Erin's review for the March Audio Sointuva

[abdo123]

I'm just speechless over how good the results are, text book perfect response (other than the typical 2-way vertical lobes) and unbelievable compression performance thanks to the Purifi mid-range.

Link: https://www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loudspeakers/march_audio_sointuva/

 

[voodooless]

No surprise here I guess. Very well executed design. Though they are super hideous! The Purify looks like shit, the wood as well, and the tweeter color doesn’t match the rest at all.

The filter looks quite extensive. Quite some work went into this. Directivity wise, it is very smooth, but also a lot of narrowing at the top end. I think I’d like to see a slower slope.

 

[abdo123]

No surprise here I guess. Very well executed design. Though they are super hideous! The Purify looks like shit, the wood as well, and the tweeter color doesn’t match the rest at all.

The filter looks quite extensive. Quite some work went into this. Directivity wise, it is very smooth, but also a lot of narrowing at the top end. I think I’d like to see a slower slope.

The response is flat at ~20 degrees off-axis. This way two people can have a pretty great sweet spot with time intensity trading.

Aesthetically my partner definitely agrees with you, however i'm a very 'function follows form' person and knowing that the weird shape on the purifi controls the breakup better is enough for me.

 

[voodooless]

The response is flat at ~20 degrees off-axis. This way two people can have a pretty great sweet spot with time intensity trading.

Oh, generally I don’t mind the narrower profile. It would help a lot in my sucky room. Erin didn’t seem to mind either and was surprised by it.

Aesthetically my partner definitely agrees with you, however i'm a very 'function follows form' person and knowing that the weird shape on the purifi controls the breakup better is enough for me.

Nothing a grill and a paint job can’t fix

 

[Frank Dernie]

Though they are super hideous! The Purify looks like shit, the wood as well, and the tweeter color doesn’t match the rest at all.

Ha-ha, beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
I really like wood with complex figuring and hadn't even noticed the tweeter colour.

 

[RMW_NJ]

Wow, impressive! Still always have trouble placing a value on high performance/high cost equipment…like is this twice as good as an R3 or BMR (considering it costs twice as much)?

 

[NYfan2]

Yes, very impressive, another contender for the Passive Speaker Recommendation by @sweetchaos ?
Let's wait for the preference score.

 

[Weeb Labs]

Directivity is rather narrow from 9KHz onward. Less than 20 degrees above 10KHz, depending upon where you draw the line.

 

[sweetchaos]

Impressive performance.
This will certainly be one of the top 3 speakers for their price point, i'm guessing (before seeing the preference score).

I hope more painted finishes are available, as I'm not a fan of natural wood.

 

[BenB]

Based on my experience with my wall-splasher speakers, I think it's porbably desirable to voice the treble up a bit on such a narrow directivity speaker (like has been done here). Howerver, the bass starts to roll off at 150 Hz. That sounds a lot more problematic to me for anyone thinking about using it for 2 channel playback. I see that the directivity is smoothe, but I think it's too narrow for my tastes. When someone does a good job of implementing something that's at odds with my preferences, it's hard to get excited.

 

[BoredErica]

Very curious to see preference score w/ eq + sub. I think Purifi drivers look like trash and can't ever get a speaker with it. But if you like it more power to you.

 

[Freeway]

Nothing a grill and a paint job can’t fix

How does the song go?
"I saw your speakers the other day. They sure are ugly."
"Yeah, but they sure can cook!"

March has an extensive wonderful selection of beautiful timbers (not veneers) and stain. Plain paint, too.

 

[Madjalapeno]

Though they are super hideous! The Purify looks like shit, the wood as well, and the tweeter color doesn’t match the rest at all.

I like natural wood, but that has too much going on. Something with less figuring would look nicer.

 

[Massimo]

I wouldn't get hung up over the timber finish. It's the measurements that matter. March Audio offers a vast array of finishes for the Sointuva:

"The Sointuva is manufactured to order and as such you can specify any colour of paint finish. Alternatively we can manufacture the speaker in a range of Australian timbers."

Sointuva Speaker | March Audio AU

We are very excited to present our Sointuva speaker. Sointuva is a Finnish word meaning "musical harmony" and March Audio believes this very aptly describes the performance of the Sointuva speaker.Our design objective was to produce a speaker that is moderate in size yet possessed exceptionally...

www.marchaudio.net.au

 

[Holmz]

Very curious to see preference score w/ eq + sub. I think Purifi drivers look like trash and can't ever get a speaker with it. But if you like it more power to you.

I thought it was given as 6.7 and over8 with a sub.
While I like my old speakers, these did seem to be sounding better in another’s house.
But I have objective way to compare my old the new speakers now.

Klipsch speakers seem to look nice.

Based on my experience with my wall-splasher speakers, I think it's porbably desirable to voice the treble up a bit on such a narrow directivity speaker (like has been done here). Howerver, the bass starts to roll off at 150 Hz. That sounds a lot more problematic to me for anyone thinking about using it for 2 channel playback. I see that the directivity is smoothe, but I think it's too narrow for my tastes. When someone does a good job of implementing something that's at odds with my preferences, it's hard to get excited.

When I heard them about 2 months ago, I was astounded that the bass was as good as it was.
We listened to a lot of music tyjaht I was familiar with, and some I was not too familiar with.

It seemed like it was punching pretty hard down at ~40 Hz.
And I actually opened the iPad NIOSH app to see what the SPL was. (It was difficult to have a conversation.)

 

[Tangband]

No surprise here I guess. Very well executed design. Though they are super hideous! The Purify looks like shit, the wood as well, and the tweeter color doesn’t match the rest at all.

The filter looks quite extensive. Quite some work went into this. Directivity wise, it is very smooth, but also a lot of narrowing at the top end. I think I’d like to see a slower slope.

Seems to be a very good loudspeaker.
Looking at March audios website, they have really interesting amplifiers and dacs for reasonable prices to.

 

[Sancus]

Probably as good as it gets for a small loudspeaker capable of playing loudly, for sure.

That said, this is a passive speaker that costs $3500-$4000 each. So you should expect near perfection. And the directivity(ignoring vertical) definitely isn't perfect, there's a bit of crossover disturbance, in addition to the treble narrowing. It also has no low frequency control whatsoever.

When you consider amp/dac we're in Genelec 8361A or D&D 8C (studio version) territory. And I don't really see any special attributes, beyond just "well executed 2-way", that I expect(hope?) to start seeing in that price range.

I'm absolutely not saying there's any reason not to buy it, but it also doesn't seem SOTA to me either by any means.

 

[pierre]

Let me break some good news: score is 6.9 which is stellar for a passive speaker.

         SPK auEQ                                                                                                                                            
-----------------                                                                                                                                            
NBD  ON 0.29 0.24                                                                                                                                            
NBD  LW 0.25 0.20                                                                                                                                            
NBD PIR 0.21 0.16                                                                                                                                            
SM  PIR 0.91 0.96                                                                                                                                            
SM   SP 0.99 0.99                                                                                                                                            
LFX       34   32                                                                                                                                            
LFQ     0.84 0.84                                                                                                                                            
-----------------                                                                                                                                            
Score    6.9  7.3                                                                                                                                            
w/sub    8.5  8.8                                                                                                             
-----------------                                                                                                                                            
+6.88 +7.32 March Audio Sointuva

An EQ doesn't help much so I also boosted the bass a bit and get the score up to 7.3.
As always you can play with the EQ to taste, i would remove the small ones and keep only 2 and even like that it would be worth listening to see if that improves the sound or not.

The speaker is really ugly but it should perform.

March did a great job.

Here is the EQ in details:

EQ for March Audio Sointuva computed from ErinsAudioCorner data
Preference Score 6.9 with EQ 7.3
Generated from http://github.com/pierreaubert/spinorama/generate_peqs.py v0.14
Dated: 2022-01-07-08:39:44

Preamp: -1.9 dB

Filter  1: ON PK Fc   156 Hz Gain -0.84 dB Q 3.87
Filter  2: ON PK Fc  2086 Hz Gain +0.94 dB Q 2.41
Filter  3: ON PK Fc  1296 Hz Gain +0.77 dB Q 5.97
Filter  4: ON PK Fc   208 Hz Gain -0.51 dB Q 5.29
Filter  5: ON PK Fc   127 Hz Gain -0.50 dB Q 5.85
Filter  6: ON PK Fc    41 Hz Gain +2.96 dB Q 1.35
Filter  7: ON PK Fc   105 Hz Gain -0.51 dB Q 5.89
Filter  8: ON PK Fc   265 Hz Gain -0.52 dB Q 6.00
Filter  9: ON PK Fc  1702 Hz Gain -0.56 dB Q 5.84

 

[TimF]

woodwork to die for.

 

[essence]

I have a pair with the original tweeter, what surprised me is how much smaller depth wise (its less than half depth-wise compared to my old Dynaudio C1s) very handy for near-field desk placement even though it wasn't designed for nearfield.