This is a review, listening test and detailed measurements of the Meyer Sound Amie Studio (active) monitor speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $4,080 each (sold in pairs?).
The deep, horn like waveguide sets the speaker apart from its competitors. The large throat of the port and larger than normal enclosure (relative to its woofer) imparts similar feeling. Speaker is not that heavy despite having a large heatsink on the back:
As you see, or rather don't, there is only a balanced input and speakon type connector for power. There are no controls for gain, bass, treble, etc. I am fine and actually happy with the latter two but did wish to have a gain setting. Driving the speaker at 0 dbu on the first test, I nearly jumped out of my chair in how loud the speaker played!
Speaker is designed and built in Berkeley California. In other words, some of the highest labor costs possible.
Speaker was measured using Klippel Near-field Scanner. I could not find anything in the manual regarding acoustic reference so went for the tweeter. Measurement temperature was 67 degrees F.
Meyer Sound Amie Speaker Measurement
As usual, we start with our suite of anechoic frequency response measurements:
At macro level, response is flat and extends quite deep (F10 of 43 Hz). Focusing in, there are a lot of minor disturbances which we will diagnose shortly. The other big thing that stands out is the sudden drop in high frequency response as soon as the tweeter takes over around 1100 Hz. Company documentation states this is intention as to avoid console bounce and such.
Near-field response quickly shows that the front port is letting loose resonances that mix with on-axis response:
The woofer also has a couple of bumps but it has very controlled behavior above its pass band with resonances at very low levels.
The narrow tweeter response naturally impacts our early window reflections (assuming far field listening):
We see that all responses other than on-axis (represented as "Front Wall") are attenuated which is what they aimed. Once blended with on-axis response, the step is not as pronounced but is still there:
Again, this is for far field listening. Impact for near/mid-field listening would be less.
We already know the story on directivity but let's dig into directly:
Vertical directivity is specially tight:
Distortion is impressively low for such a small speaker:
While I didn't capture it, even at 103 dBSPL, the sweep sounded very clean with no sign of strain or distortion.
EDIT: I ran step sweeps from 96 dBSPL to 101 dB to see how far it can go:
As I have indicated, speaker starts to limit bass response around 97 dBSPL at 1 meter. What is strange is that it limits a specific frequency range. Response below 100 Hz is fine as is 500 Hz.
Waterfall graph is ruthless in the way it shows the port/woofer resonances:
Step function shows some kind of optimization in timing of the woofer and tweeter:
Meyer Sound Amie Listening Tests
Up to this point my impression was that "this is a good speaker but not great." That changed in an instant when I started to listen to it. That impressive and clean bass with practically unlimited dynamic response (in near-field listening) plastered a big smile on my face that remains up to this point! Sitting on axis, tonality is excellent as helped with bass response. Track after track not only sounded right, it also sounded beautiful.
On tracks with deep sub-bass, speaker simply didn't play that region making me thing there is a high-pass filter in there. This was the only miss.
Really, the sound was as perfect as I would wish it.
Note however that this is all with direct, on-axis response. Move to the left or right a few inches and highs drop right off. This also means that there are no spatial effects. With my eyes closed, the sound would come very focused form the speaker itself. Of course this is in mono. In stereo you would get a center image but I expect overall effect to be a smaller, more focused soundstage.
EDIT: I listened for noise. There is hiss from tweeter but it is somewhat "warm" in flavor and dies out at about 1 foot.
Conclusions
Active monitors have such a great advantage over passive speakers in the way they can be so optimized. Alas, many short change you when it comes to power, dynamics or deep bass. This is especially true in smaller monitors. I can fix frequency response errors in EQ but can't do anything about lack of power or too much distortion. It is clear that Meyer Sound put dynamics and clean power front and center. It gives up a small amount of precision but gives you all you want in dynamics which fits my priorities just fine. That said, I wish they would do a revision and put the port in the back.
I am going to put the Meyer Sound Amie monitor on my recommended list. It will be a model I will remember together with a small handful of other top performing studio monitors.
-----------
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 deep, horn like waveguide sets the speaker apart from its competitors. The large throat of the port and larger than normal enclosure (relative to its woofer) imparts similar feeling. Speaker is not that heavy despite having a large heatsink on the back:
As you see, or rather don't, there is only a balanced input and speakon type connector for power. There are no controls for gain, bass, treble, etc. I am fine and actually happy with the latter two but did wish to have a gain setting. Driving the speaker at 0 dbu on the first test, I nearly jumped out of my chair in how loud the speaker played!
Speaker is designed and built in Berkeley California. In other words, some of the highest labor costs possible.
Speaker was measured using Klippel Near-field Scanner. I could not find anything in the manual regarding acoustic reference so went for the tweeter. Measurement temperature was 67 degrees F.
Meyer Sound Amie Speaker Measurement
As usual, we start with our suite of anechoic frequency response measurements:
At macro level, response is flat and extends quite deep (F10 of 43 Hz). Focusing in, there are a lot of minor disturbances which we will diagnose shortly. The other big thing that stands out is the sudden drop in high frequency response as soon as the tweeter takes over around 1100 Hz. Company documentation states this is intention as to avoid console bounce and such.
Near-field response quickly shows that the front port is letting loose resonances that mix with on-axis response:
The woofer also has a couple of bumps but it has very controlled behavior above its pass band with resonances at very low levels.
The narrow tweeter response naturally impacts our early window reflections (assuming far field listening):
We see that all responses other than on-axis (represented as "Front Wall") are attenuated which is what they aimed. Once blended with on-axis response, the step is not as pronounced but is still there:
Again, this is for far field listening. Impact for near/mid-field listening would be less.
We already know the story on directivity but let's dig into directly:
Vertical directivity is specially tight:
Distortion is impressively low for such a small speaker:
While I didn't capture it, even at 103 dBSPL, the sweep sounded very clean with no sign of strain or distortion.
EDIT: I ran step sweeps from 96 dBSPL to 101 dB to see how far it can go:
As I have indicated, speaker starts to limit bass response around 97 dBSPL at 1 meter. What is strange is that it limits a specific frequency range. Response below 100 Hz is fine as is 500 Hz.
Waterfall graph is ruthless in the way it shows the port/woofer resonances:
Step function shows some kind of optimization in timing of the woofer and tweeter:
Meyer Sound Amie Listening Tests
Up to this point my impression was that "this is a good speaker but not great." That changed in an instant when I started to listen to it. That impressive and clean bass with practically unlimited dynamic response (in near-field listening) plastered a big smile on my face that remains up to this point! Sitting on axis, tonality is excellent as helped with bass response. Track after track not only sounded right, it also sounded beautiful.
On tracks with deep sub-bass, speaker simply didn't play that region making me thing there is a high-pass filter in there. This was the only miss.
Really, the sound was as perfect as I would wish it.
Note however that this is all with direct, on-axis response. Move to the left or right a few inches and highs drop right off. This also means that there are no spatial effects. With my eyes closed, the sound would come very focused form the speaker itself. Of course this is in mono. In stereo you would get a center image but I expect overall effect to be a smaller, more focused soundstage.
EDIT: I listened for noise. There is hiss from tweeter but it is somewhat "warm" in flavor and dies out at about 1 foot.
Conclusions
Active monitors have such a great advantage over passive speakers in the way they can be so optimized. Alas, many short change you when it comes to power, dynamics or deep bass. This is especially true in smaller monitors. I can fix frequency response errors in EQ but can't do anything about lack of power or too much distortion. It is clear that Meyer Sound put dynamics and clean power front and center. It gives up a small amount of precision but gives you all you want in dynamics which fits my priorities just fine. That said, I wish they would do a revision and put the port in the back.
I am going to put the Meyer Sound Amie monitor on my recommended list. It will be a model I will remember together with a small handful of other top performing studio monitors.
-----------
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/
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