Neumann KH 310A Review (Powered Monitor)

[Vintage57]

I’ll provide prepaid shipping labels for as many as I can get ‍

 

[audiomaestro]

Just an idea. Maybe Amir could get a guitar or violin, play a scale very slowly or some chords, record it via a flat mic, then compare the playback through future tested speakers as a final "tonality" check test? I think the measurements are 100% right on the money for electronics, but not quite for speakers.

 

[smcc]

It has possibly been discovered, thanks to user smcc, that the conflicting subjective opinions about the KH310 being distorted or harsh in the treble may in fact be due to some of them having damaged tweeters. (which may be common since both of his were damaged).

Oh and just to add to that...I did an install with a bunch of KH120s...and one of them arrived with the tweeter like that...brand new in a sealed box...I can't find the measurements...but it was a similar distortion plot...also I wandered back into the place a few times years later, and by ear, I reckon they're all gone south tbh...

 

[smcc]

You can understand why some people might miss that it's damaged...there's a calibrated measurement I did of the dodgy KH310A, just before return...earthworks M30 microphone at 1m...calibrated with a B&K calibrator...94dB @1m....there's plenty of speakers that measure that bad at spec, lol...it also failed rather slowly, when I first noticed it, it wasn't as bad...

 

[FrantzM]

Just an idea. Maybe Amir could get a guitar or violin, play a scale very slowly or some chords, record it via a flat mic, then compare the playback through future tested speakers as a final "tonality" check test? I think the measurements are 100% right on the money for electronics, but not quite for speakers.

Here is the thing: The way the reviewer perceives and evaluate the sound depends on her/his present state of mind, mood, likes and a long list of bias-inducers. The microphones/measuring chain varies little. The results are reliable. Any discrepancy that is within human perception limits (or not), will show in the measurements, repeatedly, reliably, not so, with a human subject/listener...

Peace.

 

[audiomaestro]

Here is the thing: The way the reviewer perceives and evaluate the sound depends on her/his present state of mind, mood, likes and a long list of bias-inducers. The microphones/measuring chain varies little. The results are reliable. Any discrepancy that is within human perception limits (or not), will show in the measurements, repeatedly, reliably, not so, with a human subject/listener...

Peace.

I understand your point, but you may have misunderstood mine. What I'm suggesting is for Amir to actually have a reference live instrument in his room. Playing recorded music from albums and interpreting how it should sound is not good enough nor reliable, some for the reasons you stated. There should be a physical guitar or violin in his hand, play the instrument live, and then play a recording of it immediately after through a speaker and compare if the tonality matches the live instrument. It doesn't matter how he hears things that day or what kind of mood he's in, if what is coming out of the speaker matches the tonality of what is in his hand. (his ears will hear both the instrument and the recording of it identical, regardless of how he hears things, if its a faithful reproduction) There are some speakers I can confirm which he gave a recommended rating to (with good measurements) which don't have good tonality, and would never be good enough for me to mix guitar tracks on. I think having proper tonality is less important for electronic/techno music, though. This should all be accounted for in reviews.

I'll blindly purchase electronics which have good measurements, but it's not enough for speakers.

 

[dominikz]

I understand your point, but you may have misunderstood mine. What I'm suggesting is for Amir to actually have a reference live instrument in his room. Playing recorded music from albums and interpreting how it should sound is not good enough nor reliable, some for the reasons you stated. There should be a physical guitar or violin in his hand, play the instrument live, and then play a recording of it immediately after through a speaker and compare if the tonality matches the live instrument. It doesn't matter how he hears things that day or what kind of mood he's in, if what is coming out of the speaker matches the tonality of what is in his hand. There are some speakers I can confirm which he gave a recommended rating to (with good measurements) which don't have good tonality, and would never be good enough for me to mix guitar tracks on. I think having proper tonality is less important for electronic/techno music, though. This should all be accounted for in reviews.

I'll blindly purchase electronics which have good measurements, but it's not enough for speakers.

Let me just note that one-microphone in-room recording of an acoustic instrument reproduced via a conventional front-firing loudspeaker can never sound exactly as the real thing. The reasons are many, e.g.:

1. One microphone cannot sample the entire soundfield generated by the instrument, nor its directivity characteristics
2. Room sound will be captured to some extent, but without any directional information related to individual reflections
3. The loudspeaker has a different directivity pattern vs any real instrument (which also have different directivity patterns between themselves)
4. The room-sound on the recording will be reproduced, and more reflections will be added on top during reproduction
5. The multi-dimensional radiation of the instrument will be in a sense "spatially compressed" in the recording, without any directional or spatial information that could later be reproduced

Sound engineers go to great lengths to try and make realistic recordings despite of the above complications - but it is not easy (as evidenced by many IMO quite poor professional recordings).
It would IMHO be unfair to ask of Amir to try and do this for every review. Also, it would be very hard to standardize the whole procedure and make it reliable and repeatable. The measurements, on the other hand, are both standardized and repeatable - but require non-trivial interpretation.

 

[HerbertWest]

If someone is telling me they hear something which the current measurements can not back up, then I'm going to ask around and figure out why.

Investigating anecdotes is a good practice to uncover latent defects. however, while the trigger for the investigation might be anecdotal, the investigation itself should rely on hard data, and not anecdotes without quantifiable aspects. In this case, with all due respect, we are just collecting few anecdotes.
IMHO we don’t know what that “reviewer” heard, and probably it is ok as it does not matter - it is his subjective opinion; also, if that review was *really* due to a blown tweeter, and the reviewer did not check or realize that, he might have other problems to solve.

 

[audiomaestro]

Let me just note that one-microphone in-room recording of an acoustic instrument reproduced via a conventional front-firing loudspeaker can never sound exactly as the real thing. The reasons are many, e.g.:

1. One microphone cannot sample the entire soundfield generated by the instrument, nor its directivity characteristics
2. Room sound will be captured to some extent, but without any directional information related to individual reflections
3. The loudspeaker has a different directivity pattern vs any real instrument (which also have different directivity patterns between themselves)
4. The room-sound on the recording will be reproduced, and more reflections will be added on top during reproduction
5. The multi-dimensional radiation of the instrument will be in a sense "spatially compressed" in the recording, without any directional or spatial information that could later be reproduced

Sound engineers go to great lengths to try and make realistic recordings despite of the above complications - but it is not easy (as evidenced by many IMO quite poor professional recordings).
It would IMHO be unfair to ask of Amir to try and do this for every review. Also, it would be very hard to standardize the whole procedure and make it reliable and repeatable. The measurements, on the other hand, are both standardized and repeatable - but require non-trivial interpretation.

I appreciate your informed reply.

It should still be better than listening and judging speakers based on album recordings, though? For example, we can easily recognize our loved ones voices over the telephone or over a headset, even if we didn't hear them for many months. There's something about the tonality which we easily recognize after years of hearing their voices. On the other hand, sometimes when we talk to those same people on a cheap speaker phone we might say "Oh, the sound is odd, I didn't recognize your voice". That was an extreme analogy, but you get the idea. While not perfect, I still think it's better than doing subjective listening test with albums. Maybe it's something loudspeaker designers should better attempt to do, because some of the "good speakers" fail horribly at it. Or maybe what I'm asking is really next to impossible. It was worth shooting the idea out there.

 

[tmtomh]

Here we have a stellar speaker, one of the best measure here, yet, subjective opinions are slowly, insidiously working to raise doubts about its lofty and frankly exceptional level of performance... ASR came to be exactly to reject those "reviews" in which subjectivity abounds and conflict of interests reign.
This sort of noise is polluting the debate... I am annoyed.
...

Peace.

I get what you are saying, but at the same time I think it's well within the ASR culture to investigate, or at least hypothesize about, empirical observations. Of course one of the strongest hypotheses about many subjective observations like this is that there's no objective truth to them! But still, even in that case this discussion has helped clarify, for example, that the distortion of the 310's tweeter (when in good working order, at least) is very unlikely to be the source of perceived treble elevation or harshness. So that's one issue that's more or less sorted out by this discussion.

 

[audiomaestro]

"A big soft "boring" sound, with nothing hyped up, neutral but a tad on the warm/dark side?" That's about right...except the switch at the back for the top end can bring them from dark to bright...also I wouldn't call them soft, just neutral...they're great speakers for mixing/tracking, you can hear everything.

Honestly, for the money, I don't think they can be matched...let alone beat.

I was going to go for the 8341A...but the additional 3ms latency was a turnoff for me; I like that these are analog...also (I think) the 310s are a bit more powerful...and it's an extra 2 grand for the 8341s...tbh if it wasn't for the latency I might have gone for the 8341; I love the imaging from coaxial type speakers, it's just not the same with any non-coaxial design, I don't care what anyone says...if I was ever going to upgrade from these (unlikely) it would have to be something like that, probably Ones...if I was going to go mad and 8351Bs, I'd have to hear the Danley Studio 2 before though...

I don't plan on playing them so loud, so I think the tweeters would last forever on my set if I get a pair. I will certainly not buy them used, unless they have a warranty, based on all this information you provided. It was really helpful and probably solved this "harsh treble" mystery. It was very odd how some said the treble sound smooth and soft, then a few out of the blue "its so harsh and distorted" comments. That's why I asked around here.

Yeah, based on measurements, I eliminated hype and narrowed down my choices to the Neumann KH310 and the Genelec 8341A/8351B's. The ATC's are really something special in tonality, but I feel they are overpriced. The Neumann's are half the price and there's a point of diminishing returns here. If I'm happy with the Sennheisher HD650, I will be happy with the KH 310, right? Excuse me if I'm a bit redundant here. Thank you for your time on the measurements and insight.

 

[dominikz]

For example, we can easily recognize our loved ones voices over the telephone or over a headset, even if we didn't hear them for many months. There's something about the tonality which we easily recognize after years of hearing their voices. On the other hand, sometimes when we talk to those same people on a cheap speaker phone we might say "Oh, the sound is odd, I didn't recognize your voice". That was an extreme analogy, but you get the idea.

While we can normally recognize a voice over the phone, it should be appreciated that the 'tonality' is indeed modified in a phone call when compared to the same person speaking in a room.

While I'm not an expert in this sub-field, my assumption is that the mechanism by which we recognize voices is related more to the formants of the voice and phrasing/diction of the speaker rather than absolute 'tonality'. Adding linear distortion (band-passing audio is normal in telecom systems) will not change the formant content, it will just linearly shape the existing spectrum, so we can in most cases still recognize the voice.

Similarly, we can probably differentiate between two very different sounding guitars based on their in-room recordings even if overall tonality of the recordings themselves is skewed - because the harmonic content of the guitar spectrum is preserved, even if spectrum is linearly shaped in some way by the recording/reproduction chains.

The phone call is however overall not a bad analogy - but it is IMO actually showing how well human hearing apparatus adapts to (and disregards) distortion in search of useful information

 

[mightycicadalord]

Here we have a stellar speaker, one of the best measure here, yet, subjective opinions are slowly, insidiously working to raise doubts about its lofty and frankly exceptional level of performance... ASR came to be exactly to reject those "reviews" in which subjectivity abounds and conflict of interests reign.
This sort of noise is polluting the debate... I am annoyed.
...

Peace.

To be fair the guy in the video did share some measurements of the issues he described.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

Please, not again this endless discussion about measurements. There is this e.g. this nice thread about it (certainly also about 1,000 more): https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...are-measurements-everything-or-nothing.29062/
If after reading the 127 pages you think you still want to contribute something substantial to the discussion, feel free to do so there.

 

[audiomaestro]

Please, not again this endless discussion about measurements. There is this e.g. this nice thread about it (certainly also about 1,000 more): https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...are-measurements-everything-or-nothing.29062/
If after reading the 127 pages you think you still want to contribute something substantial to the discussion, feel free to do so there.

Apologies! I didn't intend to make it a thread about measurements. I was just trying to figure out why some stated the KH 310 had harsh treble, because they are at the top of my list. I think we can move on now, after the helpful input from user smcc.

It's my first time seeing that linked thread. Interesting that Amir himself stated measurements matter more for electronics and less for speakers. That's exactly the same conclusion I came to. It's why I will blindly buy electronics with good measurements, but not so fast with speakers. I wish there was a better way to do listening test, since that 20 - 30% is critical. It's why I was shooting ideas about live instruments vs playback, but I guess it's not feasible.

I have a scale for how much measurements matter for each category of products:

DACs: 100%
Amplifiers (headphone and speaker): 80 to 90% due to variability of available power. Hard to internalize how much power is available/enough without listening tests.
Speakers: 70 to 80%
Headphones: 50 to 80% (measurements too variable)

This is why you see me do listening tests for the last two categories and half of second (headphone amps).

 

[mightycicadalord]

Please, not again this endless discussion about measurements. There is this e.g. this nice thread about it (certainly also about 1,000 more): https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...are-measurements-everything-or-nothing.29062/
If after reading the 127 pages you think you still want to contribute something substantial to the discussion, feel free to do so there.

This is out of place in relation to the discussion.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

This is out of place in relation to the discussion.

I didn't mean you. I could have been more specific, but I think it came through.

I found the part about the tweeters interesting and already thought about trying those distortion measurements on all my Neumann speakers...

 

[Pearljam5000]

2 things :
1. Tonality is everything and I'm not sure how much measurements help in this case, you *have to * listen to a speaker to know if you like it.
2. My KH120 tweeters distorted like crazy at high volume

 

[audiomaestro]

Oh and just to add to that...I did an install with a bunch of KH120s...and one of them arrived with the tweeter like that...brand new in a sealed box...I can't find the measurements...but it was a similar distortion plot...also I wandered back into the place a few times years later, and by ear, I reckon they're all gone south tbh...

Since you have a lot of experience with both the KH 310 and KH 120's, how similar is the voicing/tonality between the two? I'm not concerned about bass, I can always add a sub. I'm under the impression that in order to get the stellar mids of the KH310... that I need to actually get the KH310.

 

[YSC]

I certainly recognize the KH310 to be a good speaker (its at the top of my list) and one which has some of the best measurements, but it's up to the individual whether that is sufficient to claim a speaker as stellar. It's certainly in the right direction, though. There are numerous speakers on the recommended list which have bad tonality. If a speaker measures wonderfully, but makes a Stradivari sound like a cheap fiddle during playback, then we're not quite there yet... I don't care about how low the bass goes if it can't do tonality right. On the other hand, there are speakers which do not measure as well yet do not lose that magic during playback. I don't know why this is, but I'm open ears if anyone can shed some insight.

In the 18th century, Ignaz Semmelweis was put into an insane asylum for suggesting its wise to wash ones hands to avoid illness... If someone is telling me they hear something which the current measurements can not back up, then I'm going to ask around and figure out why. It has possibly been discovered, thanks to user smcc, that the conflicting subjective opinions about the KH310 being distorted or harsh in the treble may in fact be due to some of them having damaged tweeters. (which may be common since both of his were damaged) Without the "insidious" discussion "polluting the debate", we may have never learned the reason for those extreme conflicting opinions that went against the posted measurements. I'm thankful if that is the case, and can't wait to get my pair!

from my experience with my 8030C with the dip switches and then adding the 7040A with REW and EQ tuning, I would say itt's 90% of the time due to the speaker - speaker interaction and speaker - room interaction in action. say if I put thte 8030C in anechoic flat setting and place in my computed desk very close to the front wall. the front wall boost in the bass region creating 3 huge peaks at 60, 130 and 200hz of 4-6db and then a huge null at 90hz and 225hz, it makes the music being boomy yet missing some mid - upper bass to low mids. also the speaker interference causing some nasty nulls in the upper mids. and it kinda sounded ok but boomy and tonally incorrect. then I use the bass switches to counter the 150-200hz peaks and theh some roll off to make bass more neutral, bang it suddenly sounded so correct.