Infinity R162 Bookshelf Speaker Review

[Cahudson42]

R162 now showing 'sold out' - even at the $450 price - on Harmon site. Still available on Amazon at 'only' $300/pair..

Would appear the $159/pair days may be gone..

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

R162 now showing 'sold out' - even at the $450 price - on Harmon site. Still available on Amazon at 'only' $300/pair..

Would appear the $159/pair days may be gone..

Trust me sale price will return. It will pop up at any time and sell out in a few days. The discontinued models come back to life mysteriously. Infinity must be managed by "modern" bankers. Unaccountable algorithmic business model.

 

[Cahudson42]

Trust me sale price will return. I

Well, they are back. But at $450.. Bet you will be proven correct..

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

Well, they are back. But at $450.. Bet you will be proven correct..

You will have to look daily. The 263 appeared out of thin air a few weeks ago. Lasted couple of days. Make a shortcut to Harmon on phone or tablet and check daily. Harmon is responding to this site.

 

[Euphonious]

The R162 is listed today at $179.99/pr. at Harman's site.
https://www.harmanaudio.com/sale/RE...162_color=Black-USA-Current&cgid=sale#start=1

 

[thebriantang]

Hey everyone. Currently trying to decide on either the R152 or R162 for a new home theater system with some music listening as well. Any thoughts on which would be the better pick up? I can get either pair for about $100. Thanks!

 

[ShawnL]

I'm receiving a pair R162 tomorrow. I can't help but think these speakers have been hamstrung. The Harman site states they are 2700hz 3rd order crossover. It's clear from the graphs that their directivity narrows near the crossover due to beaming of the woofer. The Revel M16 on the other hand uses the correct crossover of 2100hz to obtain constant directivity between the drivers.

I wonder if the Infinity tweeter can handle a lower crossover. I'm thinking of using DSP and bi-amps to test this out. Before I do this and risk damage does anyone have any thoughts?

I also wonder about the large spacing between woofer and tweeter in the R162 cabinet. The M16 gets them as close together as possible. Seems like another way to reduce competition between the two.

Shawn

 

[Mudjock]

I suspect there is more going on than merely an attempt to reduce competition between Infinity and Revel models. Speaker design, especially commercial speaker design is all about tradeoffs. The higher crossover point does at least a couple of things that would make the accountants happy.
1. Allows the use of a less robust (expensive) tweeter. A tweeter that maintains its composure at 2.1 kHz at high SPL's is typically not cheap.
2. Allows the use of smaller, cheaper crossover components. The woofer inductor(s), in particular would usually be a smaller value for a higher crossover point.

I don't know if it is really this simple for the driver spacing, but I was noticing that the woofer position was somewhat constrained by the positions of the grille fasteners. Moving the tweeter down closer to the woofer might cause additional diffraction issues by making the distance to the top edge too similar to the distance to the side edge of the baffle.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

Hey everyone. Currently trying to decide on either the R152 or R162 for a new home theater system with some music listening as well. Any thoughts on which would be the better pick up? I can get either pair for about $100. Thanks!

162

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

R162 now showing 'sold out' - even at the $450 price - on Harmon site. Still available on Amazon at 'only' $300/pair..

Would appear the $159/pair days may be gone..

Sale will come back. Patience.

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

I suspect there is more going on than merely an attempt to reduce competition between Infinity and Revel models. Speaker design, especially commercial speaker design is all about tradeoffs. The higher crossover point does at least a couple of things that would make the accountants happy.
1. Allows the use of a less robust (expensive) tweeter. A tweeter that maintains its composure at 2.1 kHz at high SPL's is typically not cheap.
2. Allows the use of smaller, cheaper crossover components. The woofer inductor(s), in particular would usually be a smaller value for a higher crossover point.

I don't know if it is really this simple for the driver spacing, but I was noticing that the woofer position was somewhat constrained by the positions of the grille fasteners. Moving the tweeter down closer to the woofer might cause additional diffraction issues by making the distance to the top edge too similar to the distance to the side edge of the baffle.

Revel will sound better. Infinity will sound great compared to competition.

 

[Maiky76]

@AudioQuestShill asked me to design an EQ for this speaker
Here it is.

Score no EQ: 4.88 nothing significantly wrong except the 700Hz resonance, ascending trend

Better stay at tweeter height and at about +/10deg horizontally

EQ design:
Score with EQ: 6.58 which impressive although quite a few biquads are rather sharp and may not translate on all speakers due to production tolerance. The optimizer agrees with @amirm that the HF is a tad too hot out-of-the-box.

Infinity R162 APO EQ 96000Hz
October262020-182437

Preamp: -1 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 122.5 Hz Gain -0.78 dB Q 4.24
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 155.5 Hz Gain -0.57 dB Q 4
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 724 Hz Gain -2.96 dB Q 6.33
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1300 Hz Gain -1 dB Q 10
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 2164 Hz Gain 1.17 dB Q 2.79
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 3195.5 Hz Gain -0.93 dB Q 4.5
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 4758 Hz Gain -1.39 dB Q 4.28
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 6498 Hz Gain -0.94 dB Q 7.38
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 8505 Hz Gain -1.11 dB Q 7.16
Filter 10: ON PK Fc 15867 Hz Gain 1.5 dB Q 2.31
Filter 11: ON PK Fc 19111 Hz Gain -3.19 dB Q 0.47

Corresponding Spinorama:

Zoom PIR-LW-ON

Regression - tonal much flatter now

Very decent improvements:

The APO config file is attached as well as the rest of the analysis

 

[Erici]

@AudioQuestShill asked me to design an EQ for this speaker
Here it is.

Score no EQ: 4.88 nothing significantly wrong except the 700Hz resonance, ascending trend
View attachment 89661

Better stay at tweeter height and at about +/10deg horizontally
View attachment 89664
EQ design:
Score with EQ: 6.58 which impressive although quite a few biquads are rather sharp and may not translate on all speakers due to production tolerance. The optimizer agrees with @amirm that the HF is a tad too hot out-of-the-box.

Infinity R162 APO EQ 96000Hz
October262020-182437

Preamp: -1 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 122.5 Hz Gain -0.78 dB Q 4.24
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 155.5 Hz Gain -0.57 dB Q 4
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 724 Hz Gain -2.96 dB Q 6.33
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 1300 Hz Gain -1 dB Q 10
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 2164 Hz Gain 1.17 dB Q 2.79
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 3195.5 Hz Gain -0.93 dB Q 4.5
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 4758 Hz Gain -1.39 dB Q 4.28
Filter 8: ON PK Fc 6498 Hz Gain -0.94 dB Q 7.38
Filter 9: ON PK Fc 8505 Hz Gain -1.11 dB Q 7.16
Filter 10: ON PK Fc 15867 Hz Gain 1.5 dB Q 2.31
Filter 11: ON PK Fc 19111 Hz Gain -3.19 dB Q 0.47

View attachment 89663

Corresponding Spinorama:
View attachment 89660
Zoom PIR-LW-ON
View attachment 89658
Regression - tonal much flatter now
View attachment 89659
Very decent improvements:
View attachment 89662

The APO config file is attached as well as the rest of the analysis

Thanks Maiky76. Really appreciate your work here!

I typed the EQ into JRiver and it sounds very good! Now I need to create some filters using REW to reduce the room effects below 300.

 

[bennybbbx]

seem this speaker can not buy new. Is infinity dead ?. I see specs of this r162. it have a very wide angle on tweeter. currently i have on diffrent outs a Kali LP6 and a canton plus .x3 . in compare the kali have above 1.5 khz very few stereo width. I learn that in studio monitors many use waveguide to reduce tweeter angle. I think this is very bad because the bass have wide angle but tweeter much less angle give lots loss of reality. if you not hear this, you can highpass filter a example song with 1.5 khz or 2 khz(depend on crossover freq) and compare with a speaker without waveguide. the waveguide speaker sounds as when use a stereo width reducer plugin.

maybe there are other 6 zoll speakers with such a wide tweater angle as the r 162 and cost not more as 400 $ ?

 

[BYRTT]

.....maybe there are other 6 zoll speakers with such a wide tweater angle as the r 162 and cost not more as 400 $ ?

The three one's graphed below is also wide in horizontal plane but costs looks be in 900-1000$ class for a pair, if interested on following link its possible overlay and compare Amir's acoustic analyzes https://colab.research.google.com/g...er/Loudspeaker_Explorer.ipynb#scrollTo=cell-1

Links their ASR acoustic reviews:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/revel-m16-speaker-review.11884/#post-343439
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...al-aria-906-speaker-review.14085/#post-429721
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...a-bookshelf-speaker-review.15055/#post-472969

 

[Alice of Old Vincennes]

seem this speaker can not buy new. Is infinity dead ?. I see specs of this r162. it have a very wide angle on tweeter. currently i have on diffrent outs a Kali LP6 and a canton plus .x3 . in compare the kali have above 1.5 khz very few stereo width. I learn that in studio monitors many use waveguide to reduce tweeter angle. I think this is very bad because the bass have wide angle but tweeter much less angle give lots loss of reality. if you not hear this, you can highpass filter a example song with 1.5 khz or 2 khz(depend on crossover freq) and compare with a speaker without waveguide. the waveguide speaker sounds as when use a stereo width reducer plugin.

maybe there are other 6 zoll speakers with such a wide tweater angle as the r 162 and cost not more as 400 $ ?

Infinity will reappear randomly.

 

[BillG]

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...helf-speaker-review.12333/page-11#post-550778

Thanks for this.

 

[bennybbbx]

The three one's graphed below is also wide in horizontal plane but costs looks be in 900-1000$ class for a pair, if interested on following link its possible overlay and compare Amir's acoustic analyzes

really not good that there not more and with better price and sad that infinity is down. I can suggest better never buy a waveguide speaker if you have a room with a structure wallpaper as can see in image. the room sound in general good but it need speakers with large angle or stereo width is reduce. and kali is not so good in such a room

 

[BYRTT]

really not good that there not more and with better price and sad that infinity is down. I can suggest better never buy a waveguide speaker if you have a room with a structure wallpaper as can see in image. the room sound in general good but it need speakers with large angle or stereo width is reduce. and kali is not so good in such a room

For Focal Aria 906 there is better costs than what Amir printed into his post 1 review, https://www.homecinesolutions.fr/p/17034-focal-aria-906-dark-ebony

Now you havent filled in location data for your ASR account profile so cant know where you live but can say a Canadian member dealed that French shop and got a pair shipped to Canada and was asked €581.67, polar map animation below is set to "normalized" so it replicate close to what Amir's beamwidth graphs presents for horizontals, and Focal Aria 906 is a bit wider than Infinity R162 below 12kHz area..

 

[bennybbbx]

For Focal Aria 906 there is better costs than what Amir printed into his post 1 review, https://www.homecinesolutions.fr/p/17034-focal-aria-906-dark-ebony
Now you havent filled in location data for your ASR account profile so cant know where you live but can say a Canadian member dealed that French shop and got a pair shipped to Canada and was asked €581.67, polar map animation below is set to "normalized" so it replicate close to what Amir's beamwidth graphs presents for horizontals, and Focal Aria 906 is a bit wider than Infinity R162 below 12kHz area..

I live in germany there is no such low price.I update my profile and add country
cost around 850 eur new. the horizontal diirectivtity diagram look good. but i want also vertical a good one. because then the area in cm 2 of reflections is biggest and vertical is not good on the aria 906.so much less cm ^2 than R162 . the tweater of aria 906 look identical in horizontal and vertical, maybe the small waveguide givt the worse results