M-Audio BX3 Monitor Review

[PeteL]

Doesn't look like it slipped through quality control. Or it missed, on the assembly line, the programming of the DSP inside, e/g no filter for the bass/mid driver?I

Me I think that there is no DSP, just a very basic passive tone control before the amp. I don't think the Mid bass driver is crossed over neither, just protection for the tweeter. That's post amplification because the second speaker is passive.
All these things cost money you know.

 

[DSJR]

Doesn't look like it slipped through quality control. Or it missed, on the assembly line, the programming of the DSP inside, e/g no filter for the bass/mid driver?

In UK speak, this is a *powered passive* speaker (2 x 25W if you look at the specs) and the slave speaker is driven by a 3.5mm TS connector by the looks of it, the full range amps driving the main and slave speakers in a traditional 'passive speaker' fashion, despite the stereo amp pack being in the back of one box only!

BX3 | M-Audio

3.5" Black Kevlar 120-Watt Multimedia Reference Monitors. Perfectly designed to fit in compact spaces for music listening, video production, live streaming and video gaming

m-audio.com

*Active* as I was brought up to understand the term, is a proper active powered electronic crossover BEFORE the amps, which then look directly at the speaker drivers, said amps only being given the bandwidth needed by the drovers and no more.

Nowhere for DSP to go as the amps just power a seemingly very simple 'passive crossover (I'd guess a cap for the tweeter), hence the massive issues in th elower kHz region where the drivers overlap too much?

 

[notsodeadlizard]

These are quite normal "computer speakers".
Put them on both sides of the monitor on your desk and you can play games and even listen to voices in some kind of work chat.
It is completely incomprehensible why they are tested, M-Audio does not position them as hi-fi (already everyone has forgotten what this means, even those who understood this).

 

[ROOSKIE]

Me I think that there is no DSP, just a very basic passive tone control before the amp. I don't think the Mid bass driver is crossed over neither, just protection for the tweeter. That's post amplification because the second speaker is passive.
All these things cost money you know.

The 2nd speaker can be 'passive' and the whole speaker still can be active. Many system use a master/slave combo. The slave speaker just needs a connection that can carry the approriate number of channels.

In UK speak, this is a *powered passive* speaker (2 x 25W if you look at the specs) and the slave speaker is driven by a 3.5mm TS connector by the looks of it, the full range amps driving the main and slave speakers in a traditional 'passive speaker' fashion, despite the stereo amp pack being in the back of one box only!

BX3 | M-Audio

3.5" Black Kevlar 120-Watt Multimedia Reference Monitors. Perfectly designed to fit in compact spaces for music listening, video production, live streaming and video gaming

m-audio.com

*Active* as I was brought up to understand the term, is a proper active powered electronic crossover BEFORE the amps, which then look directly at the speaker drivers, said amps only being given the bandwidth needed by the drovers and no more.

Nowhere for DSP to go as the amps just power a seemingly very simple 'passive crossover (I'd guess a cap for the tweeter), hence the massive issues in th elower kHz region where the drivers overlap too much?

Yes, absolutely same in the USA, this is a 'Powered' speaker and not an 'Active' speaker.
Active, refers to the type of crossover - electronic(active, meaning that it requires active electrical power) or passive components(meaning does not require it's own electrical power).

This speaker which as you have pointed out is a 2-way with just 2 amp channels for 2 complete speakers and is therefore obviously a 'powered' speaker, one using passive x-over. An active 2-way pair would of course require 4 channels.

The only way 2channel amplification could work with an active pair of speakers was if the drivers were full range drivers.

 

[ROOSKIE]

These are quite normal "computer speakers".
Put them on both sides of the monitor on your desk and you can play games and even listen to voices in some kind of work chat.
It is completely incomprehensible why they are tested, M-Audio does not position them as hi-fi (already everyone has forgotten what this means, even those who understood this).

I agree these are fine for basic computer speakers and likely better than many options under $100.

That said, M-Audio positions them for content creation and since they are very inaccurate knowing that is helpful.

+it is always fun to look for a stand out. If these had happened to have measured very well then would you be complaining about them being tested???

 

[dogmamann]

This is a review, detailed measurements and listening tests of the M-Audio BX3 powered monitor speaker. I purchased it from Amazon by request from membership. It costs US $107.
View attachment 269195
The speaker looks like many professional monitors we review. However, when you hold it in your hands, it is extremely light and pretty small. So light that its stiff power cord drags it left and right by its sheer weight! The little 3.5 midwoofer though seems to be of high quality with high excursion for its size. Back side shows pretty rich feature set:

View attachment 269196
A single cable carries the output to the slave speaker.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

Reference axis for measurements was the tweeter axis. Room temperature was rather cold at around 60 degrees F.

M-Audio BX3 Measurements
Let's start with our suite of frequency response measurements:
View attachment 269197

Wow, that is one uneven frequency response! I don't know what they had in mind with this. The trough at 10 kHz is quite curious. I guessed at the dual drivers being active and causing cancellation and 3-D soundfield radiation seems to show that:
View attachment 269198

Here is our near-field response of each radiating source:
View attachment 269199

We can see that the mid-woofer is going strong to 10 kHz and beyond.

Directivity is good resulting in early reflections to be similar to on-axis:

View attachment 269200

Speaking of directivity, response is indeed good in horizontal direction:
View attachment 269201

View attachment 269202

No doubt this is due to small midwoofer not being much larger than the tweeter. Vertical response is quite narrow as the two drivers work hand in hand to beamform:
View attachment 269203

So be sure to point the tweeter at you (elevate or tilt the speaker back).

Now we get to another problem area: distortion. Even with hearing protection I could tell the speaker was complaining, creating secondary tones during even 86 dBSPL sweeps:

View attachment 269205

View attachment 269206

I usually go to 96 dBSPL but no way could the BX3 handle that. So I settled for 90 dBSPL. As you see, the results are not pretty there.

I forgot to run the waterfall test but here is the step response:
View attachment 269207

M-Audio BX3 Listening Tests
I started to listen to the BX3 and attempt to develop filters to it. But no matter what I did, I kept hearing some artifacts. I traced this to the port. Boy, what comes out of that hole is ugly! In all but the faintest volumes, it would both chuff and spit out highly distorted version of the front wavefront which by the way, sounded decent! I stuffed the port but then that high reduced the low frequency response. I put in high pass filters of different shapes but none would reduce the distortion enough. And this was with the port some 1 meter/3+ feet away from the back wall. If you put it any closer to the wall, it would get even worse I am sure. So I gave up.

Conclusions
I don't know how companies manage to sell a pair of active speakers for just $106. But sometimes cheap is too cheap. The distortion here and uneven response is just too much to handle causing the speaker to fall below my minimum standard for good sound. But maybe I am too picky. The BX-3 has over 1000 reviews on Amazon with 4.5 star average score! So if you fall in that same bucket, and want something that is better than your laptop speakers, this will do. For me, it won't and I want to encourage to spend more and get something better.

I can't recommend the M-Audio BX3.

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

The woofer response signals, it is run directly from the amps signal without any inductor in series or cap in parallel to roll the response off. Instead the design relies on natural roll off of the woofer.. There would be just a 3.3uF or 4.7uf cap in Series with the tweeter. None will be having any extra bracing to contain the vibration on the side panels. Some won’t even have enough damping materials. But it’s how it is at this price point. They cannot run the company if they give more.

But some of them really has potential to mod, provided the cabinet is stiff enough.


For me the biggest caveat of all is the left and right speakers won’t sound the same since one of them is jam packed with electronics and the other cabin is relatively empty. It should be measurable.

 

[Steve Dallas]

These are quite normal "computer speakers".
Put them on both sides of the monitor on your desk and you can play games and even listen to voices in some kind of work chat.
It is completely incomprehensible why they are tested, M-Audio does not position them as hi-fi (already everyone has forgotten what this means, even those who understood this).

Except that the web page for these speakers calls them "Reference Monitors" and has images of video and music production. Indeed, they come with a license for M-Audio's music production software.

 

[PeteL]

The 2nd speaker can be 'passive' and the whole speaker still can be active. Many system use a master/slave combo. The slave speaker just needs a connection that can carry the approriate number of channels.

You are probably answering to someone else. I didn't say anything about this being an active speaker system, but more generally in electronic, something active is something that rely on a power source to operate. One of those 2 boxes the one with the amps is "active" for what that's worth. There's an amp in it which is an active device.

 

[PeteL]

Except that the web page for these speakers calls them "Reference Monitors" and has images of video and music production. Indeed, they come with a license for M-Audio's music production software.

You could be surprised to know on what equipment some struggling artists first demos was produced on. Yes M-Audio targets the musician, content creators, that's their market, among many other use cases, but more importantly, in this particular case, they target people that are not willing to spend money for speakers, regardless of the verbiage. They are legion. To be honest, as a general remark, not willing to target you specifically, I find this a little moot all this outrage in this community every time a couple marketing sentence suggest a quality product... Like if that would make them crooks and thieves and snake oil salesman. We need to chill a bit. What do you expect them to say. "these speakers suck, only buy them if you are very poor"? I mean, the pricing does speak for itself don't it? Everybody does marketing, if we get offended each time products are not the SOTA of Hifi we'd be angry all the time. For some, it's what they work on, it's their reference at this time in their life, maybe... There is also a multitude of use where you are a "creator" and you need a monitor, but you don't need fidelity. M-Audio acknowledge it:
"Are you unhappy with the sound quality of your built-in computer speakers? Looking to get a better listening experience for your favorite music, podcasts, live streams, video games, video calls and conferences?"
I mean, there is not much misleading there... Let's move on. It's better than the average computer speaker. It cost a meal for 2 at a half decent restaurant, before wine...

 

[wwenze]

How is the woofer even loud enough at 10kHz to achieve significant cancellation, especially when the nearfield measurement shows it isn't loud enough? Sound physics is weird.

 

[ROOSKIE]

You are probably answering to someone else. I didn't say anything about this being an active speaker system, but more generally in electronic, something active is something that rely on a power source to operate. One of those 2 boxes the one with the amps is "active" for what that's worth. There's an amp in it which is an active device.

No need to take it appart, on the photo there's a jack labeled "Output to passive speaker"

Howdy, indeed I am replying to you.
I know you did not claim this speaker was active.

Usually(always as far as I know??) when talking about active speakers, active refers to the crossover and crossover alone, not other elements of the speaker. It is shorthand for that quality alone----->it is describing that the crossover itself needs it own electricity to operate. You can have amplifiers in a speaker and it is not an 'active speaker', you can even have discrete amps for each drive unit and it still is not an active speaker if the crossover is one of passive components.

So an active crossover uses electricity to power the crossover. Again that is what makes it an 'active designated speaker' and there are several forms of active crossovers.
If a speaker has a 'slave' speaker that is connected to it that slave speaker still may be part of an active speaker system.

I was just pointed out that although this particular speaker is a powered speaker and not an active speaker, that fact that it uses a 'slave speaker' style of connection for the 2nd speaker does not preclude it being a fully active sytem. You had mention that aspect as proof of the non-active nature but you can not look to that quality alone to determine if the system is active, some active speakers systems use a slave speaker and then have all of the electronics in 1 of the 2 speakers and are fully active with an electronic crossover and discrete amplifiers for each drive unit of both speakers contained in the one speaker.

 

[PeteL]

How is the woofer even loud enough at 10kHz to achieve significant cancellation, especially when the nearfield measurement shows it isn't loud enough? Sound physics is weird.

Indeed, but me further than that It is still a head scratcher to me how that Klippel thing can produce a woofer response without disconnecting the tweeter... I admit my ignorance and may need a Klippel 101 class somehow and it's probably a phase and delay calculation... But still, head scratching about the accuracy of that....

 

[anphex]

Maybe it would be fun to make a junk "studio monitor" listening test including these, Eris 3.5 and JBL 104, and iLoud Micro/Genelec 8010 as "plastic/tin can premium edition"
Results may be a bit surprising IMO

Smallest Glenelecs be like:
- knock knock!
- who's there?
- ehm that's "bass"

Though to be fair: DSP speakers will probably always have better bass extension.

 

[wwenze]

The US$99±50% is the awkward pricerange where companies are trying to create something that works but fail because they don't have enough budget. US$200/pair is when they finally have enough money to buy all the parts to create a good speaker, and thereafter improvement per $ slows drastically.

So this speaker (and the R1280T too since it got mentioned) doesn't have the budget for active crossover or a proper passive one. We should feel lucky we even get a tweeter, since there are other US$99±50% speakers that don't.

For users coming from <$50 speakers (or $200 speakers that sound like one) such a speaker can still be the best thing they have ever heard. But personally I would say go straight to US$200.

 

[PeteL]

Howdy, indeed I am replying to you.
I know you did not claim this speaker was active.

Usually(always as far as I know??) when talking about active speakers, active refers to the crossover and crossover alone, not other elements of the speaker. It is shorthand for that quality alone----->it is describing that the crossover itself needs it own electricity to operate. You can have amplifiers in a speaker and it is not an 'active speaker', you can even have discrete amps for each drive unit and it still is not an active speaker if the crossover is one of passive components.

So an active crossover uses electricity to power the crossover. Again that is what makes it an 'active designated speaker' and there are several forms of active crossovers.
If a speaker has a 'slave' speaker that is connected to it that slave speaker still may be part of an active speaker system.

I was just pointed out that although this particular speaker is a powered speaker and not an active speaker, that fact that it uses a 'slave speaker' style of connection for the 2nd speaker does not preclude it being a fully active sytem. You had mention that aspect as proof of the non-active nature but you can not look to that quality alone to determine if the system is active, some active speakers systems use a slave speaker and then have all of the electronics in 1 of the 2 speakers and are fully active with an electronic crossover and discrete amplifiers for each drive unit of both speakers contained in the one speaker.

OK, does it really matter? Yes typically active speakers use an amp per driver and use electronic crossover at the front end. That's passive XOver vs Active XOver. I understand that. Now that "Active speaker" would be short for "Speaker using active XOvers, maybe, most of the time. Well in this case it obviously don't. Do you have examples of a pair of 2 way speakers that would have all 4 channels amplifications in one speakers along with the crossovers and feeding channel of speaker currents over the next box which would have only 2 drivers in it? Or is it just words? Really, what's the benefit of that?
Yes I would call this a powered speaker too, that's the word I used in previous post. Bottom line, one speaker contain an amp, an active device. What labeling would you have used for "Output to passive speaker"? Output to unpowered speaker? I feel like this is making a fuss about nothing really.

 

[ROOSKIE]

For me the biggest caveat of all is the left and right speakers won’t sound the same since one of them is jam packed with electronics and the other cabin is relatively empty. It should be measurable.

Volume is always tricky to visualize.
The electronics often take up only minimal airpsace. It might look cramped to the eye but internal volume is not changed much.

It is will also only affect the bass frequencies which are usually expereinced as a sum between the two speakers.

The electronics might only take up .005-.1 cuft depending on the size of the amps and stuff. However the are usually relatively constant. Bigger amps with more displacement in larger speaker with more internal volume to give.

I bet the amp in this pair is tiny.

This M-Audio is a really small speaker but for example if I model a 5" woofer in a .37cuft enclosure and then in a .33
I might lose 1db of bass @55hrz ---->who cares?? (Plus with DSP if the sytem has it, I can basically add it back.)
Nobody is going to notice ever that one speaker has slightly less bass.

 

[JMC]

This is a review, detailed measurements and listening tests of the M-Audio BX3 powered monitor speaker. I purchased it from Amazon by request from membership. It costs US $107.
View attachment 269195
The speaker looks like many professional monitors we review. However, when you hold it in your hands, it is extremely light and pretty small. So light that its stiff power cord drags it left and right by its sheer weight! The little 3.5 midwoofer though seems to be of high quality with high excursion for its size. Back side shows pretty rich feature set:

View attachment 269196
A single cable carries the output to the slave speaker.

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

Reference axis for measurements was the tweeter axis. Room temperature was rather cold at around 60 degrees F.

M-Audio BX3 Measurements
Let's start with our suite of frequency response measurements:
View attachment 269197

Wow, that is one uneven frequency response! I don't know what they had in mind with this. The trough at 10 kHz is quite curious. I guessed at the dual drivers being active and causing cancellation and 3-D soundfield radiation seems to show that:
View attachment 269198

Here is our near-field response of each radiating source:
View attachment 269199

We can see that the mid-woofer is going strong to 10 kHz and beyond.

Directivity is good resulting in early reflections to be similar to on-axis:

View attachment 269200

Speaking of directivity, response is indeed good in horizontal direction:
View attachment 269201

View attachment 269202

No doubt this is due to small midwoofer not being much larger than the tweeter. Vertical response is quite narrow as the two drivers work hand in hand to beamform:
View attachment 269203

So be sure to point the tweeter at you (elevate or tilt the speaker back).

Now we get to another problem area: distortion. Even with hearing protection I could tell the speaker was complaining, creating secondary tones during even 86 dBSPL sweeps:

View attachment 269205

View attachment 269206

I usually go to 96 dBSPL but no way could the BX3 handle that. So I settled for 90 dBSPL. As you see, the results are not pretty there.

I forgot to run the waterfall test but here is the step response:
View attachment 269207

M-Audio BX3 Listening Tests
I started to listen to the BX3 and attempt to develop filters to it. But no matter what I did, I kept hearing some artifacts. I traced this to the port. Boy, what comes out of that hole is ugly! In all but the faintest volumes, it would both chuff and spit out highly distorted version of the front wavefront which by the way, sounded decent! I stuffed the port but then that high reduced the low frequency response. I put in high pass filters of different shapes but none would reduce the distortion enough. And this was with the port some 1 meter/3+ feet away from the back wall. If you put it any closer to the wall, it would get even worse I am sure. So I gave up.

Conclusions
I don't know how companies manage to sell a pair of active speakers for just $106. But sometimes cheap is too cheap. The distortion here and uneven response is just too much to handle causing the speaker to fall below my minimum standard for good sound. But maybe I am too picky. The BX-3 has over 1000 reviews on Amazon with 4.5 star average score! So if you fall in that same bucket, and want something that is better than your laptop speakers, this will do. For me, it won't and I want to encourage to spend more and get something better.

I can't recommend the M-Audio BX3.

-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

 

[amirm]

Indeed, but me further than that It is still a head scratcher to me how that Klippel thing can produce a woofer response without disconnecting the tweeter... I admit my ignorance and may need a Klippel 101 class somehow and it's probably a phase and delay calculation... But still, head scratching about the accuracy of that....

I put the mic very close to the driver. This for the most part excludes the response from the other/tweeter in this case.

 

[JMC]

I am actually rather surprised and disappointed as the only time I have heard an M-Audio product (I think it was the slightly larger BX5 monitor), it actually sounded very decent.

 

[PeteL]

I put the mic very close to the driver. This for the most part excludes the response from the other/tweeter in this case.

Thanks. May you share the polar pattern of this mic? And how close? Genuine curiosity.