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Kali Audio IN-8 Studio Monitor Review

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amirm

amirm

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It seems like you have more information than I have. We concluded earlier that 3m is the most likely distance, but what makes you think the speakers were "toed in completely toward the listener"?
As I have shown in the pictures of Harman listening room, the speaker is placed in the center of the room and the listener likewise sits there and listens directly at the speaker on-axis. Nothing is toed in but the effect is that way.
 

napilopez

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It seems like you have more information than I have. We concluded earlier that 3m is the most likely distance, but what makes you think the speakers were "toed in completely toward the listener"? What makes you think there was only a single listening seat and that the speaker being tested was always pointed towards it? It doesn't seem obvious to me that the speaker shuffler rotates to always point the speaker towards the listener - in pictures/videos of the shuffler we never see any rotation, the speaker is always pointed towards the back of the room. Maybe @amirm can clarify?

Anyway… I think if we really wanted to be rigorous about calculating scores based on the full listening window, we should not use the LW average, because, as discussed many times before, averages are misleading and can unfairly inflate the score. Instead I suspect the ideal way would be to calculate the Olive score at every angle included in the LW, and then provide the score for each angle, along with a recommendation in the lines of "best score 5.8 achieved at +10° horizontal, worst score 5.0 achieved on-axis" (which basically translates to "don't toe-in this speaker!"). That's significantly more complicated than the current calculations, but nothing that a bit of code can't crack :)

@edechamps you quoted mitchco but I think you meant me =]
I think your suggestion, if implemented efficiently enough, would definitely be interesting. Though I do personally think a small listening window relative to ideal angles would be most representative because of the much discussed issues sometimes present on individual curves that are largely inaudible.

As for how I know how the speakers were placed, I was simply paraphrasing from part one of the preference rating studies :). The one with the bookshelf speakers only. Here is the text verbatim from section 3.8:

"All tests were performed with a single listener in the room situated in the same seating location, who controlled the switching of the loudspeakers. The listener sat 3 m. away from the loudspeaker, on-axis to the loudspeakers. All loudspeakers were positioned so that the design axis or tweeter was approximately positioned in height to the listeners’ ears."

So it seems they accounted for the intended listening axis when provided vertically, but not horizontally, though in my experience it's much less common for manufacturers to specify horizontal positioning unless it's specifically on axis. Vertically it's usually just listen at the tweeter or between the mids and tweeter.
 
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edechamps

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Thanks @amirm and @napilopez, I did forget that part of the study… it didn't occur to me that all tests were done with one listener at a time, that must have taken forever! :eek:

So it seems they accounted for the intended listening axis when provided vertically, but not horizontally, though in my experience it's much less common for manufacturers to specify horizontal positioning unless it's specifically on axis.

Yep. And I understand this is the main argument behind your insightful suggestion of using LW instead of On-Axis: the protocol of the study, where listening is always done exactly on-axis, doesn't match real world scenarios where people move around the speaker. My suggestion is, instead of calculating the score from the LW, a more accurate way to solve the problem is to calculate the score at every angle within the LW to eliminate the possibility of the speaker looking better due to averaging.
 

TimVG

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Yep. And I understand this is the main argument behind your insightful suggestion of using LW instead of On-Axis: the protocol of the study, where listening is always done exactly on-axis, doesn't match real world scenarios where people move around the speaker. My suggestion is, instead of calculating the score from the LW, a more accurate way to solve the problem is to calculate the score at every angle within the LW to eliminate the possibility of the speaker looking better due to averaging.

I understand your intention, but I'd be very surprised if the 0° on-axis measurement and LW show high correlation from one to another, that you'd find anything in the individual measurements that would influence the preference in a real world scenario. If a loudspeaker is absolutely intended to be listened to within a very narrow, specific window, before the sound quality noticeably degrades or changes, well I wouldn't buy that loudspeaker.. I'm quite confident we can find everything we need to know about the direct sound between the on-axis and listening window average.
 

Absolute

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You may also find this article about MMM interesting.
So, I've been measuring quickly with RTA full-range Pink Noise PN in rew as per the the video. Here's the result;

Klipsch RTA Averaging - 50 average cycles.jpg


How does it look? SBIR I can't do anything about because the subs doesn't sound very good above 120-150 ish. I can't figure out how to calibrate the SPL level in the RTA, so ignore absolute levels.
 

QMuse

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So, I've been measuring quickly with RTA full-range Pink Noise PN in rew as per the the video. Here's the result;

View attachment 53394

How does it look? SBIR I can't do anything about because the subs doesn't sound very good above 120-150 ish. I can't figure out how to calibrate the SPL level in the RTA, so ignore absolute levels.

It looks pretty good!

As @thewas_ said, try to adjust vertical scale grid to 5dB for better resolution.
 

tuga

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And what about Harbeth's dip at 500Hz?

Btw, Harbeth's dip between 2700 and 5000Hz is exactly in the area where our ears are most sensitive.

Sorry, I simply can't have confidence in a scoring system that gives slight advantage to Harbeth as I cannot believe blind listening test would confirm it.

You could be dismissing the possibility that the wide dip in the presence region actually sounds nice (at least to some people):

Linkwitz's has written about it:

H - Psycho-acoustic 3 kHz dip

Our perception of loudness is slightly different for sounds arriving frontally versus sounds arriving from random directions at our ears. The difference between equal-loudness-level contours in frontal free-fields and diffuse sound fields is documented, for example, in ISO Recommendation 454 and in E. Zwicker, H. Fastl, Psycho-acoustics, p. 205.
Diffuse field equalization of dummy-head recordings is discussed in J. Blauert, Spatial Hearing, pp. 363, and headphone diffuse field equalization by G. Theile in JAES, Vol. 34, No. 12.
Reference to a slight dip in the 1 to 3 kHz region for loudspeaker equalization is made in H. D. Harwood (BBC Research Department), Some factors in loudspeaker quality, Wireless World, May 1976, p.48.


Around 3 kHz our hearing is less sensitive to diffuse fields. Recording microphones, though, are usually flat in frequency response even under diffuse field conditions. When such recordings are played back over loudspeakers, there is more energy in the 3 kHz region than we would have perceived if present at the recording venue and a degree of unnaturalness is introduced.
This applies primarily to recordings of large orchestral pieces in concert halls where the microphones are much closer to the instruments than any listener. At most listening positions in the hall the sound field has strong diffuse components.
I use a dip of 4 dB (x1.gif, 2760NF) to equalize for this. The circuit consists of R, C and L in series, forming a frequency dependent ladder attenuator in conjunction with the 5.11k ohm source resistor. You may choose to make the notch filter selectable with a switch for different types of recordings.

I have found through my own head-related recordings of symphonic music that the dip adds greater realism, especially to large chorus and to soprano voice and allows for higher playback levels.


https://www.linkwitzlab.com/models.htm#H

Or that the woofer is better behaved at the top of its passband and that maybe the tweeter is smoother-sounding.
 

tuga

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Let's try to level match 2 PIRs to get the idea how they would sound in a listening test.

View attachment 53173

That boomy bass and wide dip at 3kHz doesn't look too primising, right? And yet they have the same scoring..

What about that 2dB peak from 1.2 to 1.7kHz? Our ears are quite sensitive in that range too. It may sound like enhanced resolution with a Diana Krell recording but wait 'till you hear what it does to Heifetz's Guarneri del Gesù...
 

TimVG

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What about that 2dB peak from 1.2 to 1.7kHz? Our ears are quite sensitive in that range too. It may sound like enhanced resolution with a Diana Krell recording but wait 'till you hear what it does to Heifetz's Guarneri del Gesù...

Maybe that's why the designer talks (stresses) about playing them at 'normal' volumes and listening to 'midrange resolution'.
 

tuga

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Maybe that's why the designer talks (stresses) about playing them at 'normal' volumes and listening to 'midrange resolution'.

Are you referring to Revel?
Because the it's the Revel that is producing the "unpleasant" peak.

I have also read Shaw mention that Harbeths are balanced to be played at normal volumes. And UK sitting rooms are small, so that makes sense.

I would add that in my opinion such balance suits classical music recordings very nicely.
 

tuga

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I agree with @QMuse that the on-axis dip shouldn't be there, considering that the speaker is alreading relaxing it's output off-axis due to its topology.

But that dip has nearly disapeared in the ensuing iterations of the model:

5jc9D67.png
 

TimVG

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Are you referring to Revel?
Because the it's the Revel that is producing the "unpleasant" peak.

I have also read Shaw mention that Harbeths are balanced to be played at normal volumes. And UK sitting rooms are small, so that makes sense.

I would add that in my opinion such balance suits classical music recordings very nicely.

Before I got into the science side of things, I had a pair of PS3ESRs at one point, and considered the M30 as an upgrade - but in an A/B test with some other speakers they just fell short to me. Anyhow, the Revel peak - it could be audible, or not. There's always a simple PEQ filter to sort it out. Directivity and general slope is miles ahead of likely any Harbeth model, so I'd take the Revel nonetheless.
 

Absolute

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A little bit on the bass-heavy side, but still looking good! :)
I get alot of gain at some positions due to proximity to back wall, so there's a bigger seat to seat variation than I would like in the bass. I did adjust bass down by a couple of dB after this, but didn't remeasure. What I did, though, was sacrifice a little sweet spot graph sexyness for better MMM RTA graph. That hurt my pride a little.

Won't be playing music anytime soon... :p
 

thewas

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As seen several times in this thread, due to their smooth directivity the Kalis can be EQed to even higher perfection, so I experimented a bit with mine in the weekend.

EQing the listening window smoothes thus also the predicted in-room response nicely:


Kali Audio IN-8 ASR.png

(upper curves are LW and PIR without and the graphically offsetted by -10 dB curves are LW and PIR with my 10 PEQ).

(Please feel free to contact me if you need the filter coefficients)

Using this EQ created a very nice smooth and close to the Harman target moving microphone measured response around my listening position which needs no further EQ above 500 Hz, only below it

kali-audio-in-8-mmm-room-response-without-room-eq.png


which is easily performed

kali-audio-in-8-mmm-room-response-with-room-eq.png
 
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