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Neumann KH120 II Monitor Review

Rate this monitor speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 3 0.7%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 3 0.7%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 37 8.1%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 412 90.5%

  • Total voters
    455
These resonances at low levels around 300-500Hz are usually cabinet/panel related.

They appear worse than they sound, because they are usually buried beneath the noise floor of the listening room. As SPL increases, the vibrational modes of the walls changes.

It takes Herculean efforts to eliminate all cabinet resonances, and really drives up the cost of manufacturing and end-cost for the consumer. When cabinets are REALLY bad, you get things like this-


Enclosure of KH120ii is very well controlled and not resonant at all - I would say less as the old model. When i have time i will do a few measurements with acceleration sensor.
But as my measurements don't show the THD peak from amirm I don't think it's a normal problem of this speaker.
 
I'd have question the sanity of anyone saying DSP is "cheating". Lol. But I digress...The conversation has moved on.
Haha I agree, but I can think of a few people that are actually pretty knowledgeable, such as possibly the person from GR Research. There are people that swear they can hear differences from good cables vs $1,000 dollar cables, DAC chips that measure differently below human threshold etc.
 
Do
Haha I agree, but I can think of a few people that are actually pretty knowledgeable, such as possibly the person from GR Research. There are people that swear they can hear differences from good cables vs $1,000 dollar cables, DAC chips that measure differently below human threshold etc.
I find people who claim such things either have more money than sense or are trying to sell you something. Lol. My pet peeve is people claiming they can hear a difference after burn in...
 
Yeah, Genelec and Neumann do both measure each speaker at the factory and tune EQ accordingly. That's why they don't do pair matching, the KH 120 II matches every single speaker of the model made within +/-0.45dB(great for multichannel!).

If you tried to duplicate this yourself on cheaper speakers with data from one speaker you run into the unit variance problem. It's still usually an improvement but you can't match Neumann that way.
I should add that my ADAM monitors seem to be similar in that regard. I have 3 pairs total of ADAMs. They all measure essentially identical to their twin on and off axis. I have a triplet of the ARTist 5 and one measures slightly different at 10kHz over a small fraction of an octave (I use it as my center channel speaker even though I’m sure there’s no way I could hear the difference). I’m not sure how they achieved this 10 years ago, but I sort of assumed they were individually DSPed. I’m not even sure the AX series has the capability though. I don’t think they do. So maybe I just got lucky, but none of the passive speakers I’ve measured, well come to think of it none of the other active speakers I’ve measured have been that close. I’ve measured Mackie, JBL, BEHRINGER, and KRK active monitors. All the other active monitors also rattled when I did the sine sweep, but the ADAMs and all the passives didn’t. I don’t really think it’s luck judging by the competition. There must be some serious QA going into these better studio monitor designs.
 
Enclosure of KH120ii is very well controlled and not resonant at all - I would say less as the old model. When i have time i will do a few measurements with acceleration sensor.
But as my measurements don't show the THD peak from amirm I don't think it's a normal problem of this speaker.

I agree. We can make a mountain out of a molehill.

PM me if you want to discuss minor panel/fixing/mount resonances further
 
When you visit a self-proclaimed "professional" audio forum called GearSpace, you always see this speaker being bashed. But by looking at these measurement values, you can understand what kind of people gather in that professional audio forum...
 
When you visit a self-proclaimed "professional" audio forum called GearSpace, you always see this speaker being bashed. But by looking at these measurement values, you can understand what kind of people gather in that professional audio forum...
There's also a very strong ATC fetish there, the funniest thing is they also consider this forum as lab coats personel cosplay and force themselves to not measure stuff because you know, ears are the only measurement instrument they need. ATC isn't publishing any meaningful data for a reason and it resonates with them very much. I removed my account there after reading too many descriptions of a word clock generators and cables sound properties
 
There's also a very strong ATC fetish there, the funniest thing is they also consider this forum as lab coats personel cosplay and force themselves to not measure stuff because you know, ears are the only measurement instrument they need. ATC isn't publishing any meaningful data for a reason and it resonates with them very much. I removed my account there after reading too many descriptions of a word clock generators and cables sound properties

Artists rely on their senses. There is a mix of people on GearSpace, but a substantial part are musicians making music and they favor gear that make the sound they like. That is not necessarily a correct or true sound, but what fits their music. So opinions on GearSpace is relevant if you want to make music in the same style/genre of a said person on that forum. That is a different approach from hifi. But there is of cause also people on that forum that look for a neutral sound also...
 
There is a mix of people on GearSpace, but a substantial part are musicians making music and they favor gear that make the sound they like. That is not necessarily a correct or true sound, but what fits their music.
This is an absolutely terrible idea if you want to make music for other people to listen to, though. Because they won't be using whatever speaker you chose specifically for however it sounds for your music.
 
Artists rely on their senses. There is a mix of people on GearSpace, but a substantial part are musicians making music and they favor gear that make the sound they like. That is not necessarily a correct or true sound, but what fits their music. So opinions on GearSpace is relevant if you want to make music in the same style/genre of a said person on that forum. That is a different approach from hifi. But there is of cause also people on that forum that look for a neutral sound also...
I'm talking about so called engineers and especially mastering engineers, which when confronted with blind test or measurement of any kind cover their ears and scream "if it sound good it is good". I found quite a few times major problems with plugins just by testing them in plugin doctor, like for example generating DC or oversampling not working at all, but when they see plugin doctor or any graph they just panic. I'm a sound guy too, had GS account for 15 years, recorded/mixed/mastered more than 500 albums, but there's a border I just don't want to cross
 
I'm talking about so called engineers and especially mastering engineers, which when confronted with blind test or measurement of any kind cover their ears and scream "if it sound good it is good". I found quite a few times major problems with plugins just by testing them in plugin doctor, like for example generating DC or oversampling not working at all, but when they see plugin doctor or any graph they just panic. I'm a sound guy too, had GS account for 15 years, recorded/mixed/mastered more than 500 albums, but there's a border I just don't want to cross
I guess it is a mix of experience / "brand" / pride in that case. They are used to working by ears and have mixed and sold a lot of successful albums and trust that what they hear is good no matter how it measures. But as for mastering it does sound weird cause in my book that should be about reproducing the original recording as true to the original as possible (even if the orginal recording sounded crap).
 
This is an absolutely terrible idea if you want to make music for other people to listen to, though. Because they won't be using whatever speaker you chose specifically for however it sounds for your music.
I was curious about the speakers a No1 artist uses in recording studio,so I got the screen shot from Lewis Capaldi documentary.
Can anyone tell?



Rec.PNG
 
I guess it is a mix of experience / "brand" / pride in that case. They are used to working by ears and have mixed and sold a lot of successful albums and trust that what they hear is good no matter how it measures. But as for mastering it does sound weird cause in my book that should be about reproducing the original recording as true to the original as possible (even if the orginal recording sounded crap).
From my almost 2 decades of experience I think majority of mastering engineers aren't worth the price and this profession will die first because of the AI. I started doing mastering by myself to save my musician friends from destroying their music 10 years ago and now it's a big part of my job but I won't cry after it. I have a subscription to Mix With The Masters website and there's a lot of video material about "top tier" mastering, it's just horrible. Pure voodoo with explaining how 0.05dB boost at 20Hz is giving the music foundation it lacked, I'm not exaggerating, it's in the video from Sterling Sound studio, one of the most famous facilities (with ATC monitors of course).
Here's a cool experiment about it
 
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I was curious about the speakers a No1 artist uses in recording studio,so I got the screen shot from Lewis Capaldi documentary.
Can anyone tell?



View attachment 299694
ATC, ATC and ProAC, but that's a recording studio and those almost never sound or measure that good because of the big board in front of the ears, window behind the speakers etc. It's a compromise within a compromise, near field monitors you see are there because mains that high are usually not even turned on
 
ATC, ATC and ProAC, but that's a recording studio and those almost never sound or measure that good because of the big board in front of the ears, window behind the speakers etc. It's a compromise within a compromise, near field monitors you see are there because mains that high are usually not even turned on
And he was wearing some Sony headphones in the scene back while singing (although there's lots of different ones on the board of the recording engineer too).
Thanks!
 
BTW those ProAC Studio 100 were very popular especially in mixing world, to this day the biggest name today uses them - Serban Ghenea. His assistant that's doing mostly atmos upmixing now is using them for stereo work as well, but at least he got Genelec 83x1 + W371A based system, yet he said it's too good sounding for mixing lol. Resonating box with V shaped response is weapon of choice for many mixing engineers https://www.stereophile.com/content/proac-studio-100-loudspeaker-measurements
 
BTW those ProAC Studio 100 were very popular especially in mixing world, to this day the biggest name today uses them - Serban Ghenea. His assistant that's doing mostly atmos upmixing now is using them for stereo work as well, but at least he got Genelec 83x1 + W371A based system, yet he said it's too good sounding for mixing lol.
Just don't tell @Pearljam5000 ,we may have to call the emergency.
 
It would be somewhat interesting to see how the ProAc Studio 100 measures on the Klippel NFS.

I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a reasonable power response or predicted in-room response.

You gotta remember these speaker designers were doing it in the 1980s, when they were measuring with a single axis, without a computer, if they had anything at all.
 
It would be somewhat interesting to see how the ProAc Studio 100 measures on the Klippel NFS.

I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a reasonable power response or predicted in-room response.

You gotta remember these speaker designers were doing it in the 1980s, when they were measuring with a single axis, without a computer, if they had anything at all.
I don't know about the power, since I know many users are stacking spare woofers as they blow out regularly, foam surrounds also are a factor
 
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