This is a review and detailed measurements of the Human Speakers 81 dk. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $1,270 (kit or finished?).
Everything from the grill to lacquer finish looks gorgeous. Like the hand written notes on the back (and very recent production date):
The grill was stiff and hard to remove so I left it in place. As usual, measurements are performed using Klippel Near-field scanner. I roughly identified center of tweeter through the grill and set it as the acoustic axis.
Company hand builds/modifies its own drivers.
If you are not familiar with my tests, I highly recommend that you watch my video on understanding speaker measurements.
Human Speakers 81 dk Measurements
Let's start with our frequency response measurements:
Ouch. We clearly have design issues around the crossover region: peaking before, dip during, followed by a strong resonance. Near-field driver measurements shows why:
I think they use a low order crossover which is a mistake together with too low of a woofer drop off relative to where tweeter takes over. Tweeter response also drops by 5 kHz or so. Off-axis response can't help but be as bad:
Resulting in poor predicted in-room response:
I was surprised how bad distortion was:
I could hear distortion during the test sweeps through my hearing protection at 96 dBSPL!
Dispersion is wide making it less critical to toe in the speaker:
We have the usual, narrow 2-way vertical smoothness:
Impedance is reasonable but shows a number of resonances:
Same as waterfall:
Finally, here is the step response:
I am a bit under the weather so no listening tests. If I get a chance, I will take a listen tomorrow and post.
Conclusions
Sometimes beauty is skin deep and that is what we have with 81 dk. Company is proud of its custom drivers but both demonstrate very obvious flaws. Woofer has a strong resonance and tweeter lacks high frequency treble response. Crossover design adds to this by allowing the woofer resonance to force its way out and a gap to exist with the tweeter response. Result is a colored and flawed speaker.
Can't recommend the Human Speakers 81 dk. Company needs to up its game, measure and fix obvious issues with its design. The enclosure is gorgeous and deserves better guts.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Everything from the grill to lacquer finish looks gorgeous. Like the hand written notes on the back (and very recent production date):
The grill was stiff and hard to remove so I left it in place. As usual, measurements are performed using Klippel Near-field scanner. I roughly identified center of tweeter through the grill and set it as the acoustic axis.
Company hand builds/modifies its own drivers.
If you are not familiar with my tests, I highly recommend that you watch my video on understanding speaker measurements.
Human Speakers 81 dk Measurements
Let's start with our frequency response measurements:
Ouch. We clearly have design issues around the crossover region: peaking before, dip during, followed by a strong resonance. Near-field driver measurements shows why:
I think they use a low order crossover which is a mistake together with too low of a woofer drop off relative to where tweeter takes over. Tweeter response also drops by 5 kHz or so. Off-axis response can't help but be as bad:
Resulting in poor predicted in-room response:
I was surprised how bad distortion was:
I could hear distortion during the test sweeps through my hearing protection at 96 dBSPL!
Dispersion is wide making it less critical to toe in the speaker:
We have the usual, narrow 2-way vertical smoothness:
Impedance is reasonable but shows a number of resonances:
Same as waterfall:
Finally, here is the step response:
I am a bit under the weather so no listening tests. If I get a chance, I will take a listen tomorrow and post.
Conclusions
Sometimes beauty is skin deep and that is what we have with 81 dk. Company is proud of its custom drivers but both demonstrate very obvious flaws. Woofer has a strong resonance and tweeter lacks high frequency treble response. Crossover design adds to this by allowing the woofer resonance to force its way out and a gap to exist with the tweeter response. Result is a colored and flawed speaker.
Can't recommend the Human Speakers 81 dk. Company needs to up its game, measure and fix obvious issues with its design. The enclosure is gorgeous and deserves better guts.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
