Neumann KH 310A Review (Powered Monitor)

[Lawmaker09]

Yes, they are likely to export it here which helps with pricing ($3700/pr)... so wanted to check with the community here if they saw any import or custom duty issues with this process.

I ordered 3 pairs of Genelec speakers in 2020-21. Much cheaper than buying them in the US. Distributor markups are excessive IMO. I think I only had to pay import taxes or fees once, it was fairly low, less than $100. The courier will contact you. Thomson is a good option if they agree to export the product you want, the don’t export Genelec to the US… :-(

 

[Lawmaker09]

Its for midfield listening so prefer the sub for the DSP and integration, also room size (35 by 21 by 8.5 ft with the listening position at 13 ft from the wall) will play a important role so sub supports LF management.

They don't need a sub unless you want to play extremely loud.

 

[Lawmaker09]

From the prior reviews in this thread and other threads, I gathered you have a similar set up (KH3+7) and have followed your postings with interest. Thank you.

Curious to know if there is another dealer in the US which could match Thomson or come close.

 

[SlothRock]

KH420? For a minute there I thought we had a substantial new speaker update in the works.

Isn't a new KH 310 with DSP confirmed in the works?

 

[Lawmaker09]

Isn't a new KH 310 with DSP confirmed in the works?

My layperson understanding is that the KH3 gets pretty pretty close to price perfect so hard to improve without major price increases a.k.a one can get the KH430.
Isn't KH310D the DSP version of the KH310A.
Perhaps additional color choices as it certainly has WAF dimension wise.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Isn't KH310D the DSP version of the KH310A.

Not really. Just a digital input (with the option to set a delay). Much older and not comparable to the DSP in KH80/150/750.

 

[Lawmaker09]

Not really. Just a digital input (with the option to set a delay). Much older and not comparable to the DSP in KH80/150/750.

Got it, any impressions or experience of the DSP features between the 150 and the 750.

 

[Honken]

My room is a bit smaller than yours and I sit a bit closer to the speakers, just shy of 3 meters or so. I run them crossed to subwoofers at 100hz.

I have mentioned this earlier in the thread but I don't feel like I need the subwoofers really, for most of the music I listen to the 310s get more than loud enough for me at my listening position. There's plenty of headroom to spare for me, on the speakers I've set the output level set to 94 and the input gain to -0, when I listen to music using these settings my DAC is usually set somewhere at around -18db mark. According to my watch, this results in listening levels around 65-70 dbc, not sure about peaks.

What the subs for sure do is to dig deeper (~19Hz), but I don't notice that with most music. Some of my favorite electronic tracks have a noticeable less physical impact without the subwoofers. Can't really feel the bass in my chest without them, but to my ears it sounds more similiar than not. Wether or not this translates to "don't need a sub" or not I think is rather subjective and situational. The 750's DSP capabilities are not to be ignored either.

My only real complaint is the amps that are rather hot at idle.

I've not heard the 150.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

My room is a bit smaller than yours and I sit a bit closer to the speakers, just shy of 3 meters or so. I run them crossed to subwoofers at 100hz.

I have mentioned this earlier in the thread but I don't feel like I need the subwoofers really, for most of the music I listen to the 310s get more than loud enough for me at my listening position. There's plenty of headroom to spare for me, on the speakers I've set the output level set to 94 and the input gain to -0, when I listen to music using these settings my DAC is usually set somewhere at around -18db mark. According to my watch, this results in listening levels around 65-70 dbc, not sure about peaks.

What the subs for sure do is to dig deeper (~19Hz), but I don't notice that with most music. Some of my favorite electronic tracks have a noticeable less physical impact without the subwoofers. Can't really feel the bass in my chest without them, but to my ears it sounds more similiar than not. Wether or not this translates to "don't need a sub" or not I think is rather subjective and situational. The 750's DSP capabilities are not to be ignored either.

My only real complaint is the amps that are rather hot at idle.

I've not heard the 150.

A lot of rooms produce severe dips in the area 70-100hz. Subs can help filling those holes (because of their different position in the room), which is much more important than the area 19-34hz. That's why subs can be very useful even with a speaker like the KH310, that itself is loud and deep enough for most cases.

 

[Honken]

Very true, but again that is what I'd consider situational. I have my 310s sitting on top of my tubular subwoofers for this very reason as the subs output are almost at floor level which changes things, but I wouldn't say that it is always true. If one does not experience severe nulls at the listening position then I don't think the 310s are lacking in bass output for music. However, if one is experiencing nulls at the LP, then it wouldn't matter how deep the speaker itself goes, a null is more or less a null most of the time (yes, I am well aware of outliers to this simplification). If you are watching movies or playing games with the 310s, they could also be lacking in lower end output.

People often speak of subwoofers, especially with regards to setups with multiple subwoofers, as if it'd be easy to place them where it is optimal. Sure, you technically have more leeway with regards to placement compared to speakers, but capable subwoofers are large things that are often connected via cable. That restricts placement in most rooms, outside of dedicated listening rooms/studios. Personally, I would love to place a sub or perhaps both closer to the LP, but that would force me to run cables across my living room, so I don't do that and instead have chosen to live with some narrow nulls.

 

[JeyElDee]

No, really. I mean it. They can play very loud BUT, if you add a sub, you can set the low on the monitor at minus x db and let the sub do more work.
In that case they can play even louder. Of course there will be lower bass with a sub but I think it is not nessecary if you don't need the extra volume.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

No, really. I mean it. They can play very loud BUT, if you add a sub, you can set the low on the monitor at minus x db and let the sub do more work.
In that case they can play even louder. Of course there will be lower bass with a sub but I think it is not nessecary if you don't need the extra volume.

A lot of rooms produce severe dips in the area 70-100hz. Subs can help filling those holes (because of their different position in the room), which is much more important than the area 19-34hz. That's why subs can be very useful even with a speaker like the KH310, that itself is loud and deep enough for most cases.

 

[teashea]

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:

View attachment 94736

I was relieved to find "rack mount" ears to grab onto for lifting it:

View attachment 94737

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:

View attachment 94739

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:

View attachment 94740

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:

View attachment 94764

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:

View attachment 94742

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:

View attachment 94743

Very low bass creates a bit of issue with distortion exceeding 100%:
View attachment 94744

Beam width control is excellent but naturally a bit asymmetrical:

View attachment 94745

Here is the same as a contour:

View attachment 94746

Vertical directivity is very good due to use of mid-range and careful design:

View attachment 94747

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.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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Another very good review. Neumann is really on their game.

 

[Lawmaker09]

Looking for feedback from owners of the KH310 on the requirement of a Protection Screen for the loudspeakers. Current set up has the speakers against a wall in a non traffic area.

 

[tifune]

Looking for feedback from owners of the KH310 on the requirement of a Protection Screen for the loudspeakers. Current set up has the speakers against a wall in a non traffic area.

If you have kids at your house with any regularity, the grilles are worth it. When I had 310s, I was afraid to sneeze near that fabric dome. Otherwise, outside of aesthetic preferences I'd say so there's no need

 

[teashea]

Looking for feedback from owners of the KH310 on the requirement of a Protection Screen for the loudspeakers. Current set up has the speakers against a wall in a non traffic area.

It depends on the circumstances. That beautiful but susceptable midrange dome could be done-in in a second by a wayward finger.

In the situation where I have mine the studio, they are quite out of the way. I am the only one living there. My doggers and kitty live in the air-conditioned garage, etc etc, so I do not feel compelled to have a protection screen.

But in more usual situations, it seems like it would be an excellent idea.

 

[LTig]

Looking for feedback from owners of the KH310 on the requirement of a Protection Screen for the loudspeakers. Current set up has the speakers against a wall in a non traffic area.

I do own the O300D (predecessor of KH310) and got the very expensive but extremely sturdy (you could beat them with a hammer and not kill the drivers) protection grills without thinking. According to Markus Wolff (chief developer) one can measure their influence on sound but it is too minor to be audible.

 

[teashea]

I do own the O300D (predecessor of KH310) and got the very expensive but extremely sturdy (you could beat them with a hammer and not kill the drivers) protection grills without thinking. According to Markus Wolff (chief developer) one can measure their influence on sound but it is too minor to be audible.

Can you show us a photo? I would love to see it. Are they made by Neumann? How much do they cost? I like the idea.

 

[Lawmaker09]

Can you show us a photo? I would love to see it. Are they made by Neumann? How much do they cost? I like the idea.

For the grill specs and visuals https://en-de.neumann.com/gkh-310
Cost per what I can figure... is lowest at

Neumann GKH 310

Protection Screen for Neumann KH 310 A Loudspeaker Material: Metal, Colour: Black RAL 9005, Dimensions: 256 x 381 x 47.61 mm, Weight: 890 g, Includes: 1 Pieces

www.thomannmusic.com

 

[LTig]

For the grill specs and visuals https://en-de.neumann.com/gkh-310

Yep, they look like those for the O300D and the size is exactly the same, and the prize is comparatively to what I paid in 2004 wrt inflation.