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JTR Noesis 210HT speaker (review by Erin)

sweetchaos

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Thanks to @hardisj for another speaker review!

The Noesis 210HT is a 2 way loudspeaker equipped with two 10” woofers in a sealed enclosure, combined with an ultra high-end compression driver fitted on a large, wooden horn with a 60 x 60 coverage pattern.

Retails for US$2000/each.

Review:
DSC03028.JPG

CEA2034%20--%20JTR%20Noesis%20210HT%20%282022%20Model%29.png

JTR%20Noesis%20210HT%20%282022%20Model%29%20Horizontal%20Contour%20Plot%20%28Normalized%29.png

JTR%20Noesis%20210HT%20%282022%20Model%29%20Vertical%20Contour%20Plot%20%28Normalized%29.png

Preference score (according to Erin): 2.4 (5 with sub)

JTR%20Noesis%20210HT%20%282022%20Model%29%20Harmonic%20Distortion%2086dB%20%40%201m.png

JTR%20Noesis%20210HT%20%282022%20Model%29%20Harmonic%20Distortion%2096dB%20%40%201m.png

JTR%202022%20Noesis%20210HT_Compression.png

Erin's conclusion:
Listening was conducted in my living room at 4m using the Parasound HINT-6 for power. I would have taken them up the stairs into my home theater room but didn’t have anyone around to help me and I didn’t want to bother my wife with that. My living room is a decent size with open floor plan that extends into the hallway, kitchen and dining room.

  • Average sensitivity is about 92.5dB @ 2.83v/1m.
  • Some pronounced resonances in the midrange were bothersome and the constant directivity of the horn paired with the narrowing directivity of the woofers (or, rather, likely they’re center-to-center spacing) results in a “bright” sounding treble in-room. Looking back at the horizontal SPL and the estimated in-room response, you can see what I mean. The EIR has a downward slope from ~150Hz to 1.5kHz and then shows a slightly rising trend above this frequency up to about 10kHz. This combination lends itself to sound different ways to different people because the frequencies are relative to each other. Personally, I would describe this EIR as “bright”, if I am being succinct in my description. However, with a touch of EQ and a proper HF shelf-filter, this speaker is a beast with tons and tons of output, great detail and excellent imaging.
  • Excellent directivity means ability to use EQ at will to shape the sound to your liking.
  • Great imaging / focus but not much stage width … or not as much as I like. Toe-out (facing speakers out into listening room) can improve width some with little effect on imaging focus.
  • Turning them off-axis also helps remedy the bright sound they had in my room. But this should be played with as different people may prefer a different HF tilt and the trade-off with imaging.
  • Crazy loud. Easily fills up my large open-plan living room with sound and no mechanical noise when used with a proper crossover (I landed on 90Hz). I was getting to >110dB at 4m (with hearing protection).
  • Heavy.
I’ve had a couple people suggest that the tilted-up HF response could be useful for behind-screen placement. That’s a worthwhile consideration. However, I don’t think the screen would provide enough attenuation. Certainly not for me. I use a DIY screen for my HT and when I tested it some years back, it didn’t result in more than 1-2dB of attenuation, max. I did a quick google search to see what data is available for more popular screens and it looks like that still holds true. Now, a combination of toe-out / in + a screen with enough attenuation might work to provide what is needed but I doubt it would be enough. Especially not 3-5dB of attenuation (a screen with such attenuation would be a terrible design). I wouldn’t rely on the screen to be enough on its own if you wanted to aim the speakers on-axis.
Video review:

Discuss!
 

Sancus

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Steve Dallas

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Kind of disappointing that this lowest end model was reviewed instead of literally any other model which are all 3-ways with coaxial compression drivers and lower resolution measurements seemed to indicate pretty good performance. I guess this is at least $1000/ea less than the others, but still, meh.
JTR chose and supplied the speakers as I understand it from Erin's commentary, so it seems this is what they wanted on the NFS.

Several JBL 2 way options at this price.
 

Absolute

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Wow, nice waveguide! I'd be interested in measurements of the waveguide alone just to see the full frequency range usability of it.
 

ctrl

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With the cult following this brand has i expected much more.

I am also a little disappointed. In the video Erin has already gone into detail about the somewhat disappointing FR and LW.

But would like to say something about the increased third-order distortion of almost 3%@96dB@1m in the range 300-400Hz - probably triggered by the woofer (problems with the woofer drive, cone or surround resonances).

Of course, nobody listens to such a loudspeaker with 96dB@1m, so you have to transfer the increased HD3 values to a realistic listening situation.
Depending on the room size and listening distance, the 96dB@1m values roughly translate to 85-90dB at the listening position in a realistic listening situation (large room, 3-5m distance).

However, the amount of harmonic distortion does not change, so almost 3% HD3 will also arrive at the listening position at only 85dB.
The audibility threshold of harmonic distortions decreases with decreasing sound pressure level and with increasing order of distortion (are therefore more easily perceived), since the masking deteriorates.

To be absolutely sure that harmonic distortions have no audible effect on the reproduction, they should be as close to the audibility threshold as possible. Unfortunately I don't have a masking example for a masker around 350Hz, but below is the example of a narrow band masker at 1kHz. Have drawn in where the audibility threshold is for a 3kHz tone (which corresponds to the HD3 generated at 1kHz).

Important: Please consider the percentages as an rough approximation only, individual audibility thresholds can vary greatly. And the masking depends of course also very much on the masker, i.e. whether a single tone, narrow band or wide band noise is used as masker.
The example cannot be transferred one-to-one to a 350Hz masker, but it gives us an indication of the audibility threshold of HD3.
1645400947107.png

Source: Zwicker, Fastl - Psychoacoustics (colored additions by me)


Above 800Hz, harmonic distortion of the speaker is extremely low (good compression driver), as one would expect with such a concept.
A few dollars more for a slightly better woofer would probably change a lot.
.
 

LTig

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Quite rough on axis but good dispertion so possible to partially correct with EQ. And you need a sub, crossed over using a 4th order lowpass and a 2nd order high pass, as the JTR already contains a 2nd order highpass.
 

Madjalapeno

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Isn't it like a giant center speaker, with woofers either side of the tweeter, and all the associated problems?
 

AudioJester

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Why are speaker reviewers so enamored by the capability to go loud? Way beyond what would be useable?
 

AdamG

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Provides for solid dynamic range and headroom. Music is rarely recorded at a set volume/loudness level. You may not listen at high levels on average but well designed speakers should have sufficient head room to play louder passages of a score without objectionable distortion. Just a guess!
 

hardisj

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Why are speaker reviewers so enamored by the capability to go loud? Way beyond what would be useable?

It's not just reviewers. It's buyers, too. If people didn't want it there would be no market for it. Everyone would be listening on their countertop radios with a single full-range 2-inch driver.

Personally, the reason I push speakers hard is because *people want to know*. "How loud does it go?" "What's the compression look like?". All typical questions posed by prospective buyers / readers / watchers. It’s nice to be able to give real numbers in an answer.

Objectively speaking, it's much easier to build a speaker that sounds good and has the traits I look for in a speaker if it doesn't go loud compared to a speaker that does get loud. The design process for the latter is much more taxing. You want more SPL? The typical answer is to either use HE drivers (which limit the bandwidth) or use multiples (which challenges DI continuity). I find the designs that can get loud and maintain their composure while having wide radiation and great linearity on/off-axis very, very cool.
 
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eddy555

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why's the official site show a different woofer used? Like this looks like a pro style, and they have a rubber surround type one.
WBnYujAA.jpg
 

flyzipper

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Could someone help with a fundamental understanding of narrow or wide horizontal beamwidth (Erin measured it as narrow in this speaker's case).

In a large echoey room, my intuition says a speaker with narrow beamwidth would be less problematic versus one with wide beamwidth (less energy would hit side walls), but is my intuition correct?
 

Mnyb

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Loud is not only insane levels . Dynamics as someone mentioned especially in HT application, where dynamic content is still a thing .

You Americans seems to have larger houses in general ;) I see Erin listening to for example KEF-R3 at what I would call floorstander distance .

And the spl capacity of many small speakers are not what you think . It’s not evenly spread as soon as there is bass content they cr*p out at surprisingly low levels . Spl capacity of a speaker is not evenly spread in its operation range . You read one spec for example 40Hz -20kHz and 110dB at one meter these are not valid at the same time sadly.
It partly helped in the treble as the energy content of music or movies at the highest treble is not much , but typically a speakers spl capacity is not matching typical content. You will hit a limit at lower levels than one might think .

My experience is that a typical floorstander with dual 6,5” woofers don’t cut it for realistic hifi .

This speaker however seems a bit ott for spl :) but again large HT with many seats...
 

MarkWinston

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Disappointing to me... they couldnt even get the basic things right like frequency response. Maybe a flatter response is reserved for the more expensive models? Hmmmmmm...
 

ernestcarl

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Disappointing to me... they couldnt even get the basic things right like frequency response. Maybe a flatter response is reserved for the more expensive models? Hmmmmmm...

I don't think there's any obvious mistake here. Very high efficiency speakers like these often require additional EQ processing -- I know that some manufacturers after purchase will provide the necessary/recommended DSP. Others have it already fully built-in, and others you have to create manually for yourself. This will be easier to understand if you check out the raw frequency response measurements of more HE drivers and/or speakers.
 

MarkWinston

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I don't think there's any obvious mistake here. Very high efficiency speakers like these often require additional EQ processing -- I know that some manufacturers after purchase will provide the necessary/recommended DSP. Others have it already fully built-in, and others you have to create manually for yourself. This will be easier to understand if you check out the raw frequency response measurements of more HE drivers and/or speakers.
This just means high effiency speakers are not for me. Im not going to want to use eq after spending so much on a speaker. But thats just me. But IF DSP was already built in, I would heavily consider this.
 
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