Neumann KH 310A Review (Powered Monitor)

[dfuller]

They are kh420 competitors (price-wise, so better to compare with that).

Yep, though they're definitely sized and intended for use closer to 310s (they're a little bit bigger, and because of the monstrously huge ferrite motors that ATC uses quite a bit heavier).

 

[aac]

Yep, though they're definitely sized and intended for use closer to 310s (they're a little bit bigger, and because of the monstrously huge ferrite motors that ATC uses quite a bit heavier).

KH420 horn section can be rotated and recommended listening distance is 1.5-3 meters, while kh310 is 1-2.5 meters. I'd say the overlap is definitely there. Even more so for home users that don't have a mixing console or another surface like that. Size difference is here, true.
Those ATCs are a competitor to genelec 8361 in similar size/price category then, if we go by "speakers that asr likes" list.
Is there any justification in using ferrite instead of neo these days performance-wise?
It'll probably be impossible to compare them objectively, as ATC never provides any data, could've at least measured distortion if they insist on their drivers being good. In resolution magazine it looks like atc distortion is lower almost all regions except 100-300 hz, where neumann is better.

 

[dfuller]

Is there any justification in using ferrite instead of neo these days performance-wise?

In some situations yes - most neo mags demagnetize at relatively low temperatures so high power handling is not a particularly fantastic use case for most neo alloys. I think with ATC it's a combination of them being used to how ferrite behaves, far less chance of it failing prematurely, and sintered ferrite magnets being way cheaper than neo even given the massively lower gauss per pound. They do use neodymium for their tweeters though, IIRC.

 

[aac]

Drivers in things like jbl m2 or even 708p seem to be fine with power handling and they are neo. Can't say anything about Neumann.
I don't think "price" of the material is the problem, it's not cheap drivers we are talking about

 

[Pearljam5000]

They are kh420 competitors (price-wise, so better to compare with that).

Only price wise
Everything else is different, I don't really think you can compare a 10 inch woofer to a 6.5/7 inch woofer (not sure by the specs what exactly the SCM25 has)
Also a tower vs a (big) bookshelf speaker
The layout of the drives of kh310 and SCM25 is similar.
You can compare KH420 to Focal Trio 11 and 8361A but I don't feel SCM25 is comparable regardless of price

 

[aac]

Only price wise
Everything else is different, I don't really think you can compare a 10 inch woofer to a 6.5/7 inch woofer (not sure by the specs what exactly the SCM25 has)
Also a tower vs a (big) bookshelf speaker
The layout of the drives of kh310 and SCM25 is similar.
You can compare KH420 to Focal Trio 11 and 8361A but I don't feel SCM25 is comparable regardless of price

I can see overlap in distances meant for 310 and 420 and atc don't provide info. For those who are ok with some extra space consumed they certainly can be compared (if we go for "atc vs neumann" lineup comparison).

 

[Pearljam5000]

 

[NeoZs99]

I went ahead and bought a pair. I'm happy I took the bullet.. The Neumanns are really effortless. The only downside is that I now tend to listen higher to my usual listening levels. Maybe I'll get the kh750 in the future

 

[Ricci]

Excellent review.

A friend of mine has a pair of these in his studio. He kept raving about them. I didn't expect them to sound as good as they did, but after many hours of mixing through them I really am impressed with the engineering, design tradeoffs and polish these have. Especially considering the relatively compact size. With support from a good sub, they put out more sound with better composure than I expected too.

 

[CtheArgie]

I went ahead and bought a pair. I'm happy I took the bullet.. The Neumanns are really effortless. The only downside is that I now tend to listen higher to my usual listening levels. Maybe I'll get the kh750 in the future

Get the KH750! I am so delighted I did!

 

[dfuller]

I went ahead and bought a pair. I'm happy I took the bullet.. The Neumanns are really effortless. The only downside is that I now tend to listen higher to my usual listening levels. Maybe I'll get the kh750 in the future

The KH750 is very restricted in terms of SPL at low frequencies, so I would recommend either a KH810 or a Rythmik F12 or L12 instead.

 

[CtheArgie]

I don't think the Rhythmiks have a high pass filter in them. I think you get better sound removing the frequencies below 80 Hz in the KH310s.
You may be better off with 2 x KH750 if you need "louder".
The available "PEQ" amps from Rhythmic are only RCA input, no XLRs.

 

[dfuller]

I don't think the Rhythmiks have a high pass filter in them. I think you get better sound removing the frequencies below 80 Hz in the KH310s.
You may be better off with 2 x KH750 if you need "louder".
The available "PEQ" amps from Rhythmic are only RCA input, no XLRs.

They don't - but they leave budget for a DSP crossover like a MiniDSP Flex.

 

[TimWellens]

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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So glad I found you guys! Wading thru the forum I’m happy to see so many specialists

Last year I bought a pair of Neumann KH310a’s and o boy,how I love them!
I really hurt my budget to buy them (money is tight I have no shame sharing this) but I never regretted it.(I come from 25 years working with Alesis Monitor One’s you can imagine the positive shock I got when first hearing the Neumann’s)
Now the sad part,it really keeps me up at night..:

Been playing around with REW for the last couple of days doing alot of measurements
to try to better my room acoustics.

I made a very stupid mistake,while playing various test tones I accidently played the J-Test tone. (See screenshot)

It was only after 7-8 seconds playing it at mid/high volume I saw the red letters saying NOT TO BE PLAYED THRU LOUDSPEAKERS,very high level and high frequency! CAN DESTROY TWEETERS!
(With mid/high volume I mean Apollo twin on max going into RAM heritage studio controller which was set on 6/10)
O boy,did I just wore out my Neumann KH310A tweeters? Are they damaged? I hear no difference but is it possible I wore them out thus loosing high end Freqs? Can I still thrust them for mastering?
I read in the manual they are thermal limited,would the speaker have shut down when getting too much signal?
I know there is protective circuitry inside these monitors but should I worry now?

I really don’t feel good,it’s in my mind from morning till evening for 2 weeks now.I don’t have money to buy another pair but I need to trust my monitors which is not the case now.
Maybe I could send it to Neumann (Sennheiser) to get new tweeters placed but the Kh310a’s are sealed monitors,doesn’t it lose quality once the speakers are opened to change the tweeters?
Sorry for the noob questions but I’m in pain.

Thanks a lot for your comments I really appreciate

Tim the depressed one

 

[Bamboszek]

Don't worry, warning is manly for users of passive speakers with separate amplifiers.
If it would be too loud, limiter would kick in (Neumann logo goes red) and it will protect speakers.
Actually I would be more concerned about hearing damage. If it wasn't painfully loud for you, speakers are completely safe.

 

[TimWellens]

Don't worry, warning is manly for users of passive speakers with separate amplifiers.
If it would be too loud, limiter would kick in (Neumann logo goes red) and it will protect speakers.
Actually I would be more concerned about hearing damage. If it wasn't painfully loud for you, speakers are completely safe.

Thank you so much for your response! In fact I felt a ‘sizzle’ in my ears (only high frequency as it was a Jtest ) that made me look at the screen to see what was going on and only then I saw the red warning text.I’m a bit color blind so that is maybe why I made the mistake.It didn’t hurt but the sizzle in my ears kept going on for a few minutes look listening to too loud music)
Thanks again maybe I can sleep better tonight
(I also did a self made hearing/monitor test using LOGIC PRO X and sweeping up the frequency till 20khz,I could hear the signal change till 16khz which I think is normal for a man of 48 producing music since he was a teenager).
Man you don’t realise how happy you made me.
Thanks again!!

 

[TimWellens]

Thank you so much for your response! In fact I felt a ‘sizzle’ in my ears (only high frequency as it was a Jtest ) that made me look at the screen to see what was going on and only then I saw the red warning text.I’m a bit color blind so that is maybe why I made the mistake.It didn’t hurt but the sizzle in my ears kept going on for a few minutes look listening to too loud music)
Thanks again maybe I can sleep better tonight
(I also did a self made hearing/monitor test using LOGIC PRO X and sweeping up the frequency till 20khz,I could hear the signal change till 16khz which I think is normal for a man of 48 producing music since he was a teenager).
Man you don’t realise how happy you made me.
Thanks again!!

I want to add,the signal was not loud (you almost don’t hear the test signal!) but it is very high frequency has you feel it in your ears! That’s why I kept playing it for 8 secs at mid/high volume

 

[tmtomh]

Now that Amir has reviewed the Genelec 8361a, how would folks say these 310s stack up? I realize the Neumanns are less than half the price of the Genelecs. From what I can tell, the main things you give up from the Genelecs if you get these 310s are:

- A degree of power/SPL
- About an octave of low-end frequency extension - 30Hz vs about 50Hz
- Low distortion in the 50-70Hz range (Neumann has higher distortion there)
- Digital inputs

Does that sound correct? Have I missed something?

 

[dfuller]

- About an octave of low-end frequency extension - 30Hz vs about 50Hz

Are you looking at this right? The Neumanns have an F6 of about 30 Hz.

- A degree of power/SPL

Yeah, still loud as nuts without sounding distorted though. I question how loud people are listening if KH310s run out of steam above 60-70hz.

- Low distortion in the 50-70Hz range (Neumann has higher distortion there)

Yeah, if the KH310s have any real weak point it's their bass SPL limit being pretty low.

- Digital inputs

KH310D is a thing, but they're a *lot* of money more than the 310A without any real benefit since it's just a D/A stage.

 

[sweetchaos]

LFX (bass extension at -6db) is:

Genelec 8361A is 27hz
Neumann KH 310A is 30hz.

Just clarifying...