, our grape trees all of a sudden started to produce well. With just the two of us in the house, we can't eat them all so this morning's project was getting some in the dehydrator to make rasins:
This was after canning a ton of tomatoes last night with more left as you can see in the back.
What is that? You are sick of my gardening stories and you didn't come here to read stuff like this? Well, donate some money for heaven's sake so I can't have to tell you these things to get inside your pockets!!! Here is the link: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
