At this point the discussion is more semantic/philosophical but the Klippel system removes the echoes, therefore the data is anechoic. Same as when you gate measurements, just those measurements are often spliced with nearfield data and are not high resolution in the low range, so they get called "quasi anechoic." But ultimately if the final data shows no evidence of the speaker ever being in a room, it is for all intents and purposes anechoic. Remember even anechoic chambers are not accurate at the lowest frequencies, where the klippel is.
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Kali Audio IN-8 Studio Monitor Review
- Thread starter amirm
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At this point the discussion is more semantic/philosophical but the Klippel system removes the echoes, therefore the data is anechoic. Same as when you gate measurements, just those measurements are often spliced with nearfield data and are not high resolution in the low range, so they get called "quasi anechoic." But ultimately if the final data shows no evidence of the speaker ever being in a room, it is for all intents and purposes anechoic. Remember even anechoic chambers are not accurate at the lowest frequencies, where the klippel is.
Like I said, not trying to throw rocks at you. When I see "anechoic measurement" I see that it was made in an anechoic chamber. I don't think this is. When I say simulation I'm not saying "fake" I'm saying, there are alterations made to produce a result that simulate an anechoic chamber's measurement. I'm not arguing that your system is innacurate (because clearly I have no idea!)
No I wouldn't have rated it higher or lower if people were in lab coats. But I would have rated it higher if we knew the materials used in the garage and if any room treatments were made to further reduce the impact. of any reflections I don't think saying "simulated anechoic measurements" is in any way a bad thing. Because unless I'm completely off base, that's what it is. Yes, it looks worse than saying we performed this in an anechoic chamber, but who cares? You are being accurate and what you are doing is producing important data. Over time as we compare measurements made in your garage vs an anechoic chamber and see that they match, I think the data will bear out how accurate the calculations are.
If you don't like the term "simualted", perhaps you can say something more suitable that doesn't apply it was taken in an anechoic chamber.
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I say we test things in the camper van , it's the only way to be sure.
I noted previously that there was a discrepancy between the calculated in-room response and the measurements taken for distortion measurements. Although not identical, all measurements shows some peculiar dips in the voice/lower midrange region.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #105
A chamber is a room. It is not a type of measurement. The type of measurement is anechoic. You can get anechoic by either absorbing reflections in a room, or use math and this robotic system. Both say the same thing: only the direct sound is represented, not its reflections.
A lot of other people generate "pseudo anechoic" measurements using in-room averaging and it is important to show that these measurements are very different.
As I explained, alterations are made to anechoic chamber measurements as well.
The goal is to have that doesn't include reflections, i.e. an-echoic data. And that is what we have. Where the measurements are performed is not of any significance as long as the goal is achieved.
How does it remove the echoes? Physically? If it's not physically it's some sort of simulation or extrapolation. If the final data included a photograph it would show all evidence of the speaker being inside a room that was not an anechoic chamber. If somebody put rabbits in a zero g plane on earth and ran experiments, I think it would be unfair to call it "deep space measurements". Though they would be very close to them.
Maybe I'm in over my head with this! Perhaps you are right. You clearly know a lot more about it. I find it tends to imply these measurements are equal to those done in an anechoic chamber. But I also have never made a speaker measurement in my life....
OP
- Thread Starter
- #108
That's a good point.
Amirm, did you get the distortion measurement with fundamental also for the NHT review?
OP
- Thread Starter
- #110
That's its purpose! Here is how much that option alone costs:
You think they charge 19,000 Euros but can't deliver on anechoic results?
Remember, the only true data is one where the speaker is infinitely away from any surface. That is anechoic. Both the anechoic room and Klippel systems are ways to get around having to test the speaker by itself without any boundaries.
JustIntonation
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I'm listening to the Kali LP-6 while writing this.
The Kali LP-6 very comfortably beats the JBL LSR 305P mkII in all areas. It is however quite warm sounding out of the box to my taste and listening without the use of dip switches is not recommended unless truly free standing in a very big room. I did use additional EQ to make it flatter >800Hz including EQ-ing out the dip at about 10kHz and peak above that (something which the LSR305P has even more).
Overall the Kali LP-6 is flatter in frequency response than the LSR305p, has less distortion, slightly less hiss from the tweeter, goes deeper, goes louder, has better room compensation controls (though EQ still recommended), has a crossover where the mid and tweet are actually in phase making a true Linkwitz-Riley 24dB/oct which is symetrical vertically, and has a better overall off-axis.
And on top of that, Kali publishes full polar measurements on their website done by a third party in an anechoic room.
Seriously, I've had speakers costing 10x as much sounding worse. It's an amazing speaker for the price. Don't judge it without setting it up properly, i can guarantee when set up properly it will sound amazing. Listening to the proof right now.
As for the Kali IN-8, thanks for doing the test! It doesn't surprise me however, Coaxial speakers are usually riddled with problems. The mid makes a bad waveguide usually and there are other problems as well. Best coaxial speaker I've ever heard was a Geithain, though they mount the tweeter in front of the mid. Genelec seems to have made a few nice ones recently though, but those have DSP put to work to make it flat (haven't heard them).
OP
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- #112
No. Can do at a future time when I have things calibrated better.
JustIntonation
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Great
This is going to be good.
JustIntonation
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So I am on Kali website and looking at LP-6 measurements, it has the same signature that I measured:
View attachment 45887
The drip around 8 to 10 kHz is what I measured. Their graph is very low resolution so doesn't show that in detail. Using CLF viewer, we see more detail:
View attachment 45889
Compare that to my measurements of IN-8:
The correlation is very good to their measurements. The only difference may be that the new mid-range driver is boosting that mid-range more.
All of this points to our measurements being accurate.
That dip and peak at 10kHz and above are due to the waveguide in the case of the Kali LP-6. It is seen in 3rd party measurements of the LSR305P / LSR305P mkII as well only slightly worse in the case of the JBL's compared to the LP-6 as the JBL's have a deeper waveguide. It is odd though that your measurements of the LSR305P mkII don't show the dip as much as others.
I don't think it's comparable to the IN-8 though as it has a very different and much worse "waveguide" in the form of that mid driver.
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I prefer listening to music on my radio clock than on some 2k€ speakers.
I have a good radio clock with a huge driver which has the midrange right (no bass, no treble though). Some expensive speakers have great bass, but the midrange is fucked.
@amirm
Just thought about this, are you doing your listening sessions before or after measurements? If it is the latter, you will eventually get flak from hardcore subjectivists saying the measurements are influencing your opinion.
To truly make sure your measurements are valid by comparing other measurements, the LS50 is probably the most measured speaker:
Just thought about this, are you doing your listening sessions before or after measurements? If it is the latter, you will eventually get flak from hardcore subjectivists saying the measurements are influencing your opinion.
To truly make sure your measurements are valid by comparing other measurements, the LS50 is probably the most measured speaker:
- SoundStage/NRC (anechoic down till ~100Hz)
- Princton/3D3A (anechoic down till 425Hz)
- Stereophile (quasi-anechoic down till ~300Hz?)
- KEF’s own measurements
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The measurements that you showed here are NOT in line with what we have for on-axis frequency response, spatial average, or sound power for the IN-8. We would not put a loudspeaker that measured like this on the market. We would like to understand what's going on with the speaker you have.
Your measurements and comments don't line up with what we've experienced with the IN-8, or the reactions we've gotten from others. If the speaker is defective, it is covered under our warranty, and all of our retailers are quite good about replacing product when there's an issue like this. In this case specifically, we would be interested in getting the speaker back to analyze it ourselves. We are more than happy to provide another IN-8, as well as an LP-6 and LP-8 if you'd like to test those as well.
If you reached out to us about this via our online form, email, or social media channels, please accept my apologies for not replying yet. I just spot checked our inboxes and didn't see anything from you.
These speakers have previously been reviewed on this forum, and the experience seems to have been entirely more positive. Full disclosure: we have not had any contact with the person who wrote that review.
As many commenters have pointed out, we do not have FR or CLF data published for the IN-8 yet. Our intention is to have all of our loudspeaker products tested by Pro Sound Testing in Indiana. To be frank, the IN-8 has sold about twice as well as we expected so far, and so we haven't been able to spare a pair to send to them for testing. Perhaps this was hubris on our part, and we apologize for the lack of transparency. It is not our intention to hide the performance of our loudspeakers. Quite the opposite: we prefer to provide 3rd party data for the sake of trustworthiness. To be clear, we will be having this testing done and will publish it on our website as soon as it is complete.
Here is a link to another analysis of the IN-8 where the reviewer did his own measurements: http://www.hifi-forum.de/index.php?action=browseT&forum_id=30&thread=13717&postID=33159#33159
His comments are in German, but you can see the overall frequency response of the speakers. Minus the bumps below 200 HZ, which I write off to the room, these measurements reflect what we would expect as far as the performance of the loudspeaker.
Here you can see one of our own comparisons between the IN-8 (Green) and the LP-8 (Red.) This is an apples-to-apples comparison of these loudspeakers measured in the same place in the same chamber. The reason we're sharing this is that there is a wealth of 3rd party data on the frequency response of the LP-Series (including what's published on our website, linked below,) so you can see the response of the IN-8 in that context. I've also included Stuart Yaniger's review and measurements of the LP-6 below so you can cross-check vs. what we've published.
View attachment 45888
In the measurements here, you can see some differences between the IN-8 and LP-8. The LP-8 is a bit messier at about 800 Hz. This is a box mode that comes out through the port tube. Because the mid-range handles these frequencies on the IN-8 it doesn't excite the box mode, so you don't see it on the IN-8's response. At 10k, the on axis response shows a diffraction from the baffle edge of the midrange for the IN-8. Looking at the spatial average response (ours is below, but this shows in your measurements as well) you can see that this artifact averages out when off-axis information is introduced.
View attachment 45893
You can see in these two measurements that the IN-8 and LP-8 are nearly identical below 300 Hz (330 is the xover of the IN-8 woofer) and very close up to 800 Hz. At 800, you see the same port resonance that I mentioned previously. Above that, the two speakers stay very close. Above 4K, octave-to-octave balance is maintained even though the shape of the baffle causes some artifacts in the response.
LP-Series Measurements:
LP-6 vs. LP-8 (Scroll Down
Stuart Yaniger's (@SIY on this forum) LP-6 Review: https://audioxpress.com/news/focus-on-acoustics-speakers-and-more-in-audioxpress-august-2019
please take this in the spirit of “no dumb questions, but is this last graphic intended as a measurement of the IN-8 frequency response (averaged direct and off-axis measurements)?
Your website lists frequency “range” +/-3dB as being 45Hz-21kHz.
Eyeballing the above graph it seems to be showing a variation closer to +/- 9dB over that same range?
Before they chime in, I’m foreseeing them saying it’s a listening window spec.
The on-axis null (to varying degrees) is very characteristic of the vast majority of coaxials save for proprietary ones from Genelec and KEF. As the listening window indicates, it fills in. The boosted midrange is egregious but the trend tends toward smooth. Only those two brands can be said to crack the direct radiating coaxial code without reservations.
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