Ikea SYMFONISK Picture Frame Speaker Review

[ENG]

IKEA uses Sonos for this. Sonos is the only system with Apple Music embedded. And of course all the other streaming options. Great!

 

[Ralph_Cramden]

Sonos is the only system with Apple Music embedded.

...other that the Apple HomePod Minis...

 

[JohnBooty]

If you don't need a wireless speaker that is so thin it can hang on a wall like a picture, then you can indeed spend $200 and get something better.

That's actually kind of an interesting proposition. I'm not really able to think of any off-the-shelf candidates for $200, considering this has a built in amplifier and lossless streaming.

Even with DIY it would be a bit of a squeeze if you include a streaming target and amp. Of course, a single $200 Ikea panel only gives you mono sound. Maybe the real point of comparison would be a $400 budget.

Anyway, pardon my tangent. The real story here is getting decent sound into rooms that otherwise wouldn't have any.

 

[tmtomh]

That's actually kind of an interesting proposition. I'm not really able to think of any off-the-shelf candidates for $200, considering this has a built in amplifier and lossless streaming.

Even with DIY it would be a bit of a squeeze if you include a streaming target and amp. Of course, a single $200 Ikea panel only gives you mono sound. Maybe the real point of comparison would be a $400 budget.

Anyway, pardon my tangent. The real story here is getting decent sound into rooms that otherwise wouldn't have any.

Not a tangent at all, actually. I was trying to be generous in response to @restorer-john 's argument - which he's made repeatedly because he can't seem to just admit that his pre-review dismissal of these speakers should be revisited now that the review has revealed them to be better than he and others assumed. Your comment just shows that I needn't have been as generous as I was - these are indeed tough to beat given the price and the fact that they're amplified.

 

[enricoclaudio]

This would make a very nice speaker for my bathroom. May get one to try mostly because I can use it with Roon!!

 

[sam_adams]

Like everything else Ikea, these are 'lifestyle' speakers. They will not be purchased by people who are concerned with dispersion or distortion, by frequency response or crossover slopes. None of that is understood or matters. The only thing that guides the buyer of something like this is how they will fit into the decor.

As audio enthusiasts, this may be hard to understand, but it is a 'real' thing.

Sometimes people buy things solely on the basis of looks. The fact that it produces sound is a bonus since it will allow the purchaser to play their collection of Iasos CDs that will change the feng shui of the whole house and cause their collection of crystals to resonate with beneficial harmonics.

 

[Toslink]

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

If paired with an AppleTV as the video source, yes. The AppleTV acts as an AirPlay "source" that can be sent to any AirPlay "end-point". I do just this thing in my living room system using an AppleTV 4K and a Sonos Port combined with an RME ADI-2 Pro DAC and an nCore amplifier (thank you, Amir for the help in selecting these last two components). The AppleTV is intelligent enough to synchronize the video with the audio, too. Smart. Very smart.

 

[restorer-john]

This would make a very nice speaker for my bathroom. May get one to try mostly because I can use it with Roon!!

See that's where you and I are different. A speaker in the bathroom. But that's fine, I get it.

I don't even like any outdoor speakers unless it's a concert. Speakers at a BBQ, the beach or those wretched Bluetooth boom boxes people take to pristine rock pools near us and blast the rainforest.

But I guess you can sing along in the shower.

 

[Marc v E]

See that's where you and I are different. A speaker in the bathroom. But that's fine, I get it.

I don't even like any outdoor speakers unless it's a concert. Speakers at a BBQ, the beach or those wretched Bluetooth boom boxes people take to pristine rock pools near us and blast the rainforest.

But I guess you can sing along in the shower.

For that purpose I recommend a bluetooth jammer or in dire situations, an EMP device. Just make sure nobody is using a pacemaker

Or get very close to them and bring your own music to the party. Play something seriously uncool to teenagers and do a silly dance like you're trying very hard to be hip.

 

[JohnBooty]

Like everything else Ikea, these are 'lifestyle' speakers. They will not be purchased by people who are concerned with dispersion or distortion, by frequency response or crossover slopes [...] The fact that it produces sound is a bonus

And that's fine.

Even if somebody buys this speaker solely based on looks, the performance still matters!

Thanks to Toole et al we know that proper sound reproduction correlates well with listener enjoyment even if the listener is unconcerned with the details. Just like one doen't have to understand automotive engineering to enjoy a car with excellent performance. The driver will still feel and appreciate the difference.

 

[JohnBooty]

See that's where you and I are different. A speaker in the bathroom. But that's fine, I get it.

I don't even like any outdoor speakers unless it's a concert. Speakers at a BBQ, the beach or those wretched Bluetooth boom boxes people take to pristine rock pools near us and blast the rainforest.

But I guess you can sing along in the shower.

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.

 

[restorer-john]

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

Just put in a big subwoofer for that elusive brown note. Ewww. Toilet humour. Bad John (me) Issued myself a thread reply warning.

 

[bobster]

Nice surprise indeed! @amirm when you say Airplay, do you mean v1 or v2? (The only difference I know/care about is the ability to play across multiple rooms in sync).

@elliott Sonos only supports AirPlay 2.

@amirm's review inspired me to pick one up this evening for my very-small (8.75' x 11') bedroom, where there's not really room for a bookshelf system. I have a stereo pair of Sonos One speakers in the kitchen.

I'm a professional musician, composer, and occasional recording engineer (tracking, editing, mixing, mastering). I have good ears and I want good sound, even though I won't be doing much listening in the bedroom.

So far I'm very happy. Like Amir, I found myself wanting to keep listening. Didn't want to turn the thing off!

(Test tracks come from Keith Jarrett's The Out of Towners, Pat Metheny Group's Speaking of Now, Donald Fagen's Morph The Cat, Ralph Towner and Gary Burton's Slide Show, and Angela Hewitt's Complete Solo Piano Music of Ravel.)

I set it on a dresser and leaned it against the wall. Might mount it on the wall later.

I did Sono's room tuning, though I'm a bit uncomfortable not being able to see the EQ curve. (It's easily disabled in the Sonos app.) It's a bit bass heavy for my ears, so I turned it down a couple of notches in the Sonos app's EQ (again, frustrating because you don't know it's actually doing).

Bass still sounds great, IMO - I don't have to work hard to distinguish kick drum from bass, for example, though that's in part due to great mixing.

I'm so accustomed to listening in stereo that before purchasing, I assumed I'd find a way to make space on the wall for a second one. But so far I don't feel a need for it; I'm delighted to say that it's both enjoyable and educational (from a recording engineering perspective) to listen in mono.

 

[bobster]

Does anyone know whether this will work as a clock radio, playing something from spotify or a NAS?

@ralph Yes, you can set "alarms" in the Sonos app, using any source. The screenshots below are from the Sonos app for macOS. Spotify isn't in the list because I don't use it. But "Imported Playlists" are from my NAS.

 

[amirm]

But so far I don't feel a need for it; I'm delighted to say that it's both enjoyable and educational (from a recording engineering perspective) to listen in mono.

Isn't this an amazing thing? I keep saying that a good speaker sounds great in mono and people don't know what I am talking about. Here, it sounds even better than a typical bookshelf speaker.

 

[dpturner]

sounds like a cool kitchen speaker, tucked under a cabinet, above the counter.

dt

 

[Maiky76]

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.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Hi,

Here is my take on the EQ.
These EQ are anechoic EQ to get the speaker right before room integration. If you able to implement these EQs you must add EQ at LF for room integration, that usually not optional… see hints there: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...helf-speaker-review.11144/page-26#post-800725

This speaker might not fit well into the Harman metric because is it not really within the general description of the speakers described by it.
Take the scores with a grain of salt...


The raw data with corrected ER and PIR:

Score no EQ: 2.4
With Sub: 4.7

Spinorama with no EQ:

• Not very smooth
• Fairly decent otherwise
• Good directivity (great for this type of speakers)
• Some resonances

Directivity:

EQ design:
I have generated two EQs. The APO config files are attached.

• The first one, labelled, LW is targeted at making the LW flat
• The second, labelled Score, starts with the first one and adds the score as an optimization variable.
• The EQs are designed in the context of regular stereo use i.e. domestic environment
• This speaker is supposed to be on the wall so I did not EQ below 500Hz as I am not quite sure how the actual response is supposed to be.

Score EQ LW: 3.6
with sub: 5.9

Score EQ Score: 4.1
with sub: 6.4

Ikea Symfonisk APO EQ LW 96000Hz
July222021-141447

Preamp: -2.7 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 545.69,    -2.47,    2.68
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 909.43,    -4.30,    10.45
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 967.65,    4.04,    1.61
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1311.51,    -2.81,    7.48
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 3172.34,    -2.66,    1.05
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 7394.78,    2.00,    3.08
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 10536.05,    -1.77,    3.75

Ikea Symfonisk APO EQ Score 96000Hz
July222021-140908

Preamp: -1.7 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 560.21,    -2.19,    2.90
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 912.43,    -3.47,    10.45
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 932.59,    3.07,    1.08
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1314.51,    -2.33,    6.08
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 3147.84,    -3.53,    0.94
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 8091.39,    1.09,    4.38
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 10547.05,    -1.71,    3.20

Spinorama EQ LW

Spinorama EQ Score

Zoom PIR-LW-ON
The PIR looks actually quite nice!

Regression - Tonal

Radar no EQ vs EQ score
Nice improvements

The rest of the plots is attached.

 

[Dave-Oh]

Honestly, I hope folks in the industry are taking long hard look at this. The measurements for this with an active DSP built in could easily become something we could speak of in the same breath as Revel.

Also got me thinking about the WISA consortium that is working on lossless and no latency 5.1 or 7.1 wireless transmission from a televisions. With that technology just a TV and 4 of these strategically placed on walls could get you pretty cool theater sound with highest SAF ever.

 

[GWolfman]

Interesting product. Too bad there's no line in (that I can see).

 

[amirm]

There is only power in and out and Ethernet. No line in unfortunately.