Meyer Sound Amie Monitor Review

[OCA]

(listening in anechoic chamber) in-head localization can occur

Isn't that enough proof that it's formed mainly by reflections? Have you ever tried playing with speaker toe-in and tested the changes in the phantom image width? All you are changing is the horizontal reflection angle to the side walls.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Isn't that enough proof that it's formed mainly by reflections? Have you ever tried playing with speaker toe-in and tested the changes in the phantom image width? All you are changing is the horizontal reflection angle to the side walls.

Just the opposite. As @dominikz said ...

In my experience center phantom image exists even if side reflections are largely absorbed, because it is mainly created by the direct sound from both loudspeakers ...

This is also my experience. Headphones with a HRTF (head-related transfer function) circuit can do the same thing, as can binaural recordings played back through headphones. I have noticed, OTOH, that binaural recordings played back through speakers loses much, if not all, of the spatiality they contain. When I inquired, I was told that the room's reflections destroyed (smothered) the information that created the 3-D effects.

Jim

 

[dominikz]

Isn't that enough proof that it's formed mainly by reflections?

Not really, just that reflections influence phantom image "externalization" - but note that I haven't said which reflections.
Center phantom image exists even in the extreme case of headphone listening - just that we perceive it in the head.

Have you ever tried playing with speaker toe-in and tested the changes in the phantom image width? All you are changing is the horizontal reflection angle to the side walls.

Indeed, this is exactly why I wrote the following in my previous post:

Side wall reflections can however influence the phantom image and soundstage size.
More side reflections result in a wider and more diffuse phantom images and a soundstage that extends laterally beyond the loudspeakers, while less reflections result in more precise/focused phantom images that are fully contained between the two loudspeakers.

 

[OCA]

I was told that the room's reflections destroyed (smothered) the information

This is mostly the effect of crosstalk added to the sound with speakers. Your left ear starts hearing also the right speaker unlike the case with a headphone.

 

[OCA]

Center phantom image exists even in the extreme case of headphone listening - just that we perceive it in the head

A mono pink noise signal will be centered between speakers and also between ears with headphones but that was not what I meant with center stage. I might have used the wrong vocabulary. The center stage I was referring to only forms with well placed and calibrated speakers, way behind them and has height, width and depth in which you can locate all instruments and vocals but never the speakers themselves. The stereo source played needs to have been recorded with that in mind, too.

 

[prerich]

No problem, I'm happy if people find some of it useful!

I guess it depends on how accurate you expect it to be. Deviations of in-room measurements from the PIR are the smallest in the 1-10kHz range (i.e. almost perfect match), but even from about 400Hz to 20Hz we're mostly talking about a couple dB difference at most.
Many loudspeakers show unit-to-unit variation of a similar order, and here we're talking about comparing measurements taken in very different room and from quite different listening distances - so I'd dare say the PIR is amazingly accurate!

Sure, but that is only because that specific EQ preset optimizes for LW flatness with 100% weight, and that specific loudspeaker model has inconsistent directivity in that region.
However, note that a) the side wall early reflection will cover a significantly larger distance compared to direct sound and therefore >10kHz region in the reflected sound will be more attenuated by air absorption, and b) >10kHz part of the spectrum contains very little energy in most recordings (which is also an argument no to EQ there), so perceptually speaking this might not really be a big issue.

Let me also reiterate that I don't feel good loudspeakers (such as Revel M16 I took as an example in my previous post) don't need such EQ correction.
Also, note that I actually developed three different EQ profiles for Revel M16 loudspeaker while doing this set of experiments, with different weights assigned to different attributes:
Flat LW target EQ:

Highest preference score target EQ:

70% flat LW and 30% smooth PIR target:

My listening impressions after testing all of these filters (and many more) were that, while all audibly changed the loudspeaker sound to an extent, IMHO none of them made it worse - but also not significantly better. This is because Revel M16 is simply a good speaker as is and IMHO doesn't require correction. But there are loudspeaker with good directivity and poor LW response - those can benefit from such EQ presets significantly! See one such example here.

Can you provide a reference to back this statement?
In my experience center phantom image exists even if side reflections are largely absorbed, because it is mainly created by the direct sound from both loudspeakers which sum and create the center image illusion. In very extreme cases (listening in anechoic chamber) in-head localization can occur, similar to headphones - but I assume there are not that many such residential spaces.
Side wall reflections can however influence the phantom image and soundstage size.
More side reflections result in a wider and more diffuse phantom images and a soundstage that extends laterally beyond the loudspeakers, while less reflections result in more precise/focused phantom images that are fully contained between the two loudspeakers.

Again, I'll have to ask for references. My own experience and the research I've read doesn't seem to align with these views, but I'd of course love to learn more in case such research exists!

As I said, that was only one example of the very many approaches that can be taken (some illustrated above) - unfortunately we don't have preference research yet that tell us how best to optimize such filters, so we have to rely on the existing loudspeaker preference research combined with our own experience and some conjecture - IMO it is better than nothing and can be quite valuable with certain loudspeakers!
The filters I show in this and previous post I generated myself with the VituixCAD optimizer and based on my own quasi-anechoic polar measurements.

I disagree, the filters are definitely meaningful from about 3-500Hz to about 8-10kHz; in-room steady-state measured response doesn't accurately describe what we hear above the transition frequency (around 300Hz in many "small" rooms) - there we perceive more and more of the loudspeaker direct sound, which means that filters derived from anechoic measurements make sense in that region.

I'll have to respectfully disagree, due to reasons stated above and before.

Good talking points ! I must admit bias to OCA because his EQ techniques and videos are out of this world (if you can sit through 1hr + videos )! However you raise interesting counter arguments. I'm just going to sit back and continue learning.

 

[Deleted member 21219]

A mono pink noise signal will be centered between speakers and also between ears with headphones but that was not what I meant with center stage. I might have used the wrong vocabulary. The center stage I was referring to only forms with well placed and calibrated speakers, way behind them and has height, width and depth in which you can locate all instruments and vocals but never the speakers themselves. The stereo source played needs to have been recorded with that in mind, too.

I'm not sure, but the common terminology for what you describe might be "imaging" or "the phantom image". @dominikz has already addressed both this terminology and given his opinion of the manner and degree to which it is affected by reflections.

My setup is close-field, with my speakers close enough for me to reach out and touch them. One of the reason I did this is to REDUCE reflections. In general, I have experienced listening characteristics that are in line with his posts.

I have noticed this "phantom image" characteristic (if that is indeed the correct terminology) with Klemperer's "Der Ring Ohne Worte" (The Ring Without Words), an orchestral recording of Wagner's Ring Trilogy. This was recorded between 1961 and 1963, and remastered in 2020.

I really doubt that it was recorded with the characteristics in mind that you have mentioned, but I may be wrong. Not only that, but I fail to see how re-mastering could add any characteristics that you have mentioned if they did not exist in the original. Again, I could be wrong.

Jim

 

[OCA]

I really doubt that it was recorded with the characteristics in mind that you have mentioned, but I may be wrong

Try this one:

 

[Descartes]

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?).
View attachment 315757
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:
View attachment 315758
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:
View attachment 315759
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:
View attachment 315760

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):
View attachment 315761

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:
View attachment 315762

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:
View attachment 315763
View attachment 315764

Vertical directivity is specially tight:
View attachment 315765

Distortion is impressively low for such a small speaker:
View attachment 315766

View attachment 315767

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:

View attachment 316496
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:
View attachment 315768

Step function shows some kind of optimization in timing of the woofer and tweeter:
View attachment 315769

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/

Thank you for such an informative review, at that price the Genelec 8351 is nicer than this one and has much better directivity horizontally and vertically!

 

[Descartes]

I think its alright for what it is. Theres better speakers for far less in both active and passive~ Personally i think Meyer gear is fairly overpriced $8k a pair. Theres plenty of other options that measure even better if its for objective studio use for far less.

Genelec

 

[Deleted member 21219]

You said ....

Isn't that enough proof that it's formed mainly by reflections?

And I said ...

I have noticed this "phantom image" characteristic (if that is indeed the correct terminology) with Klemperer's "Der Ring Ohne Worte" (The Ring Without Words), an orchestral recording of Wagner's Ring Trilogy. This was recorded between 1961 and 1963, and remastered in 2020.

And I also said ....

My setup is close-field

... which means that it contains fewer of the reflections you mentioned. (I also heard the same "image" when using headphones, albeit internalized.)

Since the recording exhibits what I consider a high-quality phantom image, and this is not due to 1) modern recording techniques, 2) modern sensibilities or 3) the standard set of reflections in my room, I believe these indicate that the image is NOT formed, as you've said, "mainly by reflections". Instead, it indicates that the "image" is formed mainly from the direct signal, although sidewall reflections have some bearing also, as @dominikz has stated.

The Krall recording has nothing to do with anything.

Jim

 

[amirm]

On a different note, I wonder why no phase data is being released from those Klippel measurements although that's already embedded in the stored impulse responses.

Phase response is available but is part of the export function of the raw measurements. Those files are massive so I don't share them.

 

[OCA]

Phase response is available but is part of the export function of the raw measurements. Those files are massive so I don't share them.

I understand @amirm

I had written HTML/JS code (attached zip) a while back which extracts frequency and phase response from impulse responses in .wav format. It can read 16/24/32 bit pcm and 32-bit floats and saves the FFT results (phase response included) as small .txt files. It's not the fastest (Radix 2 algo) but does the job and works purely in the browser so platform-free and doesn't contain any JS libraries except for graphing.

I thought it might help for a quick solution or can be revised for batch processing.

 

[amirm]

I had written HTML/JS code (attached zip) a while back which extracts frequency and phase response from impulse responses in .wav format.

Unfortunately there is no way to create such wav files out of Klippel. They have demonstrated it in a video once but it is not party of any released software.

 

[LIΟN]

Most of the deviations in ER and PIR relative to on-axis seem to be at speaker crossover regions and they could really benefit from XO phase linearization filters.

Could you test this directly with a self messurement? I'm trying to play a new game a few weeks later with the speakers I have doing semi-anechoic measurements (windowing 5ms until 200hz), but I still have to wait. If can secured about 2m(6.5ft) from every wall or outdoor... that will be possible.
I'm going to do it outdoors. Because the ceiling in my room is low.
I remember that the phase correction did not have a significant effect on the direct sound in some of the user's messurement that I could see before. (I don't remember exactly). His room was a space where the reflection was very well controlled, almost only direct sound existed, almost linear phase. (I don't remember if he did the phase correction himself, or if he used dirac, but I'm sure about the applied excess phase correction)
I was also curious about this.

 

[OCA]

I remember that the phase correction did not have a significant effect on the direct sound

Phase linearization filters are allpass filters and on-axis frequency response will be identical. I'd expect benefits in ER/PIR and probably SP. Peak energy times of frequencies will be improved:

 

[LIΟN]

Phase linearization filters are allpass filters and on-axis frequency response will be identical. I'd expect benefits in ER/PIR and probably SP. Peak energy times of frequencies will be improved:

View attachment 322148

I am interested in everyone else's opinion, including you.
As I said, one of the purposes was to test those things. I think i should test it ourselves and check again whether it is reflected in real time while applying EQ and FIR filters with gating(min 5ms ~ max 10ms, No reflect)
However, messurement in which initial reflection is suppressed very well are a little difficult because i have seen that both minimum phase+excess phase(No more than 180 degrees, everything is close to zero) appear close to linear. That's why I'm a bit worried or just thinking myself.

How many meters(or feat) was your messurement measured? Looks like an in-room response.

 

[LIΟN]

I've been measuring quickly on the roof to accurately correct my speakers deviation and onaxis.
The measurement distance is 1.3 meters and both microphones and speakers are 2 meters from the floor.
I don't know how phase correction will affect ER, SP because I only measured the onaxis response to reference and correct this when measuring binaural.

The responses below are all 1/48 smoothing.
FDW is not applied.

I got a very pure response with no distortion up to approximately 8ms.

This is a Pure On-Axis Response(Until 8ms, 1/48smoothing). You can see Min phase and Excess Phase.

And this is only applied Excess Phase correct. Yes. It's looks like almost Linear Phase.

Yes. Of course, the effect on the phase correction occurs because of the application. But for this measurement, there's only a big change inside 500us. Not 5ms.
If i check until 7~8ms

It's safe to say that there's almost no difference.

This is Step Response.

I like to improve phase correction and impulse. But if you look at this in the direct sound domain, you kind of wonder if it's going to benefit when we hearing.
So phase correction and RoomEQ(IIR or FIR whatever) brings a lot of improvement with Our room, but it's about the energy of reflection that's already happening indoors... It is questionable whether there will be any improvements to the speaker's own performance. My interpretation and thinking of this may be wrong. (Because I took a 100-meter electric extension, speakers, stands, and microphones to the roof and came down, so I have no energy. I'm out of my mind.)

Also if i check 500ms with No Smoothing Frequency and Phase Response.
there is not that huge different. Because the direct sound takes up most of this messurement. 500ms full messurement's minphase/excess phase.

this is correct excessphase 500ms full response...

 

[OCA]

I got a very pure response with no distortion up to approximately 8ms

That's not distortion, that's purely the floor reflection.

Direct sound travelled 1.3m to arrive straight to the mic while the reflection travelled a total distance of:
SQRT[(1.3m / 2)^2 + (2.0m)^2)] x 2 = 4.21m bouncing off the floor at mid point.
Reflection needed to travel an extra 4.21m - 1.3m = 2.91m.
Sound will take 2.91 / 343 = 8.48ms to travel that extra distance, hence that sharp peak there in the impulse response.

Since these outdoor measurements provide very clear, noise-free data, I took the opportunity to explain the calculation in detail. This breakdown can serve as a useful source for beginners trying to identify first reflections, which are more difficult to discern from the messy indoor room measurements.

PS: In the graph, the reflection looks to be happening about 8.7ms after the direct sound so either the weather was quite a bit colder than 20 degrees Celcius (and/or more humid) or actual distances are a bit longer than 1.3m/2m.

 

[LIΟN]

That's not distortion, that's purely the floor reflection.

Direct sound travelled 1.3m to arrive straight to the mic while the reflection travelled a total distance of:
SQRT[(1.3m / 2)^2 + (2.0m)^2)] x 2 = 4.21m bouncing off the floor at mid point.
Reflection needs to travel an extra 4.21m - 1.3m = 2.91m.
Sound will take 2.91 / 343 = 8.48ms to travel that extra distance, hence that sharp peak there in the impulse response.

PS: In the graph, the reflection looks to be happening about 8.7ms after the direct sound so either the weather was quite a bit colder than 20 degrees Celcius (and/or more humid) or actual distances are a bit different than 1.3m/2m.

Yes. Almost 1.3 and 2m. My country and town is cloudy now.
Also, I think the distortion word is wrong. because I used a translator. Let me correct my words.
distortion ---> a direct sound without the effect of any early reflection