Neumann KH 310A Review (Powered Monitor)

[Mnyb]

But we can still sort them by use case anyway the KH80 is clearly for nearfield suppose the KH310 could also go in a medium sized room for example . I could probably use them in my living room I have 2,4 meters to my current speakers .

But I do think we can consider the use case first then use preference rating for the speakers left in the contests ? If a forum member wants advice on speakers in a large room . He could naturally ignore a lot of the speakers tested here on ASR and focus on the ones suitable for larger spaces and long listening distances like the large revel’s and jbl’s that’s been tested and then consider the preference ratings.
Maybe there are more factors to consider, preferred dispersion, dead or very reverberant room ?
I think if one narrow down the field based on the application , the preference score could then become somewhat useful again ?

 

[andreasmaaan]

Interesting! I nearly bought three of these for my cinema room build as lcr, i went with the klipsch kl650 in the end sunk into a baffle wall. Despite fairly thorough research on these speakers i missed that it had a port on the back which likely would not have worked for my baffle wall setup. Good to see they review so well.

Are you talking about KH310A? Your original belief was correct: there is most certainly no port!

 

[thewas]

Are you talking about KH310A? Your original belief was correct: there is most certainly no port!

Yes, the KH310 were according to Neumanns senior engineer designed as closed baffle to minimise their baffle size as rear ports are not an option for often in studios used in-wall installations.

 

[wwenze]

Sadly though, Amir doesn’t do max SPL tests in fear of damaging the speakers.

Maybe if the Klippel is smart enough it can do a THD vs power sweep and stop the test at say 5% at any frequency

 

[andreasmaaan]

Yes, the KH310 were according to Neumanns senior engineer designed as closed baffle to minimise their baffle size as rear ports are not an option for often in studios used in-wall installations.

Thanks! That makes sense now. I was wondering before why they had chosen to use a sealed box.

 

[Chrise36]

Yep, I would also prefer they keep the analog crossover, just update the amps to a more efficient ("sustainable") tech like class-D. Just comparing to Genelec, Adam and many others here.

We don't know how reliable class D amps would be and what distortion they would have especially in the highs. I prefer class d for bass maybe midrange but not for tweeters

 

[MZKM]

Many manufacturers report max wattage the speaker accepts, which together with sensitivity gives an SPL indication.

Some have a “power handling” spec, which usually is truthful. However, many have a “recommended wattage” spec, which is a total fantasy.

 

[Francis Vaughan]

I suspect one element in why the speaker doesn't have a DSP based crossover is that they didn't want to add any further latency to the system. For mixing latency is not an issue, but for monitoring during tracking it could be of significance. Given the market, this is going to be a potential deal breaker for many customers.
I would say that there is some mis-charaterisation of how DSP can be used in speakers. It is a poor design that uses DSP to simply equalise. It is more nuanced than that. Nor can you just eq out any resonances. Some, yes, most no. In many DPS crossover systems the crossover is mathematically identical to the usual analog crossovers. What you do get, with more compute capability, is the ability to synergisticly design the system. Driver design can concentrate on better performance in areas that DSP cannot help with, and can do so even when it degrades an element of performance that the DSP can ameliorate. The final result can be better than any other approach, especially for the price. All designs are cost constrained in some way or another. What makes for good engineering is a matter of using the tools and techniques at hand within the cost cap to best effect. It wasn't that long ago that DSP was science fiction for speaker design. Even analog active crossovers were viewed with suspicion. And of course there are things you can do with DSP that you cannot do in any other way. In the end you can see drivers such as a JBL compression driver that uses DSP to exactly cancel flexture modes in the diaphragm, yielding otherwise impossibly high performance.
The idea that DSP is some sort of poor cousin used to band-aid lesser designs is missing the point. If it has been so used, it is becuse the designer didn't get the point, not because DSP is an intrinsically inferior approach.

 

[Chrise36]

I'm still catching up witht he posts here, but these things are just under £3,000 the pair inc VAT from Thomann

https://www.thomann.de/gb/neumann_k...yVd3qfNg_7RohDBVSLluR8GlClcmyKM4aAg16EALw_wcB

I appreciate the looks aren't exactly waf friendly and a veneered wooden sleeve and grille would add hugely to the price, but they're not that big and on visuals alone, they MUST be better than a UK-centric passive system from the usual UK suspects.

Such a crying shame that domestic purchasers relying on high end dealers won't be able to experience the likes of these and the dealer alternative would be some inferior passive speakers and expensive amps based on old fashioned designs that sell on reputation rather than actual performance (UK based observers will know what I mean )

Well we have not seen any of the better pro uk speakers measured here yet but one observation is that the midrange is used in a limited band vs my reference midrange and the woofer is crossed high which is why there is some distortion in the low mids.Otherwise they seem to be excellent and for the price they are hard to beat with a passive system.

 

[Pearljam5000]

"Cabinet material: Polyurethane front, wooden sleeve, aluminum electronics panel"
I wish they were 100% aluminum like the KH120

 

[F1308]

"Cabinet material: Polyurethane front, wooden sleeve, aluminum electronics panel"
I wish they were 100% aluminum like the KH120

2021 is around the corner...one never knows.

 

[617]

I suspect one element in why the speaker doesn't have a DSP based crossover is that they didn't want to add any further latency to the system. For mixing latency is not an issue, but for monitoring during tracking it could be of significance. Given the market, this is going to be a potential deal breaker for many customers.
I would say that there is some mis-charaterisation of how DSP can be used in speakers. It is a poor design that uses DSP to simply equalise. It is more nuanced than that. Nor can you just eq out any resonances. Some, yes, most no. In many DPS crossover systems the crossover is mathematically identical to the usual analog crossovers. What you do get, with more compute capability, is the ability to synergisticly design the system. Driver design can concentrate on better performance in areas that DSP cannot help with, and can do so even when it degrades an element of performance that the DSP can ameliorate. The final result can be better than any other approach, especially for the price. All designs are cost constrained in some way or another. What makes for good engineering is a matter of using the tools and techniques at hand within the cost cap to best effect. It wasn't that long ago that DSP was science fiction for speaker design. Even analog active crossovers were viewed with suspicion. And of course there are things you can do with DSP that you cannot do in any other way. In the end you can see drivers such as a JBL compression driver that uses DSP to exactly cancel flexture modes in the diaphragm, yielding otherwise impossibly high performance.
The idea that DSP is some sort of poor cousin used to band-aid lesser designs is missing the point. If it has been so used, it is becuse the designer didn't get the point, not because DSP is an intrinsically inferior approach.

Yes, DSP can do tons of things which can't be done passively. Shifting responses in time is a big one. Just being able to delay a driver a few ms can help drivers play in phase for better off axis response. Can't really be done passively.

Another useful thing you can't do passively is any kind of automated correction, where the speaker takes an input from a mic and uses it to calculate a correction curve.

Dsp can also have amplitude dependent eq, to prevent over excursion and to maintain accuracy, most often in the form of a limiter.

Dsp, most importantly, makes user eq adjustments much easier. It's not practical to have a knob for continuously adjustable baffle step compensation to get the mid bass right, but is trivial with dsp. Kali and other inexpensive speakers just use a few dip switches.

We complain about dsp implementations in inexpensive products because they seem cheap and dirty with cheap amps and cheap amps to cover for cheap drivers, but in a professional setting where accuracy is a priority, it's the only viable approach and has been for a long time.

 

[Pearljam5000]

2021 is around the corner...one never knows.

Do we know for sure they're releasing a new model in 2021?

 

[Pepperjack]

I was a bit confused regarding temperature, is that the temperature of the ambient temp or the temp of the drivers? I don’t really care too much actually bought a pair from a user a while back and am happy with them, but I was imagining if the speakers were in a cold garage and then the room temporarily heated and then lost heat quickly it might never have really even heated the speaker throughout? (Kind of like an under cooked chicken) for that matter I am not clear on how well baked it should be anyway. Or was the speaker indoors at a higher temp and then brought to the garage for testing? Like o said I am not particularly concerned but wasn’t clear on exactly how the temperature issue was addressed so am a bit curious.

 

[Labjr]

Nice! Cheaper by the pound than their condenser mics! Especially the old ones!

 

[okok]

above kh310 you got kh420

but kh420 got high distortion than the last gen o410

o410 is the king among their whole line

nuemann used to publish ALL measurement datas for their speakers

 

[Ron Texas]

Thank you for another ride on the Klippel @amirm. What you are doing here is top of the line measurement. As for the $4400 price, it's not that bad considering the electronics are included.

 

[Pepperjack]

Using a time analogy I am more inclined to consider the Olive preference score as the day rather than hour from my perspective.
It seems to miss a huge amoutnt of what is important to me in a fairly large room sitting between 11 and 21 feet from the speakers in the listening area, though the rearmost seats are normally only used watching a film.
Almost all of the good scoring speakers so far would be completely hopeless in here
Even these.

Personally I feel that the olive score by itself is totally inadequate to compare to time. Particularly for a newb. I think it’s more of a “dead” “alive” and “healthy” score. Howevee it seems that most of the people here know so much about speakers that they can automatically group speakers by other important parameters and then use the score to compare speakers that meet those understood limitations to gather more useful data, this perhaps making it more of an hour hand when one has a really well established baseline to evaluate the scores with.

For example, if I am hiring someone I first need to evaluate if he is alive or not and would prefer that he be healthy. However, if I haven’t even divided them up into accountants or wrestlers yet then that still won’t help me much. If I then select someone with a high score assuming it will be great I may end up with a professional dog groomer to perform my heart surgery. But, at least he was alive.

 

[Xyrium]

And the KH 420.

And the KH810...because none of these should be without one....or two....

 

[F1308]

Do we know for sure they're releasing a new model in 2021?

All I said was that, precisely, one never knows...