Mesanovic RTM10 Monitor

[pierre]

With provided data by Deni? I wonder how w/sub score is. Can you show us them too?

Yes, I used the data provided by Déni in this thread. Without sub, score is 7.9 (Look here). The definition without a sub is arbitrary, I am not sure if I am using the same definition as others.

 

[Scholl]

When did distortion under 0.5% at 95dB/1m became "quite bad"? When did listening preference in double blind test depended on tweeter distortion over 3.5kHz being 0.4% instead 0.1% ?

Dmitry Malinovsky (Viawave) is great engineer - his ribbon has lower distortion but it is somewhat different principle since it has mylar foil suspension on his tweeters. That helps to lower the distortion.

I have no horse in this race, and my post is absolutely not an attack against Deni or his speaker as a all, far from it. But this is ASR, and, objectively speaking, 0.5% of 3rd HD between 4k and 8K at 95 dB SPL is quite bad for a tweeter, whatever its type, when common figures are 0.03% or lower. We also have to remember that 3rd HD is much more audible than 2nd HD. Does that mean that this driver is going to sound awful ? No. As I said in my post, I am well aware that HD is not all there is to sound quality, especially, as Deni pointed it out, at these high frequencies. However, even if HD at these high FR is not necessarily audible by itself, it may still increase IMD, which may be audible, at least colouring the signal (which we want to avoid in a monitoring speaker).

In the part of his post that I quoted, Deni specifically said that his design allowed to "significantly reduces harmonic distortion (especially 3rd harmonic)". When other tweeters, even ribbons, easily show 25dB lower H3 in the same conditions, I am forced to say that this specific claim doesn't make much sense. Or it does reduce 3rd HD, but as well it should because it would be really bad otherwise. But even the SRT-7 is not that impressive as far as HD is concerned. It is beaten by quite cheap dome tweeters. HD is not ribbons tweeters' strength in general.

I have not much to say negatively about the speaker otherwise. The subwoofer (Dayton Audio RSS265HF-4), is perfectly adequate in such a sealed design, and the midrange (SB15NBAC) is simply one of the very best midwoofer in the world, for a very reasonable price. Simply the best choice possible here. The support plate equipped with spring shock absorbers is also an excellent idea, seldom seen outside of custom high end studio installations. The only other minor issue I would see is the directivity mismatch at the crossover frequency between the midrange and the tweeter. Predictable in the absence of a waveguide. Unless reaching extremes, not that problematic in a studio environment in my mind, since sides reflections are absorbed (or should be anyway). Waveguide boost could have helped for power-handling and distortion at the crossover though.

 

[Scholl]

Thank you for the analysis. I can't comment on the Viawave since I've never used one or heard one. As far as other well known true ribbon tweeters are concerned, some of which have been tested on this forum, you'll see their distortion peaks in the 2-8% range. Even distortion levels this high in the 5-10k frequency range are inaudible even to the most trained ears in playback of music. I've listened to most of these ribbon tweeters extensively and will say that they all sound excellent. The most differentiating characteristic between them that I can hear (and that avid true ribbon users can attest to) is their thickness. 4 micron vs 8 micron vs 15 micron sound very different. As for the SB26ADC, it is a great tweeter with exceptionally low distortion (used in Harman products). I've used this tweeter before and it performs very well, but it displays very different tonal characteristics than true ribbons. I guess it's a matter of taste, some prefer domes over ribbons. I find true ribbons to have unrivaled detail and transient response. This can be party attributed to their mass. Our ribbon weighing in at 0.01 grams vs a SB Acoustics Beryllium dome weight of 0.46 grams. I could have easily just used the SB26ADC in the RTM10 which would have saved greatly on material and labor cost, but in the end after hundreds of hours of auditioning that tweeter and dozens of others in critical listening and blind listening tests with several engineers the decision was clear to go with the ribbon.

I see that you've also posted on the RTM10 thread over at Gearslutz. If you're interesting in a demo please feel free to shoot me an email and I'd be happy to set it up for you. We have a listening room at our shop in metro Detroit. There are several dealers in the US and international ones that would be happy to do so as well.

Thank you too for such a well mannered answer to my post. Besides your detailed measurements, something that should definitely be seen more often in the audio world. As I said in my previous post, my criticism is certainly not an attack against you or your speaker as a all. And yes indeed, I also posted in the thread at Gearslutz. Your speaker certainly sparkled my interest more than yet another two-way ported, 6" woofer +1" dome tweeter, monitor

I would gladly give a listen to your speaker, but I live in France and we are in the middle of a confinement right now because of the pandemic. So coming to your listening room in the US may prove to be a bit difficult... Furthermore, even though I would listen to your speaker out of curiosity, my current speakers are flush mounted, and your speakers could not work in such a configuration because of the side subwoofer of course.

 

[deni]

Thank you too for such a well mannered answer to my post. Besides your detailed measurements, something that should definitely be seen more often in the audio world. As I said in my previous post, my criticism is certainly not an attack against you or your speaker as a all. And yes indeed, I also posted in the thread at Gearslutz. Your speaker certainly sparkled my interest more than yet another two-way ported, 6" woofer +1" dome tweeter, monitor

I would gladly give a listen to your speaker, but I live in France and we are in the middle of a confinement right now because of the pandemic. So coming to your listening room in the US may prove to be a bit difficult... Furthermore, even though I would listen to your speaker out of curiosity, my current speakers are flush mounted, and your speakers could not work in such a configuration because of the side subwoofer of course.

No offense taken I try to be as transparent as possible about our products and provide as much insight into the design and performance as I can. Many manufacturers in pro audio seldom go into technical details and design philosophy and I think we'd all be better for it if they did. I've posted a fair amount of information regarding our ribbon mic design on other forums for those interested and I do this because of the myths that ribbon mics are inherently "dark". They've always been characterized as dark because for some odd reason engineers designing them in the past never took the time to solve that problem. Our ribbon mics employ specifically designed resonator plates that extend the frequency response out to 20kHz. This is unheard of in ribbon mics and I've spent a fair amount of time trying to educate engineers out there how we accomplish this and by doing so I hope it pushes others to further stretch the limits of a transducer technology that hasn't seen any real development in decades. Another brilliant engineer who employs similar technology is Mark Fouxman of Samar Audio whose ribbon mics are excellent. I don't mean to get off topic by talking about ribbon mics, but they are what eventually lead me to design the RTM10! Here's an anechoic unsmoothed response of our Model 2 for those curious.

Regarding my statement on 3rd harmonic distortion, I guess I should have been more clear. My goal was to decrease H3 specifically at the crossover point and lower because in almost all true ribbons, the 3rd harmonic overtakes 2nd drastically below 5kHz (with the exception of the Viawave). My goal was to make sure that H3 did not over take 2nd so that there was not a distortion peak at the crossover point. Below I've attached distortion charts of an Aurum Cantus and Fountek true ribbon that displays what I'm referring to. Important to note also that these ribbons are 15 microns thick vs our 4 micron! These are taken from http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/Tweeters_dist-test.htm

"Red = SPL/2.8V/0.25 m (for most tweeters this will produce 89-92 dB SPL at 1 meter. Actual level is important here).
Blue = 2nd
Green = 3rd
yellow = 4th
purple = 5th
Distortion lines raised 15 dB.
All tweeters having 33 uF in series, the ribbons must have, thus all others had the same regardless of impedance.
All tweeters were flush-mounted.
All graphs having 1/12 octave smoothing."

I hope this clarifies my statement. As someone who is deeply passionate about transducer design and specifically ribbon mics and tweeters I'm always researching/designing/evaluating and trying to further push the performance of our products. There will certainly be more monitors in our line up in various price ranges with performance and transparancy leading the way.

I hope you get a chance to hear the RTM10 once this pandemic passes and France opens back up. Even though you have a flush mounted set up now I would still love to hear your thoughts. Our dealer Floating Point Audio in France should have a demo pair fairly soon. They are great folks and I'm sure they'd be more than happy to let you demo them!

 

[Scholl]

Thanks for the clarifications and the graphs ! If I have the opportunity I would surely appreciate to listen to the RTM10 and your microphones.

 

[richard12511]

I agree, it's certainly not bad. Still, expensive ribbons are supposedly all about low distorsion; if I use the 8341A's small and probably cheap 3/4" Al dome, it gets a maximum of 0.2% H3 at 93 dB/1 m while crossing 500 Hz lower. If we say it's all about dispersion width, the 8341A is actually as wide if not wider as well (in addition to being smoother).

I rest my case, ribbons are a marketing gimmick unless they're used to reduce price. Which would explain why the manufacturers who have maximum performance as their selling point don't use them (Neumann, JBL, Dynaudio) or stopped using them (Genelec).
Please don't take it as something against this specific brand or monitor, as it's really not what this is about.

The manufacturer quite literally said that the ribbon was chosen for performance reasons only(blind and sighted listening tests), so how is that any different than the manufacturers who chose domes based on performance(Neumann, Genelec, etc.)? It seems unfair to label this design choice as a marketing gimmick when the choice was made entirely based on performance. Also, in this case at least, the ribbon is more expensive to produce, so it's also not about reducing price.

 

[617]

Thank you for the analysis. I can't comment on the Viawave since I've never used one or heard one. As far as other well known true ribbon tweeters are concerned, some of which have been tested on this forum, you'll see their distortion peaks in the 2-8% range. Even distortion levels this high in the 5-10k frequency range are inaudible even to the most trained ears in playback of music. I've listened to most of these ribbon tweeters extensively and will say that they all sound excellent. The most differentiating characteristic between them that I can hear (and that avid true ribbon users can attest to) is their thickness. 4 micron vs 8 micron vs 15 micron sound very different. As for the SB26ADC, it is a great tweeter with exceptionally low distortion (used in Harman products). I've used this tweeter before and it performs very well, but it displays very different tonal characteristics than true ribbons. I guess it's a matter of taste, some prefer domes over ribbons. I find true ribbons to have unrivaled detail and transient response. This can be party attributed to their mass. Our ribbon weighing in at 0.01 grams vs a SB Acoustics Beryllium dome weight of 0.46 grams. I could have easily just used the SB26ADC in the RTM10 which would have saved greatly on material and labor cost, but in the end after hundreds of hours of auditioning that tweeter and dozens of others in critical listening and blind listening tests with several engineers the decision was clear to go with the ribbon.

I see that you've also posted on the RTM10 thread over at Gearslutz. If you're interesting in a demo please feel free to shoot me an email and I'd be happy to set it up for you. We have a listening room at our shop in metro Detroit. There are several dealers in the US and international ones that would be happy to do so as well.

Deni, congrats on this product. Creating a speaker this compact with these drivers and this performance is not easy. It's really great to see a Michigan produced speaker with this kind of engineering.

Regarding the tweeter, I think that domes and ribbons are both viable (as are compression drivers). I don't think the mass of the diaphragm is what makes the difference in sound so much as the different top octave directivity and how the room eats it up.

I would love to see this product reviewed at ASR, and I'd be curious more about your design process. Did you have experience designing loudspeakers profesionally before this product? How and where did you measure and prototype it? What simulation software did you use?

Also regarding HF transducers, I just saw today that SB is releasing a small Be dome mounted in a good sized aluminum waveguide, might be an interesting unit to look at.

 

[Maiky76]

Thanks for taking the time to do this! It's nice to get an idea of what the preference score is. Always wondered what it would be! I've attached our Spin data if anyone is interested in checking it out.



This viawave ribbons look like fantastic designs and I'm sure they perform exceptionally well. Hope I get a chance to hear them one day!

Hi,

Thanks for providing the data. This great follow up and transparency!

Here are the revised scores:

No EQ: 7.67 was 7.77
No EQ with Sub: 8.62 was 8.73

LW EQ: 7.73 was 7.79
LW EQ with Sub: 8.68 was 8.80

Score EQ: 7.79 was 7.91
Score EQ with Sub: 8.74 was 8.86

I re-ran the optimizer with the new data but the results are so close that there is no point showing them.
It therefore seems that the scanned data are really close to the actual raw data provided that there is no additional smoothing...

 

[deni]

Deni, congrats on this product. Creating a speaker this compact with these drivers and this performance is not easy. It's really great to see a Michigan produced speaker with this kind of engineering.

Regarding the tweeter, I think that domes and ribbons are both viable (as are compression drivers). I don't think the mass of the diaphragm is what makes the difference in sound so much as the different top octave directivity and how the room eats it up.

I would love to see this product reviewed at ASR, and I'd be curious more about your design process. Did you have experience designing loudspeakers profesionally before this product? How and where did you measure and prototype it? What simulation software did you use?

Also regarding HF transducers, I just saw today that SB is releasing a small Be dome mounted in a good sized aluminum waveguide, might be an interesting unit to look at.

Thanks! One of the main goals was to pack as much performance into a nearfield sized monitor that we could!

I attended the University of Michigan where I studied Sound Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Right after graduation I start Mesanovic Microphones (my senior thesis was a ribbon mic). I've never worked for another loudspeaker manufacturer, but have been designing and building them for a few years now. We have a fully anechoic chamber at our shop which is used for R&D and all quality control testing for both the mics and monitors. No fancy simulation software but all the widely used measuring software at our disposal along with a variety of CAD/CAM software used for designing and programming our CNC machines.

The new waveguide SB tweeters look very nice. I haven't tried them out yet, but they sure do look tempting!

 

[hardisj]

Not sure how I missed this.

Back in July I came across this speaker on another forum where they had mentioned needing 3rd party data, so I sent them an email and I asked if they would be willing to send a demo unit to me for review/test. This was the reply I received:

We have a fully anechoic chamber we use for product development and quality control. Right now we are completing the first demo units for dealers and plan on having measurements published in the next few weeks. Soon after we'll be shipping stock to our dealers. We only have a limited number of demo units for review and we already have reviews lined up with Mix Mag, Recording Mag, TapeOp, Sound on Sound, and Resolution. Once we get those demos back I'd be happy to send you a pair to check out.

We plan on using Warkwyn for our NFS test.

I thanked them for the reply and intended to follow up but as you guys know, I stay busy with lots of other testing and reviews so I had completely forgotten about this product until I saw this thread.

Deni, I'm not sure if your offer still stands but if it does, I am still interested. If not, that's fine. Feel free to reach out to me if you are interested, though.

Thanks,
Erin

 

[Jason K]

Anyone get this speaker yet?

 

[Purité Audio]

Hopefully this week!
Keith

 

[Jason K]

Hopefully this week!
Keith

Wow! I can’t wait for your review. By the way, your products ranges are so awesome. When I go to UK, I’ll stop by your shop.

 

[Purité Audio]

please do I will make you a nice cup of tea, ( if it isn’t rationed post brexit).
Keith

 

[Jason K]

please do I will make you a nice cup of tea, ( if it isn’t rationed post brexit).
Keith

I hope so!
I saw Gradient 1.4 at your page, how about that speaker? I was impressed by Jorma Salmi’s speaker designs.

 

[Purité Audio]

Gradient, were doing, co-axial, cardioid, directional di-pole bass long before the current crop of SHIR types, the 1.4s and the ‘Revolutions’ ( see classifieds) are excellent, transparent loudspeakers.
But if you can save up I would still recommend a pair of 8Cs,
Keith

 

[Jason K]

Gradient, were doing, co-axial, cardioid, directional di-pole bass long before the current crop of SHIR types, the 1.4s and the ‘Revolutions’ ( see classifieds) are excellent, transparent loudspeakers.
But if you can save up I would still recommend a pair of 8Cs,
Keith

Oh, you mean that more recommend Revolution than 1.4? And also Dutch 8C for active speaker?
I listened the G 1.4. It was nicer than expect.

 

[Purité Audio]

To be honest I haven’t heard both together in the same room, I ‘think’ the 1.4 is more transparent, but the active Revolutions have greater bass extension and their dipole bass makes them more versatile.
If price is no object I would always plump for, Kii/8C/GGNTKT M2 if is as good as the M1 rather than any traditional passive loudspeaker.
Keith

 

[Koeitje]

View attachment 88895SB Acoustics SB15NBAC30-4
View attachment 88896

It seems that using this driver for midrange.
At the response of the driver 3.5kHz is right before directivity starts to be narrow.

Is this the same driver as in the Revel Performa3 M105? Looks the same (and looks like the one in my M106, but smaller).

 

[Jason K]

To be honest I haven’t heard both together in the same room, I ‘think’ the 1.4 is more transparent, but the active Revolutions have greater bass extension and their dipole bass makes them more versatile.
If price is no object I would always plump for, Kii/8C/GGNTKT M2 if is as good as the M1 rather than any traditional passive loudspeaker.
Keith

Thanks for your kind mention.
Recently there are many great DSP active speakers.