Ocean Way HR5 Studio Monitor Review

[GXAlan]

What I am also seeing is that the distortion is way higher than the JBL 4319.

 

[VeerK]

It seems like subpar cabinet construction could be at play here, I wonder what the innards look like

 

[GXAlan]

Just showing a quick comparison between 4 different "Studio Monitors" in the 1 kHz and up range.

 

[jhaider]

Directivity narrows a fair bit above 10 kHz as well. It may be easier to see the issues using our beam width graph:

View attachment 67886

Looking at the red line which represents -6 dB drop in level, we see that it is anything but smooth. And it becomes smaller than +- 50 degrees as soon as you go above 4 kHz.

If you allow -12 dB level drop, you get the pink line which is still not that wide and suffers from a lot of uniformity errors.

Let's look at a well done version of this in the form of Genelec 8341A which I reviewed a while back:

View attachment 67887

Now we are talking! Superb accuracy and better than 100 degree total width. No wonder that Genelec provides such measurements and Ocean Way does not.

That is a great graph. (Style, not content.) I’ve never seen pattern information so presented before. Please keep using!

That plate amp looks a lot like a miniDSP PWR-ICE125

By “a lot” you mean “except for the silkscreening and omitted volume knob.”

To me that only means serviceability is better than average. I do love the “factory service only” legend on the network port!

 

[617]

I was going to mention that these are a very inexpensive item in the Ocean Way catalog, but then I noticed that they use this mid/treble horn in their $21,000/pr monitors. Not good.

If you want a big ass horn loaded monitor there are probably better options from meyer sound, augspurger, westlake, depending on the degree of horniness desired. Then again, all of these look like designs from the 70s; you might have better luck with Genelec. At least the Westlakes look cool.

I've never seen a more 'chaotic' response in a speaker. The repeated sharp resonances are bizarre and resemble the resonances in an undamped transmission line or something. Honestly this thing looks like a headache on paper and apparently in person as well.

 

[LTig]

Yeh, lack of monotonicity will confuse the algorithm

Then the negative score may be appropriate-

 

[jhaider]

Does anyone look at those old fashioned diffraction horns and really expect better response linearity?

 

[Tks]

Okay so a few things..

I really don't understand how the designer can claim no difference across a large console.

That's simple, by lying.

I always say the way to sell audio these days is to have a "story" and a personality behind it.

Now the first question makes more sense, in reference to the target market: "professionals". I'd like to know who these professionals are that accept this low of a standard(presuming any exists). Any other industry, this sort of behavior would be laughed at (and I don't mean by the public and the consumers there, but I mean in enterprise/industry setting). Like imagine trying to sell a story of the power rating from a PSU unit. Or imagine when buying a PC or parts, Intel was to say "yeah it can overclock like crazy, 10Ghz on 10 cores, no problem, trust us, we've been building CPU's before you were born!

And then imagine a company putting in orders for these..

Do professionals in audio have any standards? It seem they're no better than us.. heck worse if stuff like this can even exist in the first place. At least here we can verify these claims. Who's verifying the claims of this speaker before Amir just did?

I know, you have to be over 50 and not hear it.

Perhaps these engineers and producers need to start hiring teens to work along side them, just to make sure they can cover the upper range of frequencies where it would be missed.

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Also, I fixed it for you bossman:

 

[CtheArgie]

Okay so a few things..



That's simple, by lying.



Now the first question makes more sense, in reference to the target market: "professionals". I'd like to know who these professionals are that accept this low of a standard(presuming any exists). Any other industry, this sort of behavior would be laughed at (and I don't mean by the public and the consumers there, but I mean in enterprise/industry setting). Like imagine trying to sell a story of the power rating from a PSU unit. Or imagine when buying a PC or parts, Intel was to say "yeah it can overclock like crazy, 10Ghz on 10 cores, no problem, trust us, we've been building CPU's before you were born!

And then imagine a company putting in orders for these..

Do professionals in audio have any standards? It seem they're no better than us.. heck worse if stuff like this can even exist in the first place. At least here we can verify these claims. Who's verifying the claims of this speaker before Amir just did?



Perhaps these engineers and producers need to start hiring teens to work along side them, just to make sure they can cover the upper range of frequencies where it would be missed.

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Also, I fixed it for you bossman:

It is an interesting observation!
A few weeks ago, some "engineer" (I'm pretty sure from Sweetwater, but not certain) was hawking these sound room taming devices and how they made the sound so much better in his studio. I asked (on Facebook, where this happened) if he had done REW before and after to validate the "betterness" of the sound. His reply was that it wasn't necessary because he was an engineer and had lots of experience and could tell without the need to measure.

I lost credibility instantaneously on him and on what he was hawking.

 

[Tks]

These results are unsurprising. Allen Sides may be a good salesman, but in addition to being bad at designing speakers, he's bad at listening and bad at analytic thinking. Here's a snippet from an interview he gave to Tascam:

"
You've mentioned that you hear a generational loss when copying or burning CDs.
Well, I've never been able to make a copy of a CD, from a CD to a CD, ever, that sounds like the original CD. About 15% of the sonics goes away, for me. If I have multiple CDs, I'll load them into the hard drive. Going to the hard drive and playing it back doesn't sound any worse than a copy of a CD. I've just never been able to make a transfer of a CD like that. But if you record directly to the hard drive, and then you're making CDs, it's a reasonable approach. "

There are entirely too many BS vendors in this industry.

Ignoring the ridiculous 15% figure and baseline nonsense like that..

He's doubling down on the deluded nonsense. Who's "recording onto" CD's in the first place lol? It goes through a physical drive in the first place (even if you were to keep it exclusively onto RAM or something) as the CD is created from the digital realm's information when the ADC converts the information to something usable in the digital realm >_<

But worse than this He then says "going to hard drive and playing it back doesn't sound any worse than a copy of a CD". A copy of the CD is what now shoots him in the foot because he JUST said any copy results in degradation of the original source.

He then concludes "but if you record directly to the drive then to CD, it's reasonable as an approach". Why would that be "reasonable"??? As if there was choice otherwise when producing CD's? Like what would be a better way of creating CD's lol? Maybe I'm just ignorant. Does anyone know of companies creating CD's without having the digital realm involved?

I just find this hilarious. It's like: first off, the stuff you're saying in the first place simply isn't true (and you can see this if you compare CD extractions and still come out with bit-perfect files in the end). And then he just doubles down with just braindead nonsense that doesn't make sense EVEN IF we granted that 15% figure as true.

 

[Worth Davis]

I think we need a quick, updated refreshed on the various panthers. Sometimes the "stealing from me" panther seems worse than headless one...but I dont know where it ranks with the armless one? I think the happy panther is the only clear one these days. OH - is golf panther better than happy laying down panther? thx

 

[Cahudson42]

If not the Headless Panther, at least add in the Piggy Bank Panther..

 

[617]

For the money this is a headless panther. I mean correct me if I'm wrong but the Kali in 8 beats this in every way besides maybe output (even that I'm not sure about) and costs a fraction. Dispersion is as chaotic as the axial response.

 

[pozz]

Now the first question makes more sense, in reference to the target market: "professionals". I'd like to know who these professionals are that accept this low of a standard(presuming any exists). Any other industry, this sort of behavior would be laughed at (and I don't mean by the public and the consumers there, but I mean in enterprise/industry setting). Like imagine trying to sell a story of the power rating from a PSU unit. Or imagine when buying a PC or parts, Intel was to say "yeah it can overclock like crazy, 10Ghz on 10 cores, no problem, trust us, we've been building CPU's before you were born!

And then imagine a company putting in orders for these..

Do professionals in audio have any standards? It seem they're no better than us.. heck worse if stuff like this can even exist in the first place. At least here we can verify these claims. Who's verifying the claims of this speaker before Amir just did?

One of these days it'll be good to start an open-letter bombardment campaign.

 

[blueone]

Thanks for reviewing these, Amir. I've always been curious about this brand when I see them in the fat Sweetwater pro sound catalog they send me now and then. My curiosity is satisfied and over with.

 

[flipflop]

 

[617]

One of these days it'll be good to start an open-letter bombardment campaign.

I

Does anyone look at those old fashioned diffraction horns and really expect better response linearity?

Yeah from a historical perspective this is a bizarre design. Ancient horn design undersized and loaded with sb acoustics woofers. It's sort of a miracle it works as well as it does.

Do we know if it uses dsp? I bet it does.

 

[oldsysop]

Allen Sides = Vincent Brient ?

 

[xykreinov]

-The HR5 scores worse than my Klipsch RP-41M
That is one terrifying roller coaster. No wonder it's so much more expensive.

 

[anmpr1]

A few weeks ago, some "engineer" (I'm pretty sure from Sweetwater...)

'Sales Engineer' is what the company calls their 'advisors'. 'Product Pushers' could be a name. That said, SW has a pretty good return policy. Usually you have to pay for shipping the return. For a special order item like Ocean Way, I don't know how it is. I can't imagine dropping the kind of dollars OW is asking for their loudspeakers without a free in-studio demo.

They show a line of home speakers with a sort of JBL/Westlake kind of pro look. I imagine most of their sales are word of mouth. It's not a well known brand outside of the a limited circle.