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Good German Hifi ?!

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DanielT

DanielT

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Go Germany!:)

I was intensely looking for a test on the speaker element/transducer Peeless SLS. Found it, mostly by chance, .... Solidly done (what else to expect, ... the German engineering tradition). The performance, especially in relation to prices, superb:


More about Peerless SLS:

I ordered two pieces, via TLHP, ....Go France! (good prices, good service TLHP).

Now , budget DIY speakers in progress! I have hopes that it will be perfectly ok! Even more than ok ... In a three-way construction.:)

Tips for those seeking information. In German distortion level, distortion factor is called (as I understand it):
Klirrfaktor
Keep that in mind if you are looking for information.:)
 
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Gurkerl

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James Larson over at audioholics took a look, a listen, and measurements of the evergreen Heco Aurora 1000. Results are actually quite good. Here in Europe these can be found for around 1200€ a pair (tax included, obviously :)).
 

sfphoto

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Braun, Sennheiser, and RME (several decades of German engineering)

IMG_7784.jpg
 

MCH

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Braun, Sennheiser, and RME (several decades of German engineering)

View attachment 210219
I must say, individually, none of those devices is my cup of tea aesthetically, but I don't know if it is the picture, the light, the arrangement or what, but they match perfectly and look great together. Quite remarcable being decades apart. Very cool indeed. (maybe I have been too long in Germany? :D)
 

DJBonoBobo

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tomtoo

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I must say, individually, none of those devices is my cup of tea aesthetically, but I don't know if it is the picture, the light, the arrangement or what, but they match perfectly and look great together. Quite remarcable being decades apart. Very cool indeed. (maybe I have been too long in Germany? :D)

Iam german and never liked the Braun hifi design. They wone design prices and i always thought toy design. I mean how you can fall in love with this?
 
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sfphoto

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Iam german and never liked the Braun hifi design.
It is a timeless design. It is amazing how well it looks (and sounds) after forty years. This is certainly not true for many things from the eighties. And it is nice how well the different components match (same size, location of knobs and switches...). But yes, either you like it or hate it, but it is simply timeless...
 

tomtoo

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It is a timeless design. It is amazing how well it looks (and sounds) after forty years. This is certainly not true for many things from the eighties. And it is nice how well the different components match (same size, location of knobs and switches...). But yes, either you like it or hate it, but it is simply timeless...

No fight. Iam not even a hater. Iam just ignored it.
 

Iceberg

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I ran across an ElectroVoice unit that was German made, looks like the era when Bosch bought the company.

Were these made by Bosch proper or handed off somewhere to make for EV? I didn't know Bosch did audio gear.
 

TonyJZX

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my limited exposure to Canton is telling me they really are a force is 'hidden under a bushel'

amazing quality that probably punches at least 2 times above its price
 

kadajawi

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I own 2 pairs of Nubert speakers, which I quite liked. (nuBox 380 and nuWave 85), each with the ABL/ATM to extend the low end to ridiculous levels (back in the day the ABL/ATM was designed for one specific model, to directly invert the frequency response curve and make it even flatter (and go lower). Nowadays it seems like they got lazy and release a one size fits all solution, which does not make sense to me. Nubert speakers were great value, too.

That being said, newer speakers from Nubert seem to focus too much on going as low as humanly possible, and too little on, well, everything else. I haven't really liked any of their newer and higher end offerings... basically anything released after the founder of the company stopped actively developing stuff.

Great German HiFi... the above mentioned ME Geithain for sure. They sound fantastic, easily better than something with their price tag should sound. Unfortunately, well, look at them! They are made for studios. Zero thought is given to design, and it shows.

Then there's Backes & Müller, which is pretty spectacular. In particular the BM Line 35. It's amazing how clean it sounds at volumes that would embarass Manowar...
 
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DanielT

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I own 2 pairs of Nubert speakers, which I quite liked. (nuBox 380 and nuWave 85), each with the ABL/ATM to extend the low end to ridiculous levels (back in the day the ABL/ATM was designed for one specific model, to directly invert the frequency response curve and make it even flatter (and go lower). Nowadays it seems like they got lazy and release a one size fits all solution, which does not make sense to me. Nubert speakers were great value, too.

That being said, newer speakers from Nubert seem to focus too much on going as low as humanly possible, and too little on, well, everything else. I haven't really liked any of their newer and higher end offerings... basically anything released after the founder of the company stopped actively developing stuff.

Great German HiFi... the above mentioned ME Geithain for sure. They sound fantastic, easily better than something with their price tag should sound. Unfortunately, well, look at them! They are made for studios. Zero thought is given to design, and it shows.

Then there's Backes & Müller, which is pretty spectacular. In particular the BM Line 35. It's amazing how clean it sounds at volumes that would embarass Manowar...
nuBox 380..
They seem to be good.A little extra bass it seems. Many people like that. They also seem to have good off axes respons, up to 10 kHz in any case. But I don't know what the blue line in the graph is supposed to show in and of itself. Appears to be EQ "friendly" . :)

I could easily imagine trying a couple of those, if they appeared on the used market.:)
380Stereoplay10_02Freq320p (1).jpg


e724249a-07e5-446b-9767-66b6e1e1ca68.jpeg
 
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kadajawi

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nuBox 380..
They seem to be good.A little extra bass it seems. Many people like that. They also seem to have good off axes respons, up to 10 kHz in any case. But I don't know what the blue line in the graph is supposed to show in and of itself. Appears to be EQ "friendly" . :)

I could easily imagine trying a couple of those, if they appeared on the used market.:)
View attachment 242965

View attachment 242966
They become better with the ABL, because that one removes that low end bump and extends the low end to 41 Hz. https://www.nubert.de/media/b7/28/ca/1662988087/abl-380-bedienungsanleitung.pdf These days that may not be as impressive anymore, but back in the day...
 

digitalfrost

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I have never understood how they make it work. To have that low end bump, they clearly must've set the bass reflex tuning frequency rather high. How else could they achieve this? However we all know that below the tuning frequency the box will be acoustically open, so if they boost the bass below, they are clearly using some excursion limits they planned in from the beginning? But in a two way this is not good idea. As nice of a product as it might be, it seems to be some shoddy engineering to me. Why not put a nice low BR tuning frequency in the first place?
 
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DanielT

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They become better with the ABL, because that one removes that low end bump and extends the low end to 41 Hz. https://www.nubert.de/media/b7/28/ca/1662988087/abl-380-bedienungsanleitung.pdf These days that may not be as impressive anymore, but back in the day...

I have never understood how they make it work. To have that low end bump, they clearly must've set the bass reflex tuning frequency rather high. How else could they achieve this? However we all know that below the tuning frequency the box will be acoustically open, so if they boost the bass below, they are clearly using some excursion limits they planned in from the beginning? But in a two way this is not good idea. As nice of a product as it might be, it seems to be some shoddy engineering to me. Why not put a nice low BR tuning frequency in the first place?
They probably deliberately created that bass bump.:) It seems in and of itself easy to EQ down, if you want to. BUT that kind of bump, colouring, extra dB in bass or whatever you want to call it MAY suit some people.:)
 

kadajawi

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I have never understood how they make it work. To have that low end bump, they clearly must've set the bass reflex tuning frequency rather high. How else could they achieve this? However we all know that below the tuning frequency the box will be acoustically open, so if they boost the bass below, they are clearly using some excursion limits they planned in from the beginning? But in a two way this is not good idea. As nice of a product as it might be, it seems to be some shoddy engineering to me. Why not put a nice low BR tuning frequency in the first place?
They used a bass chassis that allows for massive excursions, and boosted bass (with the ABL) by up to 10 dB IIRC. The speaker was designed for this in the first place. It's similar as with some active speakers, especially since DSPs have become cheap. The Devialet Expert amps do something very similar, just for a ton of speakers as Devialet has measured them. Since they have also measured excursions and have some processing power in their amp, they are able to reduce bass to avoid damage. The nuBox 380 couldn't get as loud with ABL as without, however it was more than loud enough for me (the neighbour above me complained to me that their neighbour complained... thinking the one above me was the one that was so loud). I believe I saw excursions of a cm or two. Keep in mind that the bass driver was 22 cm, so for a bookshelf it was huge.

Now, was this ideal for the mid range... probably not. But back then I didn't care too much. It still sounded fine.

The bump the speaker has when used without ABL is there to make it sound deeper than it really is. They actually said so in the documentation, IIRC (or in their forum, not sure). With newer speaker designs, they use the crossover to do this in a passive way. Keep in mind that Nubert always prided itself on their crossovers, which were rather complex. So I'm not sure if the BR tuning was the reason for the bump.

This was in the nuBox 380, a rather affordable speaker at 179 Euro for one:

2 generations later it looked like this: https://www.fairaudio.de/dwt/img/test/nubert/nubox-383/nubox_383_fw1.jpg

Without knowing much about crossovers, that looks more complex than what Focal has used in my Kanta N°1, which cost like 16 times as much...

And the nuVero 170, their current flagship (apart from the nuPyramid) looks like this:

I still have my nuWave 85, which did the same thing (with a 2,5 way setup... two 16 cm speakers, with one being only for the low end and one for low end and mid range. With the ABL it reached down to 26 Hz at -3 dB, and it did so at relatively high volume before hitting the limit (and that's with movies. For music you just wouldn't hit the limit). Did it sound a bit better mid range when not pushing the low end like this? Yes. But having 26 Hz from compact floor standers vs not having 26 Hz... they really didn't need a subwoofer.

It also must be said that their customer support is as good as it gets, and from what I hear it still is. Even if the value proposition with their nuVero line isn't really there, IMHO. I'm not too fond of the nuVero line, IMHO you can get better in this price range. Also I find their nuPro line to be rather bass heavy. I was however VERY impressed by the nuPyramid. It's a weird contraption, but it's just... wonderful. It's confident... while the others appeared to boost the low end to make them sound huge, the nuPyramid seemed to just play what was recorded.
 
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DanielT

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These speakers look really good!:D


The constructor himself comments on them in this thread:

 
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