Palmer ORBIT 11 Cardioid Coaxial 3-way studio monitor (MSRP 799€/899$)

[Liftro]

When the listening environments are acoustically okay, in a home or in a demo room, it’s really not hard to hear and remember the main characteristics of that loudspeaker. I have actually never been surprised by the sound of a speaker I’ve heard before, they always sound close to how I remembered them to sound on previous occasions.



This can be a good way to compare, but don't forget that the audio chain involved in the recording process can color the sound as well, so how do you make sure the actual recording is a good representation of how the piano sounds, IF the only loudspeaker in the room is the one you are evaluating?

Another problem, unless the recording is very dry, is that you will get a “double effect” of the room acoustics when playing back the recording in the same room where the actual recording took place.

I assure you, you want to hear the room where you're recording or mixing. Nobody wants a dead room. Our minds are very good at noticing these things. If there's no sound from the room, something sounds artificial.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Yes!


Okay this is a bit conflicting.

The KH 750 DSP manual states that:
View attachment 512587
Which is why I said that to get full-range MA1 room correction, you'd have to connect via Line.

But the newer combined manual for the KH 750 DSP / KH 805 II states that:
View attachment 512588
Meaning you'll get the same MA1 output via Analog or Digital.

Maybe this changed with a firmware update, or maybe this applies only to the KH805 II and the manual is written in a misleading way.

I'd recommend you contact customer support regarding this, or if you own the KH750 anyway, make sure your sub is running the latest firmware and test this yourself.

Give this man a medal

 

[levimax]

Let me know if you find a way to make people buy audio equipment!
Keith

FOMO seems to be pretty effective

 

[SivKiv]

Actually, I get the feeling that the biggest adversary of the Palmer Orbits will be the rooms they’re placed in. The paradox with these speakers is that, on paper, they can function as "compact main monitors” in the Barefoot style — except Barefoots are priced in a way that assumes they’ll be used in a properly treated studio. Here, the Palmers extend low enough that any studio, even a relatively large one, will have its room modes heavily excited by that low‑end extension.

For example, in my own room I have several modes around 40 Hz. With my Focal Shape 65s, that’s not a big issue because they don’t put out much energy down there, so the resonances stay limited. With speakers like the Orbits, it’s a whole different story: while acoustic treatment to manage my modes around 80 Hz is still perfectly doable, keeping a reverberation time that doesn’t smear everything below 40 Hz is impossible without membrane resonators or active absorption like PSI’s solutions — which are vastly more expensive than the speakers themselves.

So despite the incredible price‑to‑performance ratio of these monitors, it’s likely that I’ll go for an upgrade to the KH150 instead, which will let me mix all acoustic and electric instruments without any issues, and then add one or two subs for movies and to check the infra‑bass on certain electronic tracks.

Why not a multisub with the Palmer instead? Sub frequency output will be minimal when paired with a sub after all, without being all too different to say a KH120II or a KH150, therefore the room's moreso interacting with the sub anyways sub 80hz, which isn't any different than pairing it with the Neumanns.

 

[SivKiv]

FIR is just a type of EQ filter, it’s made to EQ, nothing more. And linear‑phase EQ comes with its own drawbacks anyway (pre‑ringing being the most obvious one). But I wasn’t even talking about crossover design here. I was referring to the in‑room time‑domain response, which has little to do with crossover topology once you’re below the Schroeder frequency.

The issue isn’t the speaker itself. It’s simply that achieving a room with a clean, flat time‑domain response all the way down to 26 Hz is extremely difficult. That’s the paradox: you get an amazingly affordable full‑range monitor, but it ends up requiring a room that almost none of the people buying it will actually be able to have.

It's meant to be a nearfield monitor after all, which should hopefully excite the room modes less at the kind of outputs people will be pushing this speaker at at the listening distances expected. This is my guess as to why they did not push or aim for a cardiod pattern down to 100hz, or possibly even lower, with the cardiod pattern largely being intended for wall and desk bounce than anything else, with the above nearfield effect hopefully being a sufficient basic remedy for room modes. A real in room measurement for the speaker would be great for sure(Erin for example is look to attempt to display a basic simulation of how the speaker might behave in the horizontal plane in a room, although it's still in the stage of experimentation as I understand it at the moment). Nonetheless, I agree, just having such output is great, if the extension is problematic for whatever reason, nothing's stopping anyone from high passing the speakers to the desired cut off frequency they'd want. After all, it's not just the extension that makes the speaker attractive

 

[Flaesh]

that the bass extension decrease as you increase SPL? Like on the Kii or the Devialet products?

I'd like to legislate a requirement: bass limiting as a function of loudness must be described in detail in bold type BEFORE all this claims of lowest frequency, monstrous power, and astonishing amplitude.

Palmer ORBIT 11 Cardioid Coaxial 3-way studio monitor (MSRP 799€/899$)

Tip: Smart switches are perfect for this.

www.audiosciencereview.com

and at 106 dB and 116(115?) dB))

I wanted to stick an orange ring on one of the subwoofers, but I don't have a piece of orange vinyl at home right now, Photoshop was needed:

 

[RT.]

When the listening environments are acoustically okay, in a home or in a demo room, it’s really not hard to hear and remember the main characteristics of that loudspeaker. I have actually never been surprised by the sound of a speaker I’ve heard before, they always sound close to how I remembered them to sound on previous occasions.



This can be a good way to compare, but don't forget that the audio chain involved in the recording process can color the sound as well, so how do you make sure the actual recording is a good representation of how the piano sounds, IF the only loudspeaker in the room is the one you are evaluating?

Another problem, unless the recording is very dry, is that you will get a “double effect” of the room acoustics when playing back the recording in the same room where the actual recording took place.

Your comment is correct. I have some records where the piano, the acoustic guitars and the other acoustic instruments we have (not our own but reference like), are very nicely recorded/mastered. Some of them very dry (as you described it) and some of them not dry but recorded/mastered anyhow very good. I do not have a recording of our own acoustics instruments, but anyhow the reference of real instruments are available in my living room and those ones can be compared. Which speaks not against to what you are saying. As mentioned, you are correct with your words. Our piano is frequently re-tuned. Same is valid for the acoustic guitar. Therefore I do know how those acoustic instruments does sound in my living room. And this is what I compare to the "best" recordings I have. I have to admit that especially recordings out of the 80´s very often sounds to bright and are missing heavily the bass in my environment. But therefore I have a separate EQing to come over this problem. When the CD´s where established in the market some master-engineers has been so happy about the then available high frequencies on the final medium compared to LP´s and cassettes that they somehow missed to add the required bass.
I guess that was the reason that most of us cranked up the bass on their stereos during this period of time. Now I am general listening typically very neutral. But some albums out of my young years still require some additional bass.

 

[Flaesh]

Suitable for hi-fi use with subwoofers starting at ~80Hz.

 

[Ratterbass]

Suitable for hi-fi use with subwoofers starting at ~80Hz.

If 104dB SPL is HiFi for you, I guess.

Personally, I wouldn't go much beyond 90dB, but that's just me.

 

[Matt_Holland]

A pair should be able to sustain ~95dB at 4m listening distance. That’s 116-12-12+3dB.

Surely this is plenty for most people in small/medium rooms?

Is there some suggestion that this 3-way with 1000W and 120deg dispersion can’t do as good a job than the 100s of good 2-way passive speakers out there like an Ascilab C6B?

 

[SivKiv]

If 104dB SPL is HiFi for you, I guess.

Personally, I wouldn't go much beyond 90dB, but that's just me.

I believe the point was moreso to consider these for farfield usage, which would have it sit at 92dB at 4 meters as an example.(And that's still fairly plenty given the size)

 

[Ratterbass]

A pair should be able to sustain ~95dB at 4m listening distance. That’s 116-12-12+3dB.

Surely this is plenty for most people in small/medium rooms?

Is there some suggestion that this 3-way with 1000W and 120deg dispersion can’t do as good a job than the 100s of good 2-way passive speakers out there like an Ascilab C6B?

Honestly, no. A near field speaker must not be able to sustain that. It simply is not designed for that purpose. If it can, great. But I feel like people are trying to find faults where none are simply by putting these speakers in scenarios for which they simply were not meant to be put in.

I get that we always wish for the "one for all" device, but those simply do not exist. This speaker is not meant for listening on the sofa at 4m distance the same way a Line Array is not designed to sit in your living room as well.

 

[SivKiv]

A pair should be able to sustain ~95dB at 4m listening distance. That’s 116-12-12+3dB.

Surely this is plenty for most people in small/medium rooms?

Is there some suggestion that this 3-way with 1000W and 120deg dispersion can’t do as good a job than the 100s of good 2-way passive speakers out there like an Ascilab C6B?

A small sealed cabinet loudspeaker extending to the absurdly low frequencies that the Orbit 11 does will likely inevitably lead to either severe distortion or compression(usually in the form of limiting) once pushed "louder". How bad it is, we'd need actual measurements, but looking at the little data that Palmer has provided, it's looking more like the former(there's also the possibility of a reduction in output due to thermal issues, whether be it an intentional limiting carried out by the DSP, or the driver itself struggling massively). I'd honestly like most context on the 116dB figure as provided by Palmer, there is 0 indication of the environment, distance, number of speakers, bandwidth in which it maintains such peak output(or if it's just the peak output at any frequency) etc. Also just a note, but the reduction in output is 6dB per doubling of distance, not 12dB.

 

[SivKiv]

Honestly, no. A near field speaker must not be able to sustain that. It simply is not designed for that purpose. If it can, great. But I feel like people are trying to find faults where none are simply by putting these speakers in scenarios for which they simply were not meant to be put in.

I get that we always wish for the "one for all" device, but those simply do not exist. This speaker is not meant for listening on the sofa at 4m distance the same way a Line Array is not designed to sit in your living as well.

Yeah, that's fair. These speakers, as far as as I am able to tell as another "hobbyist",are very well designed and compromised for their application. Frankly, bravo to Palmer if it achieves the kind of performance they proclaim and imply with the data they've provided. It functioning well in the farfield will just be a nice additional bonus(and pairing it with a sub would likely allow it to do so)

 

[Matt_Holland]

Honestly, no. A near field speaker must not be able to sustain that. It simply is not designed for that purpose. If it can, great. But I feel like people are trying to find faults where none are simply by putting these speakers in scenarios for which they simply were not meant to be put in.

I get that we always wish for the "one for all" device, but those simply do not exist. This speaker is not meant for listening on the sofa at 4m distance the same way a Line Array is not designed to sit in your living as well.

I’m not trying to find fault at all. Quite the opposite. I’m suggesting that they would be more than capable to performing as a hifi speaker at 4m listening distance.

 

[DSJR]

Yeah honestly I'm also worried about the bass because my room is only 3X3 meters

Don't use bass-less speakers in that room, but take HUGE care on the final choice. I do wish I knew more as regards modern Neumanns and Genelecs, but I still feel a larger bass driver will deliver lower bass notes a touch more cleanly. The Orbit II may well fit the bill here, but you're going to have to try them in that room and on music you like to see if it works for you.

 

[Matt_Holland]

A small sealed cabinet loudspeaker extending to the absurdly low frequencies that the Orbit 11 does will likely inevitably lead to either severe distortion or compression(usually in the form of limiting) once pushed "louder". How bad it is, we'd need actual measurements, but looking at the little data that Palmer has provided, it's looking more like the former(there's also the possibility of a reduction in output due to thermal issues, whether be it an intentional limiting carried out by the DSP, or the driver itself struggling massively). I'd honestly like most context on the 116dB figure, there is 0 indication of the environment, distance, number of speakers, bandwidth in which it maintains such peak output(or if it's just the peak output at any frequency) etc. Also just a note, but the reduction in output is 6dB per doubling of distance, not 12dB.

I agree we need a more complete data set. I’m suggesting that based on what we do have they would perform similarly to a lot of 2-way speakers, if not better, at 4m listening distance.

My calculation for a pair at 4m was peak SPL minus 12dB crest factor (Palmer shared a 104dB distortion graph which to me is evidence that their 116dB peak SPL spec is based on 104 continuous using 12dB crest factor noise). Then I took another 12dB off for 4m distance (doubling distance twice from 1m). Then I added ~3dB for a pair of speakers assuming incoherent summation.

 

[Flaesh]

If 104dB SPL is HiFi for you, I guess.

The term "power hi-fi" exists, but it's not widely used. There's nothing bad with undistorted and uncompressed peaks in music playback.

to consider these for farfield usage

Yeah. Regular home music listening. In rooms of average size, say, from 20 square meters to however one have at home. Not considering audiophile listening for a single chair, desktop systems, near-field mixing, and other specific applications. 20 Hz at approximately 0 dB at the listening position is a rough, but quite achievable, figure. General concepts can be discussed in other threads.
The 120º directivity of the Palmers may appeal to many listeners (although I personally use speakers within 90º degrees at home).

 

[SivKiv]

I agree we need a more complete data set. I’m suggesting that based on what we do have they would perform similarly to a lot of 2-way speakers, if not better, at 4m listening distance.

My calculation for a pair at 4m was peak SPL minus 12dB crest factor (Palmer shared a 104dB distortion graph which to me is evidence that their 116dB peak SPL spec is based on 104 continuous using 12dB crest factor noise). Then I took another 12dB off for 4m distance (doubling distance twice from 1m). Then I added ~3dB for a pair of speakers assuming incoherent summation.

Yeah that's fair. Its not far off, if at all 80hz and above compared to any typical speaker that's decent out there. The output limitations it has should be a given due to its size and sealed cabinet, and it's not really a deal-breaker at all if subs are an option

 

[goat76]

I assure you, you want to hear the room where you're recording or mixing. Nobody wants a dead room. Our minds are very good at noticing these things. If there's no sound from the room, something sounds artificial.

I think you need to read what I wrote again, as I never said anything implying that an acoustically dead room should be used for recording and mixing.