Meyer Sound Amie Monitor Review

[OCA]

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

I adore your dedication to the cause Always wanted to take outdoor measurements and the roof is a great idea but never had the guts to attempt.

 

[OCA]

My country and town is cloudy

Maybe that's the reason Denon/Marantz have decided speed of sound is 300m/s and embedded that to all their AVR product line for the last 20 years

 

[LIΟN]

I adore your dedication to the cause Always wanted to take outdoor measurements and the roof is a great idea but never had the guts to attempt.

I think your VBA idea and various DRC approaches are very beneficial. I respect.
I also wanted a measurement that removed the in-room variable as much as possible, so I did it on the roof.
I live in an apartment. If you live in a house, it would be enough to just do it in the yard. If you go up to 2m, you can get more room for high-resolution data and initial reflection, but I think about 1.5m will be enough. And anyway, the bass area is not accurate by the gating method, so you have to measure the microphone close to the woofer unit, measure the port separately, and add it up.

 

[LIΟN]

Always wanted to take outdoor measurements and the roof is a great idea but never had the guts to attempt.

In fact, it was more difficult for me to try It was harder to think about going outdoors. than the process of measurement.
Moving speakers that are already in place would be a risk for many Audiophile..... =(

 

[IamJF]

Maybe that's the reason Denon/Marantz have decided speed of sound is 300m/s and embedded that to all their AVR product line for the last 20 years

I'm mostly listening in heated rooms ...

 

[LIΟN]

I'm mostly listening in heated rooms ...

If you listen to a song in the heat of a lot of emps and equipment in a heated place, your face will turn red. lol

 

[kelesh]

$4,080 each? What contempt shown to the public.

Typical "fleece-the-pro-market-with-unlimited-funds" decision. I still remember their HD-1 from over 20 years ago. The price was so high, I never got past looking at the brochure. And they still can't produce symmetrical L/R speakers like Neumann, saving on production costs, so - $8000 to look at two identical speakers with the logo on the same left side? No, thank you. There are far better options.

 

[kelesh]

Professional tools typically cost more than consumer products, at over 10 times the price for a similar product, would you also say that Hilti is showing contempt to the public?


View attachment 315969View attachment 315970

Yes. And here, also, there are choices. You can buy an equivalent BOSCH for a third of the price of the HILTI.

 

[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:
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Vertical directivity is specially tight:
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Distortion is impressively low for such a small speaker:
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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.

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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 so much for all your reviews.
How do you compare it to Genelec Ones 8351B? Which one do you think is better

 

[amirm]

Thank you so much for all your reviews.
How do you compare it to Genelec Ones 8351B? Which one do you think is better

My pleasure. I would get the Genelec assuming you did not want to crank it way, way loud (in which case, you want to get the 8361a).

 

[OCA]

Are you saying anechoic responses of speakers need 12dB cuts at 13kHz in this day and age? One doesn't need any test to not buy such designs if they exist!

And back to my main and in fact only point which is being ignored. A fixed parameter auto-EQ process "maybe" should not be a trusted sound score attribute for speaker comparison.

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Mr Toole himself recently made a comment relevant to what we had discussed here a while back:

MMM approach and a new calibration app (magic beans)

I wonder what you guys think of this calibration approach? The app is not yet available for purchase but I was told that it should become available in about a week...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I rightfully still question the meaningfulness of "with EQ" speaker scores.

 

[Ze Frog]

Is there a benefit to the upper half of the frequency spectrum being shelved down that is lost on me?

Only it does seem rather deliberate, so I'm guessing there's a purpose.

*I should add I'm entirely new to monitor speakers, so excuse my ignorance.

 

[GXAlan]

Is there a benefit to the upper half of the frequency spectrum being shelved down that is lost on me?

Only it does seem rather deliberate, so I'm guessing there's a purpose.

*I should add I'm entirely new to monitor speakers, so excuse my ignorance.

“Amie’s horn was designed for an 80 ̊ horizontal coverage and a 50 ̊ vertical coverage. This narrow vertical coverage helps eliminate the sound bounce off the console surface above 1200 Hz. The high frequencies give us the most clues to the image that is created between the loudspeakers.
This is a precision near field speaker intended for listening to fine detail in the sonic mix. Designed to work from one to two meters, it makes for greater flexibility in the setup. Although this speaker was designed for cinema mixing, we have found that it makes for an excellent near field monitor for music recording.”

As well as

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/the-case-for-lcr-speakers-with-the-old-thx-uitra-specs%E2%80%A6.3231214/

 

[Ze Frog]

“Amie’s horn was designed for an 80 ̊ horizontal coverage and a 50 ̊ vertical coverage. This narrow vertical coverage helps eliminate the sound bounce off the console surface above 1200 Hz. The high frequencies give us the most clues to the image that is created between the loudspeakers.
This is a precision near field speaker intended for listening to fine detail in the sonic mix. Designed to work from one to two meters, it makes for greater flexibility in the setup. Although this speaker was designed for cinema mixing, we have found that it makes for an excellent near field monitor for music recording.”

As well as

https://www.avsforum.com/threads/the-case-for-lcr-speakers-with-the-old-thx-uitra-specs%E2%80%A6.3231214/

Thankyou.

 

[GXAlan]

Thank you.

But for what it's worth, THX Ultra to THX Ultra2 happened in part because people felt that the narrower vertical coverage also resulted in a different sound for 2 ch music that people were used to. They changed the standards that way.

"THX Ultra front loudspeakers, for example, were originally optimized for movie soundtracks and were required to have focused vertical directivity. This radiation pattern prevents sound from spraying up toward the ceiling or down toward the floor, which might cause audible colorations, thus providing clean dialogue and clear sound effects. Unfortunately, the vertical D'Appolito driver array that most manufacturers employ to meet this specification tends to create a less-than-smooth vertical off-axis frequency response. In the last decade or two, considerable research and listening experiments have shown that a smooth off- and on-axis frequency response is important to a system's sound quality. The Ultra specification works great for movie soundtracks and can sound good with music played in an acoustically treated high-end home theater where the uneven off-axis response can be absorbed, but it is often criticized with music playback in the more-lively living rooms that the speakers were intended for. While THX's ideal goal is still to limit undesirable early reflections, they have laid the responsibility for achieving it in the hands of the consumer. THX Ultra 2's front-speaker specification places a greater premium on having a "well-defined, smoothly varying frequency response both on- and off-axis," which guarantees that both music and movies will sound good in both dedicated theater rooms and general-purpose living areas."

THX ULTRA: Episode 2 Listening Strikes Back

THX Ultra 2: The Listening Strikes Back While it sounds like just a sequel to a successful predecessor, THX Ultra 2 is a substantially different system specification. Audio editor Chris Lewis, associate editor Geoffrey Morrison, and I traveled to Northern California to interview Laurie Fincham...

www.soundandvision.com

 

[IamJF]

Unfortunately, the vertical D'Appolito driver array that most manufacturers employ to meet this specification tends to create a less-than-smooth vertical off-axis frequency response.

That's exactly also my finding and one of the reasons I don't build D'Apollito any more!
Vertical off axis response is important and it's a mess in a BMTMB configuration. I optimised the distances with small drivers and mid domes ... it's still more uneven as I like it.

The 2nd reason is that I did listening trials with one and 2 midranges and with only one I have more of a point source impression, with 2 midranges in MTM I perceived some vertical "dimension" of the sound. At least for smaller listening distances I detected I prefer MT.

 

[RobL]

Prof. Goertz measured the Amie for Production Partner. Also a very favourable review.

 

[IamJF]

This resonance at 500Hz and 1kHz ... the price you pay for a ported midrange.
I also don't understand why they don't cross over higher with the sub?

 

[GXAlan]

This resonance at 500Hz and 1kHz ... the price you pay for a ported midrange.
I also don't understand why they don't cross over higher with the sub?

It’s explained in the video

It’s based upon statistical analysis of rooms and maintaining phase relationships. First 10 minutes is filler, and they start talking about the sub at 14 minutes in. You can fast forward to 48:30 if you just want to see data.

 

[IamJF]

That's not my experience with implementing subwoofers.
When the pictures are right they showed from the rooms - they put their setup in untreated rooms unsuitable for audio reproduction and measured more or less random variations of the setup. And then monitored standard derivations.

But that's not how you set up a proper audio room? You search for the BEST location for the subwoofer and stick with that. Not an average of 10 position! Probably use 2 or more woofers to get a more even response in the room. I always found positions for woofers which had better response as the main speakers (SBIR etc).
They talk about phase as delay is not invented yet? Of course your phase does not match when delays/distances of speakers are not right. But with rear speakers or even the center it is often simply not possible to get the same distance - that's where delay comes and it works perfectly.

So I see their point in getting an easy to use system to prevent user errors (it's way easier to implement a woofer at 40Hz crossover as at 80-120Hz) - but at 3000,- per speaker I would expect a GREAT solution, not a "also dumb ones can use" solution.