This is a review and detailed measurements of the Neumann KH 310A active monitor (speaker). It was kindly sent to me by the company for testing. I see it discounted to US $2,200 (each) as of this writing.
This is one dense and heavy 3-way speaker:
I was relieved to find "rack mount" ears to grab onto for lifting it:
Nice to see big heatsinks in the back indicating good amount of power on tap. Testing was performed with all the switches as you see.
What you don't see is a port.
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.
The system performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of more or less 1%.
Temperature was 58 degrees F initially. Past experience indicates that there may be some impact on bass response of Neumann speakers so a second measurement was performed after heating up the room to 68 degrees (it dropped back to 64 at the end of testing).
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Reference axis was the border between tweeter and midrange.
I consulted with Neumann on the results you see here.
Neumann KH 310A Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
Response basically matches Neumann's published anechoic results, sans the slight shelving in low frequencies and that one dip. Their measurements also shows a dip but it is above 100 Hz. Cause of the dip is unknown and Neumann is investigating. It is not material though as the room impact will be massive in this region but it is nice to know where it is coming from.
Even with a little shelving which Neumann thinks is still related to temperature, response is quite flan on axis. There is as much as 0.7 dB error in my microphone by 20 kHz so with that taken into account, agreement with Neumann data is excellent.
Directivity is very good as seen by how closely the upper lines mirror each other and their difference as plotted down below.
Early window reflections are as a result very good:
While not the target for this speaker, if you were to use the speaker in far-field, domestic listening space, this would be the potential response:
I have not looked to see why it became more uneven than I expected. Still, we are talking speakers here and this is a very good response.
EDIT: I had the scales wrong. It was too zoomed in. Corrected.
Interpreting near-field response of the sound producing elements is always complicated by the port. Without it, we have rather textbook responses in KH 310A:
Notice that the dip around 80 Hz is still there so that is not an artifact of the complex process Klippel NFS uses to generate its anechoic response.
Distortion is kept well under control even at the higher 96 dBSPL@1 meter:
Very low bass creates a bit of issue with distortion exceeding 100%:
Beam width control is excellent but naturally a bit asymmetrical:
Here is the same as a contour:
Vertical directivity is very good due to use of mid-range and careful design:
Neuman KH 310A Near-field Speaker Listening Tests
I know many of you think that looking at the measurements biases you in listening tests. But I must say, the very first impression of what hits my face and ears is often a surprise. I figured the KH 310A would sound good but not this good! I always start with female vocals to see if their brilliance is reproduced without harshness. The KH 310A blew me away with how it managed this careful trick! I could not believe the level of clarity, balance, yet detailed sound with zero harshness or lispiness.
Best of all, I could turn up the level as high as I wanted. This created nothing but delight as I played some of my tracks with dynamic high frequency tones such as Gruzzo by Daniele Di Bonaventura and Alfredo Laviano:
The bass was absolutely clean. It was a delight to listen to what Neumann calls "DRY BASS." It was a relief to not hear bloated bass that would all of a sudden fall of a cliff when turned up.
To make sure there was enough of it though, I queued up the track Bad News by Melody Gardot:
Wow, wow, wow! This is some impressive bass coming out of this speaker! It was resonating not only my desk and chair but my entire loft! I cranked it way up and then I could detect a bit of distortion but if you were not looking for it, you would be plenty satisfied.
I wish I had a second one and time to sit back and listen for hours and hours. Nothing has sounded this impressive and dynamic on my workstation desk. I simply put the speaker on half inch of padding with no messing with alignment and any reason to reach for EQ. And received total, absolute pleasure.
Conclusions
Neumann KH 310A shows the dedication of the design team to absolute objective perfection. Somehow the recipe here goes even beyond that producing a combine sound that delighted me and glued a smile on my face that has yet to disappear. Yes, $4,400 for a pair of these speakers is a lot of money. What you get though is design engineers perfecting the sound reproduction and not leaving you with the job of EQ to get there. Elimination of bass port (I think) has resulted in very clean low frequency response.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I am going to strongly recommend the Neumann KH 310A Active Monitor. I live for days like this when a company cares to give us the best sound reproduction we can get.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
This is one dense and heavy 3-way speaker:
I was relieved to find "rack mount" ears to grab onto for lifting it:
Nice to see big heatsinks in the back indicating good amount of power on tap. Testing was performed with all the switches as you see.
What you don't see is a port.
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.
The system performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of more or less 1%.
Temperature was 58 degrees F initially. Past experience indicates that there may be some impact on bass response of Neumann speakers so a second measurement was performed after heating up the room to 68 degrees (it dropped back to 64 at the end of testing).
Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.
Reference axis was the border between tweeter and midrange.
I consulted with Neumann on the results you see here.
Neumann KH 310A Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:
Response basically matches Neumann's published anechoic results, sans the slight shelving in low frequencies and that one dip. Their measurements also shows a dip but it is above 100 Hz. Cause of the dip is unknown and Neumann is investigating. It is not material though as the room impact will be massive in this region but it is nice to know where it is coming from.
Even with a little shelving which Neumann thinks is still related to temperature, response is quite flan on axis. There is as much as 0.7 dB error in my microphone by 20 kHz so with that taken into account, agreement with Neumann data is excellent.
Directivity is very good as seen by how closely the upper lines mirror each other and their difference as plotted down below.
Early window reflections are as a result very good:
While not the target for this speaker, if you were to use the speaker in far-field, domestic listening space, this would be the potential response:
I have not looked to see why it became more uneven than I expected. Still, we are talking speakers here and this is a very good response.
EDIT: I had the scales wrong. It was too zoomed in. Corrected.
Interpreting near-field response of the sound producing elements is always complicated by the port. Without it, we have rather textbook responses in KH 310A:
Notice that the dip around 80 Hz is still there so that is not an artifact of the complex process Klippel NFS uses to generate its anechoic response.
Distortion is kept well under control even at the higher 96 dBSPL@1 meter:
Very low bass creates a bit of issue with distortion exceeding 100%:
Beam width control is excellent but naturally a bit asymmetrical:
Here is the same as a contour:
Vertical directivity is very good due to use of mid-range and careful design:
Neuman KH 310A Near-field Speaker Listening Tests
I know many of you think that looking at the measurements biases you in listening tests. But I must say, the very first impression of what hits my face and ears is often a surprise. I figured the KH 310A would sound good but not this good! I always start with female vocals to see if their brilliance is reproduced without harshness. The KH 310A blew me away with how it managed this careful trick! I could not believe the level of clarity, balance, yet detailed sound with zero harshness or lispiness.
Best of all, I could turn up the level as high as I wanted. This created nothing but delight as I played some of my tracks with dynamic high frequency tones such as Gruzzo by Daniele Di Bonaventura and Alfredo Laviano:
The bass was absolutely clean. It was a delight to listen to what Neumann calls "DRY BASS." It was a relief to not hear bloated bass that would all of a sudden fall of a cliff when turned up.
To make sure there was enough of it though, I queued up the track Bad News by Melody Gardot:
Wow, wow, wow! This is some impressive bass coming out of this speaker! It was resonating not only my desk and chair but my entire loft! I cranked it way up and then I could detect a bit of distortion but if you were not looking for it, you would be plenty satisfied.
I wish I had a second one and time to sit back and listen for hours and hours. Nothing has sounded this impressive and dynamic on my workstation desk. I simply put the speaker on half inch of padding with no messing with alignment and any reason to reach for EQ. And received total, absolute pleasure.
Conclusions
Neumann KH 310A shows the dedication of the design team to absolute objective perfection. Somehow the recipe here goes even beyond that producing a combine sound that delighted me and glued a smile on my face that has yet to disappear. Yes, $4,400 for a pair of these speakers is a lot of money. What you get though is design engineers perfecting the sound reproduction and not leaving you with the job of EQ to get there. Elimination of bass port (I think) has resulted in very clean low frequency response.
At the risk of stating the obvious, I am going to strongly recommend the Neumann KH 310A Active Monitor. I live for days like this when a company cares to give us the best sound reproduction we can get.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Appreciate any donations using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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