A good review and a great segment about our brains adaptation to speakers. Thanks @Kal Rubinson
https://www.stereophile.com/content/dynaudio-confidence-30-loudspeaker
https://www.stereophile.com/content/dynaudio-confidence-30-loudspeaker
I believe even very good SS amps have their difference in things like frequency dependency, and that passives usually have quite wide impedance range, which I believe would make all those minor voicing differenceI've been subjected to the Confidence 60's on two occasions. Kind of laid to rest the idea that good amps should sound the same - either that or the very expensive amps used weren't good ones......... The first occasion I got a headache with listening fatigue after half an hour and the second occasion they sounded good but at twice the price of a proper larger active model of my intimate acquaintance (and more modern similar three way actives I don't yet know), this speaker/amp combination didn't appeal to me...
1. Port NF measurement shows not typical response and its second peak contributes to the overall output while it should not.
2. According to impedance going below 3ohm ~100Hz, I assume the peak at 100Hz is created by crossover and its reaction with woofers impedance. Normally this peak can be 2-3dB or even more, and it is good to compensate it with RLC in parallel to woofer. RLC compensation also increase impedance around 100Hz back to normal values.
3. NF measurements must be properly scaled and bafflestep curve has to be added before merging to farfield response. So one has to be careful to judge these measurements. That 8dB peak simply does not have to be true.
I dont get the measurements. I see peeking starting from 200Hz downwards with a mount everest at 80Hz and a breathtaking high of +8dB. With a littel bit of humor i would say this speaker is not bassshy. Any explainations?
3. NF measurements must be properly scaled and bafflestep curve has to be added before merging to farfield response. So one has to be careful to judge these measurements. That 8dB peak simply does not have to be true.
this looks much more reference class to me, but for floorstanders at this price I am always disappointed by how early the bass roll off occurredExactly. The stereophile measurements of the 2pi overall frequency response are not useful in the bass range because, as already mentioned, no baffle step correction is performed (this is at least my last information) and also the phase shift caused by the distance between BR port and woofer is not taken into account.
Stereophile should really correct this. Or do without it completely.
The "wrongly created" summed near-field measurements can still be displayed as a dashed line if a comparison with the old "wrong" frequency responses should be possible.
Of course, I don't know how reliable the stereophile's near-field measurements are.
But if I take their BR-port*** and woofer measurements and apply a baffle step correction and also consider the average distance of the two woofers from the downfire BR-port (caused phase shift between woofer and BR-port) and sum them up, then you get the green curve**.
In red is the overall frequency response of the stereophile. In purple** are the summed nearfield measurements without phase shift correction.
** The near-field measurements were simulated for 2.5m listening distance free field. For 1m listening distance, something else would result, but this is not a realistic listening distance for a floorstanding speaker of this size.
*** The BR port is not a minimum phase system, so using the near field frequency response without a corresponding phase frequency response will cause an error.
View attachment 141776
The gated far-field measurement is not available to me, so I can't create a summary free-field frequency response, but I think one can see that the 8dB increase around 80Hz shown by Stereophile is not very realistic.
It can also be seen that when the phase shift caused by the distance between BR-port and woofer is taken into account, the increase around 80Hz is also somewhat reduced.