I've had these little monitors for a while. I'm a big fan. Their name might sound like a cheap Apple knockoff product, but for $300 a pair, they sound great so long as you intend to use them in the nearfield and don't intend to listen at ridiculous volumes. I'm a 70dB kind of guy, so that's where I'm coming from.
Because I'd seen noaudiophile's excellent review and measurements, I hadn't been in any hurry to do my own measurements. Turns out my particular unit appears to show some significant differences, so I'm glad I did.
Here's the quasi anechoic spin:
We see a lot of good here, and some notable bad. Let's start with the latter. There are three prominent deep and narrow/high-q dips. These appear to be caused by port cancellations, as there are big peaks in the port response at the same location as these dips. The port definitely makes some noise during the sweep, although I honestly hadn't noticed major port noise during music.
There's also a medium-sized shallow-ish scoop around 3KHz, where the crossover is. But it doesn't appear to be the result of a middling crossover. Given the linearity of the rest of the frequency response, the consistency of the dip, and the fact that the ERDI curve is almost completely smooth here, I get this impression this dip is a tuning choice.
These trends generally follow IK Multimedia's own on-axis graph, but assuming similar performance its pretty clear theirs is smoothed significantly, showing none of the narrow dips.
(Curiously my measurements look quite different from NoAudiophiles. No 2K peak on mine, and his have no 3K dip nor the low Q dips, though his measurements show port peaks in the same places. I repeated the measurements with several different setups because the measurements seemed so different, and both my left and right speakers measured similarly. Maybe the white and black units have different resonances somehow? Or they retuned the Micro's at some point. Who knows).
The good news: High-Q dips aside are generally the least audible of frequency domain anomalies(we are more sensitive to peaks than dips, and are more likely to notice broad/low Q dips than high q ones). I mean, they're not great to have, but, better than, say, equally sized peaks. The one around 600Hz is probably the worst offender, but my measurements exaggerate its width a bit due to the diminished resolution of quasi-anechoic data in the lower midrange.
The Micro Monitors are timbrally balanced throughout most of the frequency range. That is my impression from listening too, though perhaps the combination of dips within the mids might make them seem just a tad recessed compared to an even more linear speaker like the Neumann KH80.
The bass extension down to below 50Hz is good stuff. I'm regularly impressed by the bass I'm hearing out of these little guys. it's not the cleanest I've heard, but I was expecting a lot more compression given their size. I wish they had a sub out to complete the package though.
Similarly important is the directivity performance. While matching two small drivers makes things a bit easier and the direct sound takes priority in the nearfield that smooth ERDI curve is commendable (even if it's not quite as important here as it might be in a living room setup). This also means you should be able to further smooth out on-axis/listening Window response with EQ if you'd like, though I'd probably leave the high Q dips as is.
Here's the horizontal SPL graph:
Well extended out to 15Khz or so, evenly spaced lines, consistent shape. That's that wide directivity I like to see. This results in an impeccable soundstage for such small budget speakers.
Also, apparently some of you actually like polar maps for some reason, so here you go
Note that this is normalized to the on-axis. Even though the crossover is all the way up at 3Khz, directivity is well controlled down to the mids.
Things get more interesting in the vertical plane. Here's the response at 0/5/10/15 degrees above and below the tweeter axis, as well as the Ceiling Reflections (40/50/60) and Floor Reflections (20/30/40) curves (Note turning speaker on its side for vertical measurements inevitably causes a bit of variation in the on-axis graph. I'm interested in the trends):
You can see it's surprisingly well controlled above the tweeter axis, lending itself to desktop use without having the tweeters perfectly at ear height; there's basically no change out to 15 degrees. 'Floor' reflections are worse, though still better than normal for vertically aligned drivers (again, small drivers help). Might still contribute to a sense of recessed upper midrange though, considering there's already a dip here on-axis. Use the little built-in stands to minimize the desk bounce, or place them on proper stands.
Here's the vertical polar, which basically says the same thing in a more trippy fashion:
The incomplete: It got late, so I didn't do SPL stress tests on frequency response yet. Noaudiophile has you covered there though. IK Multimedia also has a chart depicting SPL limits at 10 percent THD too.
The pinnacle of hi-fi? No. Good for bass loud enough to annoy your neighbors down the hall at 3AM while mixing your latest dubstep drop? Probably not.
Very solid performance for $300 in a compact package that actually leaves enough room on your desk for gear, food, and whathaveyou? Yep.
Because I'd seen noaudiophile's excellent review and measurements, I hadn't been in any hurry to do my own measurements. Turns out my particular unit appears to show some significant differences, so I'm glad I did.
Here's the quasi anechoic spin:
We see a lot of good here, and some notable bad. Let's start with the latter. There are three prominent deep and narrow/high-q dips. These appear to be caused by port cancellations, as there are big peaks in the port response at the same location as these dips. The port definitely makes some noise during the sweep, although I honestly hadn't noticed major port noise during music.
There's also a medium-sized shallow-ish scoop around 3KHz, where the crossover is. But it doesn't appear to be the result of a middling crossover. Given the linearity of the rest of the frequency response, the consistency of the dip, and the fact that the ERDI curve is almost completely smooth here, I get this impression this dip is a tuning choice.
These trends generally follow IK Multimedia's own on-axis graph, but assuming similar performance its pretty clear theirs is smoothed significantly, showing none of the narrow dips.
(Curiously my measurements look quite different from NoAudiophiles. No 2K peak on mine, and his have no 3K dip nor the low Q dips, though his measurements show port peaks in the same places. I repeated the measurements with several different setups because the measurements seemed so different, and both my left and right speakers measured similarly. Maybe the white and black units have different resonances somehow? Or they retuned the Micro's at some point. Who knows).
The good news: High-Q dips aside are generally the least audible of frequency domain anomalies(we are more sensitive to peaks than dips, and are more likely to notice broad/low Q dips than high q ones). I mean, they're not great to have, but, better than, say, equally sized peaks. The one around 600Hz is probably the worst offender, but my measurements exaggerate its width a bit due to the diminished resolution of quasi-anechoic data in the lower midrange.
The Micro Monitors are timbrally balanced throughout most of the frequency range. That is my impression from listening too, though perhaps the combination of dips within the mids might make them seem just a tad recessed compared to an even more linear speaker like the Neumann KH80.
The bass extension down to below 50Hz is good stuff. I'm regularly impressed by the bass I'm hearing out of these little guys. it's not the cleanest I've heard, but I was expecting a lot more compression given their size. I wish they had a sub out to complete the package though.
Similarly important is the directivity performance. While matching two small drivers makes things a bit easier and the direct sound takes priority in the nearfield that smooth ERDI curve is commendable (even if it's not quite as important here as it might be in a living room setup). This also means you should be able to further smooth out on-axis/listening Window response with EQ if you'd like, though I'd probably leave the high Q dips as is.
Here's the horizontal SPL graph:
Well extended out to 15Khz or so, evenly spaced lines, consistent shape. That's that wide directivity I like to see. This results in an impeccable soundstage for such small budget speakers.
Also, apparently some of you actually like polar maps for some reason, so here you go
Note that this is normalized to the on-axis. Even though the crossover is all the way up at 3Khz, directivity is well controlled down to the mids.Things get more interesting in the vertical plane. Here's the response at 0/5/10/15 degrees above and below the tweeter axis, as well as the Ceiling Reflections (40/50/60) and Floor Reflections (20/30/40) curves (Note turning speaker on its side for vertical measurements inevitably causes a bit of variation in the on-axis graph. I'm interested in the trends):
You can see it's surprisingly well controlled above the tweeter axis, lending itself to desktop use without having the tweeters perfectly at ear height; there's basically no change out to 15 degrees. 'Floor' reflections are worse, though still better than normal for vertically aligned drivers (again, small drivers help). Might still contribute to a sense of recessed upper midrange though, considering there's already a dip here on-axis. Use the little built-in stands to minimize the desk bounce, or place them on proper stands.
Here's the vertical polar, which basically says the same thing in a more trippy fashion:
The incomplete: It got late, so I didn't do SPL stress tests on frequency response yet. Noaudiophile has you covered there though. IK Multimedia also has a chart depicting SPL limits at 10 percent THD too.
The pinnacle of hi-fi? No. Good for bass loud enough to annoy your neighbors down the hall at 3AM while mixing your latest dubstep drop? Probably not.
Very solid performance for $300 in a compact package that actually leaves enough room on your desk for gear, food, and whathaveyou? Yep.
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