sidechain
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2026
- Messages
- 74
- Likes
- 209
Hi-Fi speakers are made to entertain you, studio monitors are tools made for work.
-
Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Palmer ORBIT 11 Cardioid Coaxial 3-way studio monitor (MSRP 799€/899$)
- Thread starter kharan
- Start date
A transparent design is a transparent design and doesn’t know where or what it is playing.
Keith
Keith
sidechain
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2026
- Messages
- 74
- Likes
- 209
I got them today, so this is just a first impression. I listened to them from the couch at the back of my room, and they still sounded good, but that’s obviously not their intended use case. From farther away, the high mids seemed to roll off a little, and the bass became a bit less focused. I feel like the SPL limitations might creep up in a recreational scenario. Again, it’s all room-dependent — if you enjoy them as nearfield monitors, more power to you!
They were designed that way (see my answer to your first question).
You nailed it!
See answer to first question...
It’s all subjective. I would say it is a speaker that showcases over-compressed material, phase issues, and distortion in a good light; rounds off overly pokey transients; and has a musical voicing and positive presentation of bad mix decisions. A good studio monitor is like a magnifying glass — you don’t want to look through it when you want to have a “good time”; it’s a tool.
Different "flat measuring" speakers can sound quite different and are just one variable among many (sorry Keith).
Sonarworks is mostly taking care of a small 100hz standing wave in my room.
sidechain
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2026
- Messages
- 74
- Likes
- 209
I'm sorry Keith but in a mixing scenario that makes no sense.
Pete
Geert
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2020
- Messages
- 2,386
- Likes
- 5,014
A speaker that’s so coloured and inaccurate that it puts a stamp on the sound that's so strong that it overwhelms the qualities of the recording.
Thank you @sidechain, low/very low Hiss is ok, isn't it, and perhaps Palmer has attended to this since the early/initial production units?
Would you consider these (more than) acceptable for mid field?
Last edited:
sidechain
Member
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2026
- Messages
- 74
- Likes
- 209
To me the whole appeal is that it's a small portable and affordable 3 way cardioid monitor that has bass, great for remote or location recordings and home studio mixing. Thats the whole point of it. If you want to try it in a mid field setting you do you!
(If you hear hiss in a mid field setting you have bionic ears)
Thank you @sidechain, what was the distance from the Couch at the back of your room to the Speakers and were the Speakers Straight/0' or Toed In. If Toed In, how much from Straight/0' were they Toed In and when listening (from Couch) were they setup for Near field listening?
Thank you, @sidechain, Yes, that is the appeal, although, especially if they can also be Playback/Room friendly....
Uh-huh.
Keith
Currently I enjoy them for recreational listening from 2.5m distance in a 5x7m livingroom. This is a test phase after an impulse buy purely based on measurements. My son is eagerly waiting to get them to his room but I keep extending the test phase simply because I like them so much. So I was curious why you think they would be best in nearfield monitoring and not well suited as hifi speakers.
The changes you described between close and distant listening, are typical for the variation in direct to reverberant sound ratio while moving away from a speaker in a room. You will find similar effects for most speakers. However, with a typical hifi speaker without dispersion control (no waveguide, let alone cardioid dispersion), you will find these effects to be much stronger than with a well designed studio monitor. Actually, dispersion control is more important in the mid-field than in the nearfield because in the nearfield direct sound dominates anyways. It's their dispersion control that makes the Orbits very well suited for mid-field.
Since the Orbits are sitting on top of my permanent livingroom speakers, I can directly compare them with less than 0.5 second switching time. It's very obvious that the Orbits are much more focussed at larger distance (3.5-4.5m) than the sound from my other speakers, which are typical hifi speakers with bare drivers and no specific measures for dispersion control. At my normal listening position at 2.5m distance, I had to toe the Orbits out to get similar soundstage width as with the other speakers, that are toed in. So again, focus of the Orbits is much stronger than for typical hifi speakers. For me there is no SPL limitation as I always get the volume I want without obvious distortion or limiter intervention. This is without a sub and I have been listening to a lot of music since I got the Orbits.
You refer to subjective qualities without linking them to measureable parameters. I would generally ask how a speaker can hide imperfections of bad recordings while faithfully reproducing all the delicate details of a good recording. My answer is that you cannot have both as these are contradicting requirements. The ability to resolve fine details and large transients is what audiophiles are paying extra for.
A speaker that rounds off transients, is simply distorting. This can be compression (nonlinear distortion) or lower output at part of the spectrum of the transient, like the treble range (linear distortion). A speaker that has soft (=lower/attenuated) treble will sound lesss "airy" with good recordings and less harsh with lesser recordings. Besides treble level, it's unfortunately much harder to develop a highly resolving speaker than a speaker that covers details and compresses dynamics.
Depending on personal preference and the music one likes, it may be a good tradeoff to sacrifice some treble details to gain less harshness. Some even adjust bass and treble on a song to song basis with tone controls that can be tuned from the listening position. Personally, I tend to reduce treble a bit. In case of the Orbits I simply lowered the treble shelving filter by one step to do this. In combination with the toe-out alignment, treble is reduced to a level that I like for recreational listening as it sounds good with most songs. For mixing you want to stay flat on axis to avoid generating harsh treble on flat speakers.
As different speakers that measure flat on axis usually show different off-axis frequency response, they will also sound different in a room. In the nearfield, flat speakers should sound very similar when used at output levels that show low nonlinear distortion.
phoenixdogfan
Major Contributor
If it were a cup of coffee, it would be something with a generous squirt of Ghiardelli Chocolate syrup so much so you couldn't tell whether you were drinking a light or a dark roast, let alone the bean type or country of origin.
Thank you, @DWOJr, nice to Know/Hear :=)
Excellent review. Watched it with youtube's translation. They really did custom bass speakers. I had doubt about that. Having seen the clean internals, the Orbits feel even more like a bargain. Impressive, makes alot of other monitors look bad in comparison.
"These monitors should be significantly more expensive and they certainly would be if they were manufactured by another company, say a well known studio system manufacturer. [...] The lower price was treated as a promotional expense." "The Orbit 11 is unique in our industry, something that theoretically shouldn't happen at this price. And here we are in the sound realms of Kii Audio or even Genelec The Ones." "I don't think it's an exaggeration to call it outstanding"
Last edited:
Similar threads
