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Neumann KH150

changer

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I find the discussion of this speaker to be exemplary for a weakness of spinorama-, distortion- and aluminium-metrics based approaches:
Seemingly, people here are interested in using this speaker music listening in a midfield setting, like from 3 meters distance, on their couch. But no discussion about the dispersion pattern. The image will most probably be narrow. It will be beautifully exact, but with little spaciousness. JBL M2 is one of the few waveguided two-way speakers with a 120 degree horizontal pattern, like many dome tweeter speakers have. People who own KEF LS50 might comment how satisfied they are with a 100 degree pattern. There is so much more than SPL and F3. BTW, I am pretty sure F3 of this speaker is satisfying most needs, but need cannot be satisfied from afar.

1) https://www.soundandrecording.de/app/uploads/2022/10/KH150hor-580x357.png
2) https://static-neumann.s3.amazonaws.com/global_images/image/file/658/Horizontal_directivity_plot.png
 

Slyman

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If you don't listen very close (less than 1.5 m distance) go for the KH150.
So the Kh150 would be the bad choice if you got under 1.5m listening distance? As a music producer its within that range you mostly listen.
 

changer

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No, at 1.5 meters you should be in the far field of KH 150, where tweeter and woofer radiate one singular wavefront. You can listen to it up close.

However, if you want to listen to music on KH 80 in mid field distance, like the couch that is 3 meters from the speakers that stand in front of the front wall opposite to your listening position, when they get loud enough, the are already distorting heavily in the bass region. The woofers are too small for this job. If crossing them to a sub might be enough I don't know. When you are not using them for movies, they could still suffice. But without much headroom at all.
 

changer

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Screenshot 2022-11-27 231602.jpeg
 

test1223

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I find the discussion of this speaker to be exemplary for a weakness of spinorama-, distortion- and aluminium-metrics based approaches:
Seemingly, people here are interested in using this speaker music listening in a midfield setting, like from 3 meters distance, on their couch. But no discussion about the dispersion pattern. The image will most probably be narrow. It will be beautifully exact, but with little spaciousness. JBL M2 is one of the few waveguided two-way speakers with a 120 degree horizontal pattern, like many dome tweeter speakers have. People who own KEF LS50 might comment how satisfied they are with a 100 degree pattern. There is so much more than SPL and F3. BTW, I am pretty sure F3 of this speaker is satisfying most needs, but need cannot be satisfied from afar.

1) https://www.soundandrecording.de/app/uploads/2022/10/KH150hor-580x357.png
2) https://static-neumann.s3.amazonaws.com/global_images/image/file/658/Horizontal_directivity_plot.png
Yes, the radiation of a speaker, the listening distance and the room acoustic treatment are all connected and all three have to fit.

Speakers like the ls 50 or kh150 provide a wide radiation in the bass and a narrow radiation in the higher frequencies. Bigger speakers like the m2 provide a much more constant radiation over frequency which is better in most rooms.

From my understanding the midfield listening distance is about from 1.5m to 2.5m.
3m or more is the listing distance of a main monitor and you need very high beaming speakers to get enough direct sound with such a long listening distance. If you have a look at the recommendations of the best studio monitors you need a speaker like the Genelec 1234A or bigger to get enough direct sound at the listening position.

Almost all home speakers aren't choosen wisely and are to small for the listening distance and therefore didn't provide enough beaming in the important frequencies from 300Hz to 4kHz. This leads to an inexact washy sound due to the amount of reflections at the listening position.

Due to the beaming difference of the KH80 and KH150 in the very important mid frequency range both speaker will always sound differently. In a set-up with very good room acoustics and a low listening distance (1m or less) the KH80 actually will sound better if you exclude the deeper bass and headroom in your judgement.
 
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changer

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Almost all home speakers aren't choosen wisely and are to small for the listening distance and therefore didn't provide enough beaming in the important frequencies from 300Hz to 4kHz. This leads to an inexact washy sound due to the amount of reflections at the listening position.

Maybe. However, the requirements for studio monitors might not match with music listening as pleasure. While a studio monitor can provide a very exact image and the mastering engineer can locate everything on the stage, even if it is small, as a music listener you would maybe prefer the image to actually be big and room filling. For a professional, what counts is if the tool enables him i.e. to control the production. For the music listener, the music experience comes first.

You are right that it is good to get speakers matching the listening room's characteristics. If this, however, means that early reflections should be excluded is not as sure. Early reflections will introduce spacial cues of the listening room into the playback of the music. Some prefer to only hear the spacial cues that are within the reflection and exclude the listening room. Others mock this as headphone sound. Whether the one or the other is right for the listener, every listener must find out through experience. Erin prefers a wider pattern, as does Amir, Earl Geddes thinks this is detrimental to the image. I have listened to a 90 x 45 pattern waveguide and found it to be too narrow for my taste.
 

test1223

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Maybe. However, the requirements for studio monitors might not match with music listening as pleasure. While a studio monitor can provide a very exact image and the mastering engineer can locate everything on the stage, even if it is small, as a music listener you would maybe prefer the image to actually be big and room filling. For a professional, what counts is if the tool enables him i.e. to control the production. For the music listener, the music experience comes first.

You are right that it is good to get speakers matching the listening room's characteristics. If this, however, means that early reflections should be excluded is not as sure. Early reflections will introduce spacial cues of the listening room into the playback of the music. Some prefer to only hear the spacial cues that are within the reflection and exclude the listening room. Others mock this as headphone sound. Whether the one or the other is right for the listener, every listener must find out through experience. Erin prefers a wider pattern, as does Amir, Earl Geddes thinks this is detrimental to the image. I have listened to a 90 x 45 pattern waveguide and found it to be too narrow for my taste.
There are certainly compromises e.g. between envelopement and exactness. But most people who claim to not like speakers with a narrow beam at a higher listening distance haven't heard a speaker which actually provides such a narrow beam down to the bass in a dedicated room. And if they hear such a speaker like a JBL K2 they often change their opinion or at least like some recordings a lot more with this type of system.
 

RobL

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Maybe. However, the requirements for studio monitors might not match with music listening as pleasure. While a studio monitor can provide a very exact image and the mastering engineer can locate everything on the stage, even if it is small, as a music listener you would maybe prefer the image to actually be big and room filling. For a professional, what counts is if the tool enables him i.e. to control the production. For the music listener, the music experience comes first.

You are right that it is good to get speakers matching the listening room's characteristics. If this, however, means that early reflections should be excluded is not as sure. Early reflections will introduce spacial cues of the listening room into the playback of the music. Some prefer to only hear the spacial cues that are within the reflection and exclude the listening room. Others mock this as headphone sound. Whether the one or the other is right for the listener, every listener must find out through experience. Erin prefers a wider pattern, as does Amir, Earl Geddes thinks this is detrimental to the image. I have listened to a 90 x 45 pattern waveguide and found it to be too narrow for my taste.
Maybe I misunderstood, but I think Slyman is considering these for music production rather than personal pleasure.
 

changer

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This is correct. This thread is already 45 pages long and there were other use cases discussed, however.
 

changer

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There are certainly compromises e.g. between envelopement and exactness. But most people who claim to not like speakers with a narrow beam at a higher listening distance haven't heard a speaker which actually provides such a narrow beam down to the bass in a dedicated room. And if they hear such a speaker like a JBL K2 they often change their opinion or at least like some recordings a lot more with this type of system.

Well, the reason might be pricetag and the size of such speakers. Btw, you will listen from a bigger distance to these kind of monsters, and the bigger distance will once again mean a more of reflected sound and increased spaciousness. Such speakers would never fit in a smaller room anyway, but there, they sounded very constrained and headphone like.

Apart from that: A very big woofer helps, if you do not go cardiod, sure. But lets be realistic: there is a number of people on this board with big houses and financial abilities, there are many who will however need to fit their speakers in a moderate sized living room, where they compete with all of the other things in it. If you can afford a D&D 8C and the likes, congratulation. For the rest, a waveguide mainly promises a good room interaction, that the reflections do not mess up the direct sound.

This sort of controlled directivity can be engineered for a narrow pattern, as for example Genelec S360 or Neumann KH 150, or a wider pattern, like JBL M2. In both cases the benefits of controlled directivity are there.
 

LTig

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So the Kh150 would be the bad choice if you got under 1.5m listening distance? As a music producer its within that range you mostly listen.
You cannot deduce this from what I wrote. However for distances under 1m the KH80 may be better suited due to shorter distance between woofer and tweeter.
 

abrxxx

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Matias

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It's like "why should we spend more in electronics to process audio above 24 kHz when you cannot hear it, and only its intermodulation distortion will be heard".

This could be a point for the entire high-res audio industry, not only Neumann's monitors.
 

SlothRock

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So in this review it says that, for the DSP to work, both speakers need to be on the same network. Does that mean you need to spring for the AES67 version of the KH150's to use the MA 1? How else would they get on the same network?
 

fuzzychaos

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So in this review it says that, for the DSP to work, both speakers need to be on the same network. Does that mean you need to spring for the AES67 version of the KH150's to use the MA 1? How else would they get on the same network?
Each speaker has an Ethernet port and that uses a Cat 5/Cat 6 cable to plug into a network switch.
 
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