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Kali Audio IN-8 Studio Monitor Review

napilopez

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I feel you misunderstand my questions. I have never questioned the Klippel rig. Not once, not ever.
I worked directly with Floyd Toole for 10 years in the research group at Harman international. The physics on acoustics is not an exclusive set of data. Anyone can study it and/or work utilizing it. What you are doing is not "audio science" but "audio consensus". I simply wanted to know about Amirs test set-up. That is a reasonable question. It is not a challenge. It is simply a question. If you are treating people in this group in such a manner, then it is simply a cult like adherence to a guru and not the physics of acoustics and electronics. If asking questions is considered inappropriate in this forum then you are not in search of better sound or science. You are just am exclusive club that belittles all those that attempt to have any conversation with you about the process. I was simply curious.

And I feel you misunderstand me - I don't mind you asking questions, nor challenge you asking them. However, some of what you are asking has been answered in this thread and those linked previously - and Kali already replied themselves. It's not clear what more you want to know other than a photo. Right now the best thing we can do is wait and see until another unit is in for testing, and kali provides its own data as promised. That's all I was saying.

EDIT: To be clear, and for what it's worth, I also think the most likely explanation is that there was something wrong with Amir's unit, because the measurements don't make sense based on what we know about Kali - and Kali themselves said the measurements do not agree with their own (here's Kali's post if you're curious, and here's Mr Sprinkle's). So something is wrong.

But Amir's measurements closely track other available anechoic data for other speakers - none of those units show nearly as much of a discrepancy from expected data as the Kali does. But we won't know until the speaker is remeasured. Right now all we have is the speaker that was presented to Amir.
 
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aarons915

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I had reservations about the test setup as well but after basically duplicating the measurement of the Revel C52, it puts that issue to rest in my opinion. The "test setup" doesn't matter as has been explained but to anyone that interested I would say imagine the Klippel in a garage...I believe that's where Amir said it's placed. The main thing I think that could be made better is to standardize the measurement SPL levels to the CTA-2034 standard.
 

spacevector

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@Jaxx1138 I think the issue here is that the premise of your question may be a bit misguided or the question itself has not been fleshed out fully.

You asked: "No, I am interested in your test configuration not Woflgang Klippels test system." and "Do you have any pictures of your test set-up?"

I think what is being claimed here is that the Klippel NFS' measurement output is akin to an fully anechoic chamber. The test setup is the NFS system itself. There may be some minimum room dimension guideline published by Klippel. The claim then is that as long as the setup requirements are followed, it doesnt much matter whether the system is in Amir's garage or yours. The results are expected to be the same.

Amir has also provided validation data for two (may be more but two that I know of) loudspeakers measured with his NFS compared with other 3rd party measurement data.
 

Jaxx1138

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@Jaxx1138 I think the issue here is that the premise of your question may be a bit misguided or the question itself has not been fleshed out fully.

You asked: "No, I am interested in your test configuration not Woflgang Klippels test system." and "Do you have any pictures of your test set-up?"

I think what is being claimed here is that the Klippel NFS' measurement output is akin to an fully anechoic chamber. The test setup is the NFS system itself. There may be some minimum room dimension guideline published by Klippel. The claim then is that as long as the setup requirements are followed, it doesnt much matter whether the system is in Amir's garage or yours. The results are expected to be the same.

Amir has also provided validation data for two (may be more but two that I know of) loudspeakers measured with his NFS compared with other 3rd party measurement data.


I understand and thank you. I am interested in the development of standards that assist everyone in getting better results acoustically. But you are correct in that I do not read all the threads on this forum.

Normally I would find this thread of little interest. But in this case there seems to be some incongruent results. This is why I am interested. And if this is the case Kali should be made aware of this. You should easily able to do a metric and then repeat it, having said that rerunning a metric in order to demonstrate you can repeat it is a great way to validate something. if I cannot repeat a measurement that I conducted in my lab for my supervisor that metric will be rejected. I measured hundreds of different loudspeakers at Harman's acoustic chamber and was easily able to repeat a metric months later with the same unit and get within 1/2 of a dB across the audible spectrum. So I was simply interested in what checks are in place to verify the metrics. That is all. Whenever I get a result that may seem anomalous I would repeat the metric several ways to ensure that I hadn't made any mistakes.

When I test anything I do measurements a minimum of three times in order to verify the repeatability of the results. I was simply attempting to find out what the protocols that were housed for this test.
 

napilopez

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I understand and thank you. I am interested in the development of standards that assist everyone in getting better results acoustically. But you are correct in that I do not read all the threads on this forum.

Normally I would find this thread of little interest. But in this case there seems to be some incongruent results. This is why I am interested. And if this is the case Kali should be made aware of this. You should easily able to do a metric and then repeat it, having said that rerunning a metric in order to demonstrate you can repeat it is a great way to validate something. if I cannot repeat a measurement that I conducted in my lab for my supervisor that metric will be rejected. I measured hundreds of different loudspeakers at Harman's acoustic chamber and was easily able to repeat a metric months later with the same unit and get within 1/2 of a dB across the audible spectrum. So I was simply interested in what checks are in place to verify the metrics. That is all. Whenever I get a result that may seem anomalous I would repeat the metric several ways to ensure that I hadn't made any mistakes.

When I test anything I do measurements a minimum of three times in order to verify the repeatability of the results. I was simply attempting to find out what the protocols that were housed for this test.

I agree with this - just want to point out again in case you missed my earlier post that Kali is aware of this thread and has actively responded to it. A new test is in order, Amir is just waiting for the speaker to arrive. He will also be testing the LP-6, which should hopefully show more of the company's design philosophy.
 

AudioJester

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It seems to be a common reaction in science. The results dont align with your "beliefs" and so you question.

You have asked for pics first, then changed your tune and asked for validation/reproducability. Both have been provided on this forum.

I think i finally understabd some of the frustration Amir must face when this keeps happening repeatedly on this forum.
 

HammerSandwich

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What are you wearing in that garage @amirm ? Maybe all those layers impact the measurements...
318rodr.3.jpg
 
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amirm

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Normally I would find this thread of little interest. But in this case there seems to be some incongruent results.
On what basis? Casual listening tests of the Kali in a show? Or pedigree of designers? How do these invalidate any kind of measurement?

You know how many objections I would have to address if that was the criteria?

If you have access to measure the Kali IN-8 in a known acoustic chamber and can give us the full acoustic environment of that :), then we can talk. Otherwise this dog don't hunt.
 

Jaxx1138

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On what basis? Casual listening tests of the Kali in a show? Or pedigree of designers? How do these invalidate any kind of measurement?

You know how many objections I would have to address if that was the criteria?

If you have access to measure the Kali IN-8 in a known acoustic chamber and can give us the full acoustic environment of that :), then we can talk. Otherwise this dog don't hunt.

How many times have you run it through the NFS system? Before you say it doesn't matter. Please just amuse me and let me know if you don't mind too much.
 
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amirm

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I measured hundreds of different loudspeakers at Harman's acoustic chamber and was easily able to repeat a metric months later with the same unit and get within 1/2 of a dB across the audible spectrum.
And I have verified the same by not-only remeasuring the JBL 305P Mark ii, but also changing the measurement conditions of the Klippel system, only to find the results remarkably the same. Furthermore I have replicated Harman's anechoic measurements of Revel C52 more than a decade after Harman made the measurements and with a different speaker sample no less.

Unless you specific experience with the Klippel NFS, no amount of experience with other measurement techniques is going to help here. Indeed your techniques there don't apply here. You would I imagine worry about whether you are in near or far field of a speaker in anechoic chamber. I don't have that worry because the Klippel system specifically measures in near-field. You would have to worry if your microphone is in a room mode in low frequencies in anechoic chamber that is not anechoic down to 20 Hz (which none are). I don't have to worry about that because the Klippel system specifically identifies the direct and reflected fields and separates them.
 
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amirm

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How many times have you run it through the NFS system? Before you say it doesn't matter. Please just amuse me and let me know if you don't mind too much.
At least 12 to 15 times. The system was provided with a sample speaker (JBL no less) and Klippel's measurements and my measurements have very high correlation with theirs. It was only then that I started to test real speaker available for review.

I take it that you have zero experience with Klippel system so you have no basis to complain about the data as presented. I suggest going to some of your old employers, two of which have Klippel systems and ask what they know about it. I did that during my due diligence before buying the system.

Forgive me for being blunt: unless you have computational acoustics and mathematics experience, you have no qualifications to understand how the Klippel system works. My signal processing experience helps me a ton in this regard. This is a comment that came from Klippel when I last reported a bug to them:

"If it is any consolation (and this is a compliment), you’ve been faster and better than anyone who has purchased an NFS. And I’m talking about the [major company names redacted]… we usually get a call while they’re building the system and spend hours helping them get it together, and then hours and hours with people getting their first measurement done. Impressive!"

Doesn't make me God. I still have things I am learning about the system (mostly on how to get it configured faster and better). And there can be deficiencies in measurements still. But please, please don't assume you are dealing with some newbie who doesn't understand this system, acoustic measurements, etc. So one look at the set up and you can say, "aha! that is what is wrong with your setup." The mere question of asking me that is casting poor light on your knowledge of this system.

You can prove me wrong. It is just that the bar is quite high. Please come back with data and measurements of this speaker. That would help. None of this does.
 
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amirm

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On question @Jaxx1138 that you can answer. Take a look at the design of Kali IN-8 and comment what design practices make it superior to JBL 305p Mark ii. Advise on merits of using a midrange for waveguide as opposed to the one on JBL. I am sure you have some simulation tools at your disposal that you can use for that.
 

Jaxx1138

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On question @Jaxx1138 that you can answer. Take a look at the design of Kali IN-8 and comment what design practices make it superior to JBL 305p Mark ii. Advise on merits of using a midrange for waveguide as opposed to the one on JBL. I am sure you have some simulation tools at your disposal that you can use for that.
I have yet to challenge anything that you have done. But merely asked what and how. It really sounds like you have an agenda outside how loudspeakers actually perform. I simply was curios. You are not a newbie. You are just rude. I am simply attempting to understand YOUR methods. THAT IS ALL. I want to know as much as anyone how this metric could look so strange. Why do you belittle people when simply asking about what you have done? You must consider yourself omniscient.

Look, I know your reputation. Why do you assume I am questioning your abilities in ANY WAY AT ALL. You have a HUGE chip on your shoulder and all I am looking to do is find out about this loudspeaker. Seriously what is your problem?
 

Jaxx1138

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On question @Jaxx1138 that you can answer. Take a look at the design of Kali IN-8 and comment what design practices make it superior to JBL 305p Mark ii. Advise on merits of using a midrange for waveguide as opposed to the one on JBL. I am sure you have some simulation tools at your disposal that you can use for that.
Concentric designs have been around for quit some time. Using the mid-range as a wave guide is achievable as long as you limit its excursion so as to not modulate the tweeter. Andrew Jones seems to favor it in his designs. The one used in the 305 is a patented wave/guide that is a modified diffraction slot that uses two knuckles that create the diffraction points for horizontal dispersion. Both have their applications. A concentric assists in eliminating the vertical lobing effects of multi way loudspeakers where different points in space both creating similar frequencies that cause interference patterns. Concentric designs have been in existence for decades. As have horns and waveguides.
 
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