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Heavenly Soundworks

nerdoldnerdith

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I had a chance to hear these from someone who was demoing them in his house when I bought a different pair of speakers from him. They sounded nice totally and had impressibly deep and clean bass for speakers of their size with meezly 5" woofers. The passive radiators no doubt contribute to that.

That being said, the Dutch & Dutch 8C totally slaughter them. I would imagine that there are floorstanding speakers in that price range that outperform them as well.
 

617

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Actually, those measurements are on the site and the extension and output actually look very good.

30 - 20,000 +/- 1dB
27 - 20,000 +/- 3dB
24 - 20,000 +/- 6dB

108dB continuous
113 dB short term
117 dB peak

Those figures are better than the Genelec 8351b($8k)

27 hz @ 108db from a 50cm^2 woofer with 4mm of xmax and a Fs of 53 hz. What do you think @hardisj ?

The numbers are totally fictional. I have no doubt with the PRs and DSP they have low tuning, but that woofer is not giving you 108db at 27hz.
 

TulseLuper

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If they're using that Tang Band driver ("4-layer voice coil" claims and the look match up, but we don't know), the driver sensitivity spec is 82dB. They'll be boosting with EQ to extend to their 27dB spec. I wonder how far the 125 watts goes.
 

hardisj

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Actually, those measurements are on the site and the extension and output actually look very good.

30 - 20,000 +/- 1dB
27 - 20,000 +/- 3dB
24 - 20,000 +/- 6dB

108dB continuous
113 dB short term
117 dB peak

Those figures are better than the Genelec 8351b($8k)


But...

We know that numbers can be obtained differently. We need to know how Genelec and this company come up with their numbers to make a comparison.

Secondly, there is this:
I think Tang Band has a couple small subwoofers that look like this too and are a little more premium.

https://www.parts-express.com/Tang-Band-W5-1138SM-5-1-4-Neodymium-Subwoofer-264-831


I agree the midbass here looks like the TB shown in the above link.

Follow that link and you’ll see a sensitivity of 82dB at 2.83v/1m and a MAX power of 80w.

Using an online calculator with the above sensitivity (even though it’s not 1 watt; it is 2 watts at 2.83v for a 4 ohm nominal speaker) and 80watts max input I came up with 101dB max SPL.


But I need to make it clear: this is all speculative. Maybe they have a special version of this driver that takes more power and has higher sensitivity. But with my experiences telling me that quantities of 500+ are needed when ordering custom units from OEMs, I would doubt that is the case.
 

hardisj

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I really don’t want to sound dismissive of this speaker. It’s just that things aren’t adding up to me. If I were in the market, I’d pass. I couldn’t spend that kind of money knowing I could literally commission a hobbyist DIY’r to build it for half the price and it would have an actual finish on the wood rather than being wrapped in vinyl (yuck). Not to mention, just doing it myself and pay for a badass CNC in the process. :D
 

617

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cursive

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Seems like an extraordinary price for what you get. I can appreciate that design, and R&D can be an expensive part of speaker design, but this just seems extreme given the off the shelf drivers, and the veneer finish @ $10,000.

Here's the measurements from the manual, some interesting bits in there.
 

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Sancus

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Measurements on the website only show on axis, but look very good.

There's off-axis measurements in the manual as posted just above this post, but like.... all the measurements look either low-resolution or smoothed to hell, to say the least. Hard to imagine trusting them at all.
 

thewas

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There's off-axis measurements in the manual as posted just above this post, but like.... all the measurements look either low-resolution or smoothed to hell, to say the least. Hard to imagine trusting them at all.
According to their site the on-axis quasi-anechoic are smoothed to 1/6 octave and the off-axis measurements are made in-room so they must be smoothed even more... Also the nearfield driver measurements show large wiggles that I doubt that even the on-axis measurement is an +-1 dB range as they state... And even if...
Actually, those measurements are on the site and the extension and output actually look very good.

30 - 20,000 +/- 1dB
27 - 20,000 +/- 3dB
24 - 20,000 +/- 6dB

108dB continuous
113 dB short term
117 dB peak

Those figures are better than the Genelec 8351b($8k)
Its not difficult today with a DSP to force a loudspeaker to very smooth on-axis and deep bass, but you don't really want to do that with mediocre drivers, also the state max SPL values are a joke, I don't even need to see 3rd party measurements for that...
 

Zvu

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I like it conceptually, if i disregard the silly price and their written specs. Threeway bookshelf with large passive radiators. Those look like 8" so at least 400cm2 of surface. Given that 5.25" woofer with 95cm2 is used, 1:4 relationship guarantees that intended tuning won't change much even at higher listening volume. Midrange is actually good - not the best out there but very good. Underhung motor, demodulation ring and very high cone breakup. Only issue i have is that it is 4 layer coil and with high Le for midrange, more suitable for some woofer. Tweeter i can't comment but today you really have to make a mess with it to sound bad.

What could be done better ? List is not long but changing drivers are on the bottom of it. I'd use tweeter with no ferrofluid (gives better detail retrieval at low volume listening), i'd make large roundovers to front baffle to deal with diffraction that is deffinitely there, i'd make measurements with basically any other program but OmniMic (ARTA, HOLMimpulse,REW etc.).

If you have room up to 20-25m2, you won't be needing much louder loudspeaker than this ever.

If these would be priced at ~2000-2500 it would sell like hot cakes. No Kef LS50W, meta or otherwise, would be able to match it.
 

ctrl

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For both drivers (if they are really used) there are reviews in the German magazine 'Hobby-Hifi'. Because of copyright I can not post the complete reviews here, but hope that a HD diagram is okay and no one complains.

Especially the 3.5-inch midrange (which looks an awful lot to me like the $30 ND91)
The small Dayton chassis is really not bad. The decay is good and the FR on axis is balanced.
Unfortunately, the chassis has no optimizations that reduce voice coil inductance (shorting rings, Cu pole cap,...). Therefore, the harmonic distortions are okay, but not very good.
1612088197826.png
For a high-priced speaker, there are definitely better drivers.


I think Tang Band has a couple small subwoofers that look like this too and are a little more premium.
https://www.parts-express.com/Tang-Band-W5-1138SM-5-1-4-Neodymium-Subwoofer-264-831
The Tang Band's W5-1138SMF chassis makes a very ambivalent impression. The subwoofer shows a balanced FR and good decay.

However, since this is a low budget chassis, no optimizations were made to control the voice coil inductance.

(Since the FR of the chassis drops from 100Hz due to the heavy moving mass, the 80dB average sound pressure stated in the measurement should be viewed critically. It could be that the sound pressure in the low bass was higher - perhaps 85dB)
1612088837083.png
The harmonic distortions, on the other hand, are really bad. Even if we assume that the sound pressure in the low bass was slightly higher than indicated in the diagram, over 10% HD5 at 50Hz is unacceptable.

Such a driver belongs in a cheap soundbar, but not in a $10k speaker.
 
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Frank Dernie

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It's great for 12 dollars.

I mean let me put it this way. In the midrange where excursion needs are low, there are cheap drivers that can do pretty well, but if you want low distortion and nice breakup characteristics you will pay. For a woofer you get what you pay for. This is among the best twelve dollar woofers out there. But the bass output is not going to be good. The over all fundamental frequency output, the bedrock of the music, will be extremely limited. This is a driver you'd use in a table radio, seriously.

Also if you look at it...it really is the dayton model. It is identical. The Tang Band woofers are pretty good little customers but they also cost 5-10x what this does.
One of my best friends is a consultant drive unit designer.
He designed a low cost driver for one of the big autombile companies for their car sound systems.
He told me that using modern design, materials and production techniques they cost well under €1 each yet he would be happy to use them as a mid range driver in a speaker of any price level. >0.1% distortion at 1kHz and I presume the breakup is well enough controlled since they are used full range in the car.
He has also always said there is no way to make an inexpensive but good bass driver :)
 

FrantzM

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With such threads, we're encouraging clickbaits from those people not pushing the envelope, not working toward the advancement of the audio arts ... Simply making a few bucks from the uneducated but financially-capable-audiophiles.
Speaking for myself, I refuse to watch these sorts of videos.
Out for now ...
 

Zvu

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Yes but they are passive so only radiate at and near their tuning frequency.

I was aiming toward the fact that with that much cone surface passives will not be moving alot, which is good.
 

Dialectic

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It's possible for anyone but it seems to be easier for people with mediocre ethics and little knowledge.
Probably right. There is little incentive for manufacturers to send their equipment to someone like Erin unless it is actually good.

What surprises me is that manufacturers send stuff to YouTube reviewers who lack both knowledge and charisma/screen presence/speaking ability (and yeah, I'm referring to the guy in the video above, among others). I have met more compelling personalities selling televisions for minimum wage at Best Buy.
 

andreasmaaan

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The harmonic distortions, on the other hand, are really bad. Even if we assume that the sound pressure in the low bass was slightly higher than indicated in the diagram, over 10% HD5 at 50Hz is unacceptable.

One amazing thing about these two graphs is that, below 80Hz, the ND91 performs roughly as well at 90dB as the W5-1138SMF does at 80dB.

I recall seeing Klippel results for the ND91 at some point, but can't find them now. IIRC, it has a great motor. Would make an excellent tiny midbass driver in a soundbar or portable speaker etc.
 
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richard12511

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27 hz @ 108db from a 50cm^2 woofer with 4mm of xmax and a Fs of 53 hz. What do you think @hardisj ?

The numbers are totally fictional. I have no doubt with the PRs and DSP they have low tuning, but that woofer is not giving you 108db at 27hz.

Maybe they're speccing it the same way KEF is speccing their new 11Hz 6.5" sub :p.

On that point, I feel like companies often spec the extension and max output metrics by different standards, and I wish they wouldn't. Genelec and D&D do it too, but they're more honest about it, and state the max output as "above 100Hz"(8351b) and "above 35Hz"(8C). My guess is something similar is happening here, but they're just not specifying the cutoff frequency.

I wish companies would give six max output metrics:

1. Continuous, short term, and peak when run full range
2. Continuous, short term, and peak above 80Hz.
 
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