Ikea SYMFONISK Picture Frame Speaker Review

[HiFidFan]

Thanks for the review @amirm The speaker test surprised me with the performance. Not bad at all.

I've been on the SONOS ecosystem since 2013 when I bought a Playbar for use in the apartment I lived in at the time, I later added their Sub. I've always been impressed with the thoughtful/high quality design of SONOS products and the SQ. Yes, over the years sometimes the app software was frustrating but all in all it has been intuitive and trouble free to use. I do wish SONOS would invest more in multichannel, and a "pro" version of their software for more advanced users (EQ) but their TruePlay seems to work OK.

Edit: Just as an aside. . . I can't speak to the durability of this Symfonisk, but my Playbar and the Sub are in our living room pulling daily duty for our music and HT, going on 8 years. I've been seriously considering selling my 2 channel set up, in the same living room, as it rarely gets used.

 

[redshift]

Thanks for the review @amirm The speaker test surprised me with the performance. Not bad at all.

I've been on the SONOS ecosystem since 2013 when I bought a Playbar for use in the apartment I lived in at the time, I later added their Sub. I've always been impressed with the thoughtful/high quality design of SONOS products and the SQ. Yes, over the years sometimes the app software was frustrating but all in all it has been intuitive and trouble free to use. I do wish SONOS would invest more in multichannel, and a "pro" version of their software for more advanced users (EQ) but their TruePlay seems to work OK.

Yep, the automobile and electronics/appliance industry went software first. It is only a matter of time until they release prosumer and/or pro gear.

 

[Ralferator]

I would not go that far, to be polite, but perhaps he is putting far more significance on things that are not audible, and focusing on JUST measurements.
But in that case, it does not help to make such huge disparaging comments of equipment or speakers one is judging based solely on measurements.

Also like Amir said, he couldn' measure the speakers on the wall, which might smooth things out, because it seems like they sounded almost perfect to him at the wall. So it doesn't make sense to judge the speaker only for the measurements which don't even show the frequency response wall mounted.

 

[redshift]

Also like Amir said, he couldn' measure the speakers on the wall, which might smooth things out, because it seems like they sounded almost perfect to him at the wall. So it doesn't make sense to judge the speaker only for the measurements which don't even show the frequency response wall mounted.

Yes.

It is a bad idea to measure speakers that is intended to go on the wall in pseudo anaechoic conditions.

Perhaps the tools should include onwalls/inwalls in the estimated FR?

 

[Spocko]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Ikea SYMFONISK picture frame speaker designed by Sonos. I purchased it a couple of days ago from Ikea store for US $199. Their website said they had 42 in stock so they are planning to sell a lot of them. That said, there was not a single person looking at their smart home/audio booth.

There are two styles of this, one with white background and another with the same inverted so looks mostly black:
View attachment 142745
I have not looked to see how easy it is to change the fabric to something else.

There is some depth to the unit so unless you cut a hole in your wall, it will stand proud a couple of inches:

View attachment 142746

I liked the French cleat that came with it which I used to hang the speaker for measurements. Cable management is nice with that big hole where you can stuff the excess power cord. Interestingly, there is a pass through power plug so you can chain multiple while using one outlet. Smart!

Setup with these products as usual is hit and miss. The Ikea manual has no words in it, just pictures! So I go and download the Ikea app and naturally it can't find anything and keeps telling me In need one of their routers. My "Sonos 2" app did not work either. But there was another app called Sonos and that one did work. It uses NFS to auto-configure the speaker which was nice. But I did not appreciate that I could not just use the included Ethernet port and had to setup Wifi to use it.

The speaker exposes two protocols: Apple Airplay and Sonos. I could not get the latter to work with my Roon player but Airplay did and that is what I used for all of my measurements and listening tests.

There is some kind of honeycomb structure under the fabric. Even when shining light through it, I could not figure out where the drivers were. Listening by ear, I figured out that the high frequencies were coming out of dead center, vertically and horizontally, so used that for measurement reference point.

Since this speaker is meant to be installed on a wall, I spent an afternoon building a back baffle for it, hung it on Klippel NFS to measure, only to see nothing but garbage. This went on through the night until I realized that the special baffle measurement system from Klippel does NOT work for wireless speakers! Wireless speakers require asynchronous measurements where you play the tone in a music player, Roon in my example, and the measurement system attempts to figure out the timing using dual microphones. Well, this can't be combined with baffle measurement where the rear radiation is ignored. Klippel confirmed that this feature is not there but would be coming in a few months.

So I ripped out the baffle and just made a stand out of it to hold the speaker vertically on Klippel NFS platform -- not easy given the tiny size of the platform. Once done, the wall was the size of the inset in the back of the Ikea speaker so should not have created more diffraction than what it creates on its own edges.

Given the full 360 measurements, the data is not quite accurate for some of the measurements when you mount the speaker on the wall. So keep this in mind.

Also, the scan is slightly less accurate than typical due to lengthy process of measuring speakers asynchronously. Error reached about 2% in lower treble and kind of got out of control close to 20 kHz.

Ikea SYMFONISK Picture Frame Speaker Measurements
As usual we start with our spinorama graph:

View attachment 142749

I expected a disaster but that is not what we have. Yes there are a lot of jaggies which can have any number of causes (plastic enclosure resonating, diffraction effects, etc.) but considering this is a lifestyle speaker, seems like good attempt was made to get an "even" response. Directivity looks good (see later graphs) as well. I don't have near-field measurements for you because I could figure out where anything was!

Early window is a graph that you need to look at with some caution given the fact that we are using a full 360 degree scan rather than 180:

View attachment 142750

Putting the two together, we get decent predicted in-room response even though it too has some error in it:

View attachment 142751

The bass drops like a rock so perhaps that extra peak was there to perceptually compensate for it. Or maybe reference axis will be different in use to make that less so.

You can see that we are measuring back radiation through our trio of 1000, 2000 and 3000 Hz 3-D directivity contour plots:

View attachment 142752

It is actually rather clean at 1000 Hz and especially at 3000 Hz. The latter shows that I picked the center of the high frequency radiation correctly more or less.

Beam width graph floored me with how good it is:
View attachment 142753

We are talking Pro level powered monitor level here! You can see the same in our directivity plot:

View attachment 142754

I have drawn two lines at ± 100 degree which is my estimate of how far back the angle goes before you hit a wall. Assuming so, this speaker will be omni directional up to about 6 kHz or so. And even that it still will radiate broadly, adding to its overall loudness and even distribution of sound.

Vertically the picture is complex:

View attachment 142756

I have drawn the same lines for reference. I think we can say that it is also approximately omni even in that axis.

Here are our in-room measurements in near-field as far as distortion:

View attachment 142757

View attachment 142758

Can't figure out why THD between 1 and 2 kHz went down, instead of up as I turned up the volume. I wonder if it has some adaptive algorithm there. It is minor though.

Ikea SYMFONISK Picture Frame Speaker Listening Tests
I had two rounds of listening tests, one when I first configured the speaker prior to measurements, and another after. In the first round, I just had the speaker leaning against a coffee table. As soon as I played a track on it, I was shocked how good the sound was. Turn up the volume and it simply gets louder and that is that. It wouldn't get hugely loud but it never seems to show any signs of distortion. Overall tonality was very nice.

Post measurements, I went though my formal tracks using the positioning that you see in the picture above. One after the other, the sound tonality was close if not perfect. Dispersion was broad which gave a very nice feeling to sound. It is like an open window to what is playing. Everything was right so I felt no need to apply any EQ! As I type this, I am still listening to the speaker and don't want to stop.

Conclusions
Measurements of this speaker unfortunately is not quite the same as its in-use application. Still, signs of good design shine through in the form of great directivity and to some extent frequency response -- both on-axis and predicted-in-room. Subjective listening tests are even more impressive indicating either I don't know what I am doing when listening to speakers, or, wall mounting helps the response. Either way, there is some genius design at play here that is absent in other smart speakers I have tested and listened to. Considering that you can hang this on a wall and have it not look like an odd thing sitting some place, it is a major accomplishment.

Objective measurements don't fully support my highest honors but my listening test results do. So it is my pleasure to give a strong recommend to Ikea SYMFONISK picture frame speaker by Sonos.

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@amirm , is this the first speaker review where your subjective impressions are surprisingly different than the objective measurements - what other speakers have similarly surprised you like this? Many will point to this review as a fine example of why measurements don't tell the whole story and why nothing can replace in person listening. Did the Dynaudio Core sound better than its measurements or did its price raise expectations too high (to Genelec/Nuemann levels)?

 

[Thomas_A]

As already mentioned these messurements does not show how the speaker measure in its intended use. In-, on- or near-wall speakers needs to be measured in place or using other maths.

 

[TimW]

@amirm , is this the first speaker review where your subjective impressions are surprisingly different than the objective measurements - what other speakers have similarly surprised you like this? Many will point to this review as a fine example of why measurements don't tell the whole story and why nothing can replace in person listening. Did the Dynaudio Core sound better than its measurements or did its price raise expectations too high (to Genelec/Nuemann levels)?

SVS Ultra Bookshelf

 

[redshift]

As already mentioned these messurements does not show how the speaker measure in its intended use. In-, on- or near-wall speakers needs to be measured in place or using other maths.

Damn right.

 

[Gyroscopics]

Is there a way this could be used as a stereo pair for a TV?

If you own a Sonos Connect (or Sonos Port as they call it now), you can feed it with analog audio from TV via RCA, then play the sound to any Sonos device including this SYMFONISK. But don't expect perfect sound quality with this solution.

 

[Gyroscopics]

I don't understand bathroom speakers either. I'm not in there very long! I manage just fine without background music.

Then again, maybe it would be useful to block out embarrassing bathroom noises if there are guests or housemates around.

Or, if you're constipated... you could put on some motivational music to help you get the job done.

When you are prepping for colonoscopy, you will spend a whole day in the bathroom / toilet. But that day will not come until you reach 50. By that time, perhaps non-invasive alternatives would become available.

 

[HiFidFan]

When you are prepping for colonoscopy, you will spend a whole day in the bathroom / toilet. But that day will not come until you reach 50. By that time, perhaps non-invasive alternatives would become available.

Cologuard FTW!

 

[maxxevv]

There's a 5GHz radio in each speaker exclusively used to link to the other speaker, creating a stereo pair.

That's via the Sonos app software I suppose ?
Not sure if I missed it somewhere but can't seem to find any information on that IKEA's product page regarding how its actually done other than the descriptions.

It would be wonderful for a lot people with small homes/rooms looking for some decent speakers that integrate seamlessly with the wireless network !

 

[bobster]

That's via the Sonos app software I suppose ?

Yes. It’s very easy. Here‘s a screenshot of the Sonos app on my iPad Pro:

 

[Toslink]

If you own a Sonos Connect (or Sonos Port as they call it now), you can feed it with analog audio from TV via RCA, then play the sound to any Sonos device including this SYMFONISK. But don't expect perfect sound quality with this solution.

And, there's encoding latency (delay). Best case (lowest delay) is when all devices are connected via Ethernet and the encoding format is set to "lossless". I've seen the delay be what I'd describe as barely noticeable, or probably around 300ms. But, it's very much a YMMV situation. That's where the AppleTV + Airplay approach really shines because the Airplay system knows the maximum delay in the signal chain and delays the video signal to synchronize audio and video.

 

[richard12511]

But these do not measure "poorly", they measure sorta good from what I see. I think you are putting way too much concern over things that do not matter as much as you assume.

The jagged peaks and valleys, are NOT an issue. It is an issue if it is a very high peak or a trend of the treble being much higher than the rest of the spectrum.

Our ears tend to average out the sounds we hear. We do not hear those small fluctuations. We tend to hear big trends of up or down, or distortion.

Indeed. It would be interesting to see these measurements with erb or psychoacoustic smoothing applied, as that’s closer to what we actually hear.

Anyone able to do that?

 

[redshift]

That's via the Sonos app software I suppose ?
Not sure if I missed it somewhere but can't seem to find any information on that IKEA's product page regarding how its actually done other than the descriptions.

It would be wonderful for a lot people with small homes/rooms looking for some decent speakers that integrate seamlessly with the wireless network !

Surround satellites that doesn’t suck? It’s about time for the traditional speaker manufacturers to take a good long look at IKEA and Sonos. And I’m not thinking about crusty sound bars.

 

[tecnogadget]

Surround satellites that doesn’t suck? It’s about time for the traditional speaker manufacturers to take a good long look at IKEA and Sonos. And I’m not thinking about crusty sound bars.

Though this would be an excellent solution for those whose room configuration screams for surrounds on the walls, they lack the proper inputs.
It would be worth if @Amir measures the KEF T series since the T101C costs the same as this IKEA and has a similarly small footprint for hanging on the wall, but different acoustics/driver design.

 

[redshift]

Though this would be an excellent solution for those whose room configuration screams for surrounds on the walls, they lack the proper inputs.
It would be worth if @Amir measures the KEF T series since the T101C costs the same as this IKEA and has a similarly small footprint for hanging on the wall, but different acoustics/driver design.

I think the problems with unconventional designs, wall mounts and in walls is that of measurement strategy.

Clearly spins and pseudo anaechoic measurements won’t give an accurate picture since those loudspeakers need a (front) wall to function properly.

Is it possible to run the kippel as a “listening area” measurement rig and instead of scanning a sphere enveloping a loudspeaker, go for a cuboid measuring the “listening” volume of a generic 3-seater sofa?

Otherwise a LTAS FR measurement strategy would work with a hand held mic sweeping the sweet spot(s).

Of course the room would need to be furnished and sized somewhat similar to the ordinary living room.

 

[nathan]

Sonos bought into the wide even dispersion mantra a decade ago. Glad to see they are still chasing that goal.

 

[cbracer]

Sonos bought into the wide even dispersion mantra a decade ago. Glad to see they are still chasing that goal.

The speaker industry we love so much is unfortunately stuck in the past, and may never grow up. Wide dispersion, perfect response, these are things we want from our typical speakers that we spend too much money on. Yet these companies are stuck trying to polish a speaker design that has many flaws. Needing to Toe-In a speaker to get the response we want? The highs that change with direction so much. These things are too overlooked. For example, many people are reaching the conclusion that powered bookshelf speakers are better than passive ones, and why? Because they control the whole ecosystem and can match things accordingly at lower cost. I read some reviews on the Dali Operon 1C, and this speaker is just plain amazing - minus the cost. It shows the value of doing crossovers before amplification, building all the components to work together. 39Hz bottom -3db out of a 5" woofer. Now I can have a speaker I want at the size I want. If money were no object that's what I would buy. It shows the importance of onboard DSP that can correct for design flaws inherit to speakers. We want that control so we do it manually on a PC. Sonos has taken a step further with TruePlay and mapping it to the room. Yes speaker companies are learning but at a snails pace compared to Sonos. What about their play-5 speakers? Buy two and set them vertically, they have 3 tweeters to fill the room, 3 base woofers (yes small). The dispersion on a speaker like this can't be matched by any normal speaker at any cost. That's a fact. And they did it for so much less using cheaper components yet making it sound better. I don't have any Sonos, maybe it's koolaid to some, I get it. But their stuff will surprise people who have open minds. My family is stuck on apple TV so anything I get has to work with the apple remote..... including the amp and speakers..... play surround sound and play stereo and not require the use of another app or another remote for the integrated amp. Even the Sonos speakers, or any wireless speakers, still requires the use of 2 wires for power,.... unless you get a battery surround speaker, but who wants that. argh, there's just no perfect answer yet. But I applaud Sonos and Ikea for speakers like this. Note it won't surprise me if these get discontinued quickly as some Ikea stuff only lasts a year or two before they move onto something else.