Neumann KH 310A Review (Powered Monitor)

[Pearljam5000]

Didn't know monitors are supposed to be fun

 

[Somafunk]

I want my monitors to be boring, my treated room and my music is the only influence on the sound that I desire

 

[MaxBuck]

If your goal is to listen to the music rather than to your system, these monitors seem to be a pretty good choice.

 

[boxerfan88]

If your goal is to listen to the music rather than to your system, these monitors seem to be a pretty good choice.

They are

 

[Ze Frog]

I like all my speakers to be 'boring', a speaker shouldn't impart any character upon the music, and that's my take as a Hi-fi user.

 

[Roving]

Hello everyone!
I have been following this thread, and I was almost ready to buy the KH310s.
However, by listening to them again last week in Berlin, I noticed that these speakers don't go loud enough, and when I pushed them to a considerable volume, which for my ears was ok (not insane amount of loudness anyways), they start to distort and listening to the box of the speakers which is not a nice feeling.
Any thoughts on this? Anyone else had the same experience?

Thanks

This.
I was recently listening to the kh310a in a sort of A/B test with another set of speakers (a 2 way speaker which I am not gonna mention, it's not the point) and from the very beginning (I started listening to them pretty loud) I could "feel" the speakers so much.
Now, for sure I read in the past about the kh310, and I had some prejudices, good and bad ones, and we know this could affect our judgment and experience. One of these was a weak phantom center. But that problem was so obvious to me that I thought it couldn't be possible. And I moved around, I was listening not closer than 1.5 meters.

I also wanted to say. For me they have a "wow" feeling. The lows are really there and tights. I didn't think the highs were problematic as I often read (even though, they were pretty crispy). Great mixes sound great, and they are revealing on bad mixes. I found them a bit soft on transients, if anything (like clicks, glitches, but also snares).
But I can't stress enough how weird was the stereo image. They somehow gave me the same feeling of my AKG Q701, where you feel the left and right instead of a proper center. It was so obvious for us listening at them, that I can't believe it is not mentioned more. FYI, the other set of speakers revealed a great and precise stereo image in that room.
I had to let them go. If it wasn't for this, those speakers would make me very happy, and for a super-fair price.

I wanted to mention this, after reading your comment, as unfortunately I didn't check if the problem would disappear at lower levels.

 

[dfuller]

The KH310 is super SPL limited. It doesn't show here really, but if you push it much at all it gets boxy and honky from the woofer having to do huge amounts of excursion. This is due to it being a very small sealed box asked to go very much lower than it would without massive EQ boosting. A sealed box of this size without a ton of LF shelving boost will not have substantial output below about 50hz.

But I can't stress enough how weird was the stereo image. They somehow gave me the same feeling of my AKG Q701, where you feel the left and right instead of a proper center. It was so obvious for us listening at them, that I can't believe it is not mentioned more. FYI, the other set of speakers revealed a great and precise stereo image in that room.
I had to let them go. If it wasn't for this, those speakers would make me very happy, and for a super-fair price.

They work much better tweeters-in IME. The stereo image makes much more sense.

 

[LTig]

The KH310 is super SPL limited. It doesn't show here really, but if you push it much at all it gets boxy and honky from the woofer having to do huge amounts of excursion. This is due to it being a very small sealed box asked to go very much lower than it would without massive EQ boosting. A sealed box of this size without a ton of LF shelving boost will not have substantial output below about 50hz.

Nothing a good sub can't fix. It did for my O300Ds.

They work much better tweeters-in IME. The stereo image makes much more sense.

This depends on the room. My O300Ds have the sharpest phantom center of all speakers I tried in my room, and the tweeters are outside.

 

[dfuller]

Nothing a good sub can't fix. It did for my O300Ds.

Yes, a sub is a huge help for sure. Dual subs even better.

This depends on the room. My O300Ds have the sharpest phantom center of all speakers I tried in my room, and the tweeters are outside.

It's been my experience across multiple rooms, in makes more sense.

 

[Roving]

The KH310 is super SPL limited. It doesn't show here really, but if you push it much at all it gets boxy and honky from the woofer having to do huge amounts of excursion. This is due to it being a very small sealed box asked to go very much lower than it would without massive EQ boosting. A sealed box of this size without a ton of LF shelving boost will not have substantial output below about 50hz.



They work much better tweeters-in IME. The stereo image makes much more sense.

Thanks for the answer. That makes sense to me, but just to clarify, I was locating the sound (at times) on the speakers and not in the stereo image with mid-high contents, while low content sounded great and faithful to the mix, right in the center or within the stereo image where it was supposed to be.

 

[Roving]

Nothing a good sub can't fix. It did for my O300Ds.

This depends on the room. My O300Ds have the sharpest phantom center of all speakers I tried in my room, and the tweeters are outside.

I was interested in the kh310s because I thought it could be a great pair of "flat" nearfields that could prevent me from having to add one or two subs.
Maybe it sounded too good to be true.

 

[HerbertWest]

Yes, a sub is a huge help for sure. Dual subs even better.


It's been my experience across multiple rooms, in makes more sense.

I use three KH310 (L/C/R), dual decent subs, and love the result even when listening 2.0 - although my room is small, 3x 3.4m, so bass is problematic without DSP, and the sweet spot ain’t that wide.

To @dfuller points:
1) best crossover in my room was 50 hz (after extensive tests with Audiolense).
2) I put the L/R tweeter in.

I usually listen below 82dB C-weighted, and at that point I still have at least another 15dB of headroom to shake the house (post DSP/Audiolense). With my limited space, three Kh420 seemed overkill and might have blown the window out.

 

[boxerfan88]

I also wanted to say. For me they have a "wow" feeling. The lows are really there and tights. I didn't think the highs were problematic as I often read (even though, they were pretty crispy). Great mixes sound great, and they are revealing on bad mixes. I found them a bit soft on transients, if anything (like clicks, glitches, but also snares).
But I can't stress enough how weird was the stereo image. They somehow gave me the same feeling of my AKG Q701, where you feel the left and right instead of a proper center. It was so obvious for us listening at them, that I can't believe it is not mentioned more. FYI, the other set of speakers revealed a great and precise stereo image in that room.

Out of curiosity, how were the KH310 positioned in your AB test?
Were the KH310 firing forward, or were they toed-in firing to a point behind the head?

My KH310 are toed-in firing at a point behind the head. The soundstage is pretty good, and the phantom center is locked in and doesn't wander. Having said that, when compared to KH150, the KH150 imaging is better I must say. (Using the camera analogy, the KH150 is pin sharp, whereas KH310 has a tiny bit of "soft focus".)

 

[Arnas]

This.
I was recently listening to the kh310a in a sort of A/B test with another set of speakers (a 2 way speaker which I am not gonna mention, it's not the point) and from the very beginning (I started listening to them pretty loud) I could "feel" the speakers so much.
Now, for sure I read in the past about the kh310, and I had some prejudices, good and bad ones, and we know this could affect our judgment and experience. One of these was a weak phantom center. But that problem was so obvious to me that I thought it couldn't be possible. And I moved around, I was listening not closer than 1.5 meters.

I also wanted to say. For me they have a "wow" feeling. The lows are really there and tights. I didn't think the highs were problematic as I often read (even though, they were pretty crispy). Great mixes sound great, and they are revealing on bad mixes. I found them a bit soft on transients, if anything (like clicks, glitches, but also snares).
But I can't stress enough how weird was the stereo image. They somehow gave me the same feeling of my AKG Q701, where you feel the left and right instead of a proper center. It was so obvious for us listening at them, that I can't believe it is not mentioned more. FYI, the other set of speakers revealed a great and precise stereo image in that room.
I had to let them go. If it wasn't for this, those speakers would make me very happy, and for a super-fair price.

I wanted to mention this, after reading your comment, as unfortunately I didn't check if the problem would disappear at lower levels.

3 ways really need distance in my opinion, 2 ways less distance is needed for proper image while Coaxials image superb no matter the distance.
Good image really does provide "relaxed" listening experience like Genelec said. Had headphones with terrific imaging like Beyerdynamic T1 and HD800S... Could play games, watch movies for hours and listen music for hours.

 

[holdingpants01]

There's not much point in buying KH310 for nearfield and using them with subs since KH150 came out - less expensive but with dsp and less distortion all over the range. Then there's not much point in getting KH310 for midfield without subs, as they will probably distort and instead of KH310 with subs one could just get KH420 for a bit more. They are now in a weird spot in the lineup, my guess is Neumann is working hard to lower the distortion below the KH150 level without drilling a hole in them, therefore we still don't see KH310-II. I used KH310 for 2 years everyday and still sometimes visit my friend studio where he uses them with KH750, while the KH310 alone sounds fine I just don't like the subwoofers in the system and I changed my view 180 degrees in the last year on them, so I try to avoid them as much as possible

 

[Roving]

Out of curiosity, how were the KH310 positioned in your AB test?
Were the KH310 firing forward, or were they toed-in firing to a point behind the head?

My KH310 are toed-in firing at a point behind the head. The soundstage is pretty good, and the phantom center is locked in and doesn't wander. Having said that, when compared to KH150, the KH150 imaging is better I must say. (Using the camera analogy, the KH150 is pin sharp, whereas KH310 has a tiny bit of "soft focus".)

Hey,

toe in. They were sitting on stands with nothing around them (it wasn't the best way to A/B as we were replacing the speakers on the stands).
By the way, vocals, kick, snare, they were perfectly centered. It was in loud moments and for stuff like complex synths where my eyes would automatically look at one of the speakers, as they were kinda loosing any correlation and breaking the stereo image illusion.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Hey,

toe in. They were sitting on stands with nothing around them (it wasn't the best way to A/B as we were replacing the speakers on the stands).
By the way, vocals, kick, snare, they were perfectly centered. It was in loud moments and for stuff like complex synths where my eyes would automatically look at one of the speakers, as they were kinda loosing any correlation and breaking the stereo image illusion.

Maybe that's in the recording

 

[Roving]

Maybe that's in the recording

Obviously I was playing tracks I know very well, or my own mixes, so I can at least exclude that. In fact, the other set of monitor didn't suffer from any of that.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

The KH150 has are more linear and a much more narrow beam width than the KH310. So they should be less room dependent in their imaging. In my small room i struggle width the image of the 310, too. If you are in a bigger room width side walls far away, this is probably less problematic.

 

[Roving]

The KH150 has are more linear and a much more narrow beam width than the KH310. So they should be less room dependent in their imaging. In my small room i struggle width the image of the 310, too. If you are in a bigger room width side walls far away, this is probably less problematic.

Thank you,
I started to regret I didn't consider at all the kh150, or even the 120. The fact is I was very set on what 2 way speaker I wanted; so the question in my mind was just considering a 3 way alternative, therefor the kh310.