EVE SC203 desktop monitor speakers, first impressions

[AnalogSteph]

I made a plan to give my trusty office speakers JBL 104 away to an individual in dire need of some actually working ones, so I needed something to replace them with. After considering various options of varying overkill factor, I eventually settled on these cuties, an active stereo speaker pair with a 3" woofer, a waveguided 0.75" Micro-AMT tweeter and a passive radiator on the back that'll set you back 499€ right now. I also ordered a Sonarworks SoundID Reference measurement mic and an Audient EVO 4 audio interface, alongside some acoustic foam (which I though was almost too much but in fact didn't make nearly as much of a dent as I had hoped).

General notes:
Nice fit and finish and sturdy feel, but so you would hope at the price. Passive radiator membrane appears to be metal, for weight I presume.
The case is slightly wedge-shaped for a native 7.5° tilt, the supplied rubber desk pads can be used to add +/- 7.5° on top.
The (left) slave speaker is connected with a 4-pin Molex reminiscent of the P4 power connector that those into building PCs are going to be familiar with, so unlike the 104s these are fully active speakers. Cable length is ample for a desk.
Inputs are analog unbalanced RCA (can take either +8 or +22 dBu max), USB Type B (UAC1, up to 24/96) or Toslink. Auto-Standby is working on analog only. Supplied USB cable is quite short indeed (say half a meter)... the same complaint actually applies to the EVO 4 as well.
Lots of functions are crammed into a single push / turn encoder interface. It's OK once you get the hang of it, but RTFM is very much advised initially. Much thought seems to have gone into these.
It's neat that you can dim the volume LED display, but the reddish-orange LEDs are hardly an eyesore even at full brightness, and it's debatable whether flickery PWM is any better.
R speaker is getting lukewarm in operation, external power adapter (a 2-prong Europlug affair) remains cool. Power specs in manual are lacking, w/ standby power being inaccurate ("<1 W") and idle power w/ no audio not being given. No hard power switch, but then again those are reserved to devices with integrated power supplies.

USB audio in was used for testing.

Sound proved a bit more deja vu than I had hoped... a bit too much bass that sounds a bit tubby for lack of a better word (too much midbass), treble seems slightly sharp / grainy. The "Low" (bass) control also seems to barely do anything in the negative range and/or have very limited effect in general. I settled on 9:00 for Low and 10:30 for High.
NO HISS, unless you are literally sticking your ear to the tweeter (<2").
These little things can make quite a racket.
Channel matching sems generally decent but substantially diverges below 100 Hz or so.
Dispersion seems fairly even although the highs quickly fade out past 45° or so.

This room isn't exactly an anechoic chamber, so this is about as good as I could do for the overall response, propped up on the EVO4 box at the desk edge, mic maybe 20 cm away (window 500s + 1/24 oct):

Or by the standards of EVE Audio at 1/6 oct:

What they claim:

You can hide a lot of surprises with that much smoothing.
Tweeters L and R nearfield (5 ms + 1/24 oct):

Quite repeatable like that. They are appreciably different, with R having an additional peak around 7 kHz. The ripple may be down to the grilles?

Woofers nearfield (100 ms + 1/24 oct):

Both twooters and weefers:

This is what the "Desk" position setting does:

Eh, not sure about that one. It seems quite heavy-handed.

For now some minimal treble EQ based on nearfield measurements only - this seems to bring things into focus imaging wise:

 

[Soniclife]

I really like mine, but I though they needed a sub, they work nicely with an auto on one.

Mine are hiss free as well.

They do auto standby on all inputs, but the input needs to be properly off, not just sending silence.

I've not measured mine, I don't think they are that actuate in the space they have had to be shoved, but I enjoy them a lot and have decided ignorance is bliss.

 

[AnalogSteph]

They do auto standby on all inputs, but the input needs to be properly off, not just sending silence.

Interesting. I'll have to test that. Would be nice in case I ever forget to turn them off when shutting down the computer for the weekend.

Incidentally, I wish that internally reversing L and R channels was a standard feature on speakers like this. Being left-handed, I'd prefer having the volume control on the left. I had previously set up the 104s like that, too (by just swapping around the input cabling), but since I'm using the USB input on these now, this is not accomplished nearly as easily.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I really like mine, but I though they needed a sub, they work nicely with an auto on one.

I don't need to rattle the office and am fairly happy as-is, but if I ever feel like it, I'll be taking a good hard look at the Fostex PM-SUBmini 2, a closed 5" that is small enough to still fit ON the desk (I presume it was originally intended for the 3" PM0.3dH set).

 

[oversky]

I made a plan to give my trusty office speakers JBL 104 away to an individual in dire need of some actually working ones, so I needed something to replace them with. After considering various options of varying overkill factor, I eventually settled on these cuties, an active stereo speaker pair with a 3" woofer, a waveguided 0.75" Micro-AMT tweeter and a passive radiator on the back that'll set you back 499€ right now. I also ordered a Sonarworks SoundID Reference measurement mic and an Audient EVO 4 audio interface, alongside some acoustic foam (which I though was almost too much but in fact didn't make nearly as much of a dent as I had hoped).

I have JBL 104-BT.
Do you miss the coaxial design in regard to stereo imaging?

 

[Soniclife]

I don't need to rattle the office and am fairly happy as-is, but if I ever feel like it, I'll be taking a good hard look at the Fostex PM-SUBmini 2, a closed 5" that is small enough to still fit ON the desk (I presume it was originally intended for the 3" PM0.3dH set).

I don't think I'd need a sub, was very surprised that for low volume home office use I wanted one, but I'm very glad I bought one.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Do you miss the coaxial design in regard to stereo imaging?

Good question. In my experience, speaker placement has a greater influence on this than speaker type. The SC203s when initially placed on boxes at the front edge of my desk gave some stunning results. The 104s now flanking a pair of 24" monitors at desk height have become rather indistinct. (Their new owner is nonetheless absolutely thrilled. I took the time to measure and EQ them, too, to be posted shortly.)

Keep in mind that a coaxial is of limited help if dispersion ends up being kind of a mess regardless, it'll just be a more similar mess in both axes (and remain consistent in extreme nearfield). Conventional 2-ways with close driver spacing and high-order crossovers (48 dB / octave in this case) are nothing to sneeze at either. My preferred type of tweeter would be a conventional waveguided dome job, which could be crossed over about an octave lower than the MicroAMT in the SC203s. This handicap considered, they're actually doing quite well. And it's not exactly like we're being swamped with good candidates for office speakers.

 

[Kyle / MrHeeHo]

I have them, bought them to take the place of my ilouds. I think (can't verify without measurements ofc) that they sound better than the ilouds but I hear a resonance somewhere in the bass region that I am not sure is the speaker or my desk resonating. If someone could send a pair to Amir we'd be able to tell for sure

 

[AnalogSteph]

I found some small boxes to prop these up by a good 20 cm. 1m x 0.5 m 8 cm pyramid acoustic foam is applied to the back wall as well as the door behind me.

Averages of 3 measurements each pre-EQ (window 200 ms, 1/18 oct, High shelf control remaining at -2.5 dB):

I had an EQ generated based on these with a slight modified room curve (LF 300 Hz 20 Hz 1.0 dB), and added a deep bass boost around 55/58 Hz manually to fill in the restricted (and imbalanced) low end at the modest levels that are needed here. (And no, that's with the satellite filter off, which shifts cutoff slightly higher still.) Very happy with the result. The papery "small speaker" sound is basically gone, and the SC203s sound like entirely legit speakers now.

Predicted response:

 

[andymcbain]

I have them, bought them to take the place of my ilouds. I think (can't verify without measurements ofc) that they sound better than the ilouds but I hear a resonance somewhere in the bass region that I am not sure is the speaker or my desk resonating. If someone could send a pair to Amir we'd be able to tell for sure

Do you still have both pairs of monitors? Co-incidentally I was A/Bing my SC203 against my friends iLouds last night.

I was very surprised by the low end performance of the iLoud. I always thought the SC203 had decent bass for the size - but yeah in comparison the bass from the iLoud felt more weighty and controlled - “tubby” seemed to sum up the SC203 pretty well.

The mid range on the iLoud seems much more present too - with more in the 2-3k region - especially noticeable on drum transients etc. Either the SC203 is lacking in this department or the iLouds are boosted here.

Where the SC203 stood out was the upper highs (or the “air band” as we say in mixing) - which were much crisper and seemed to make things sound a little wider and open - whereas the iLoud had a slightly boxed in, small speaker vibe in comparison.

It was difficult to know which I preferred. I thought the SC203 would be a good choice in my small mixing room, where I tend to work at low volumes. However I never really got on with them as monitors and always reverted to doing my detailed work in HD650s. Surprisingly to me, I think I would be happier working on the iLouds than the SC203.

Thanks for the REW measurements - and hope to see Amir review these one day

 

[Chromatischism]

I wasn't happy with my iLoud MTM midrange until I covered the desk with a desk pad and used REW to EQ down the desk reflection. But that would be needed for any speaker.

 

[AnalogSteph]

I was very surprised by the low end performance of the iLoud. I always thought the SC203 had decent bass for the size - but yeah in comparison the bass from the iLoud felt more weighty and controlled - “tubby” seemed to sum up the SC203 pretty well.

I'm not surprised. The iLouds seem to be EQ'd dead flat to under 60 Hz according to @napilopez (spec is -3 dB @ 55 Hz), and that would no doubt sound very "grown up".

Here's the quasi anechoic spin:

They must be using DSP to cut things back at higher levels, otherwise it would be asking a lot from 3" midwoofers. I can still find 3.5" woofers with fs in the 70s or 60s of Hz, but 3" not below 100 Hz and more like 120 Hz. Running speakers at or below fs is generally considered a no-no.

The SC203s would require very aggressive EQ to match this 100%. We're not just talking 5-9 dB at 55-58 Hz like my little bass boost (which has improved things a fair bit already), but another 9-12 dB on top of that. The very steep dropoff (it matches 48 dB/decade) suggests that bass response has either been substantially propped up already or an explicit highpass to limit excursion (or both, for that matter).

I have to say that the SC203s would not normally have been my first choice. They're not inexpensive and performance is about 3 dB short of legit out of the box, and I reckon both could have been helped by using a boring old dome tweeter instead. Still, I can iron out the weaknesses reasonably well (with equipment cost being offset by having been used for multiple other speakers already) and enjoy the sound of silence when nothing is playing. Now if only the construction outside would finally be finished already...

 

[AnalogSteph]

A minor tweak: I decided to add a pinch more deep bass boost, max gain +12 dB, pushing things a few Hz lower. Still not a problem due to the conservative digital levels that I tend to run.

Still happy. Arguably more so than my home setup even, which has resisted more advanced EQ attempts so far.

BTW, albums I used for listening tests: Julia Jacklin - Pre Pleasure, Hello Seahorse! - Bestia, Hand Habits - Fun House. Top peak value indicated by PEACE is about 70% (Amazon Music volume set to 50%).

 

[AnalogSteph]

They do auto standby on all inputs, but the input needs to be properly off, not just sending silence.

Cannot confirm for USB. I accidentally left them on on Sunday (but shut down the computer), only to come in today to find them still running. That would suggest that the manual is in fact correct.

 

[Digby]

Cannot confirm for USB. I accidentally left them on on Sunday (but shut down the computer), only to come in today to find them still running. That would suggest that the manual is in fact correct.

Some computers supply USB power even when computer is off. This might be something you can change in BIOS.

 

[Soniclife]

Cannot confirm for USB. I accidentally left them on on Sunday (but shut down the computer), only to come in today to find them still running. That would suggest that the manual is in fact correct.

Mine are connected using usb via my monitor, if I turn the monitor off they go to sleep, if the monitor sleeps they stay on.

 

[Weeb Labs]

Might I ask for some gated (3-4ms) off axis measurements in ten degree increments? That would give us some idea as to the directivity matching.

EVE's measurements suggest a mismatch around 5KHz and the crossover is at 4.8KHz (rather high), so I suspect quite a significant mismatch is being obscured by the heavy smoothing. If so, that would be a disqualifier for me.