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

[Bwaslo]

Thanks Salt,

Did you try switching it to digital (AES3) input, to see if that affects the hiss? I'm wondering how much of it is due to the ADC converter at the analog input.

 

[Salt]

Will do, have to find the cable ....

 

[amirm]

Will do, have to find the cable ....

Just switch to that input with nothing connected for now.

 

[jmdesignz2]

One of the last pairs ordered from Thomann: Test run in my living room! My Palmer Orbit 11 monitors sound frighteningly fantastic. Jackpot!

At some point, I’ll set the monitors up on my desk.

View attachment 515002View attachment 515003

how do they compare to the Salon2?

 

[Hemi-Demon]

One of the last pairs ordered from Thomann: Test run in my living room! My Palmer Orbit 11 monitors sound frighteningly fantastic. Jackpot!

At some point, I’ll set the monitors up on my desk.

View attachment 515002View attachment 515003

Can you hear any hissing at your listening distance? I want to order three of these to replace my HT setup.

 

[Bwaslo]

Just switch to that input with nothing connected for now.

Has this been answered yet somewhere here? Is the hiss present (or reduced) when selecting digital input?

 

[cammyt]

That opportunity has now passed; though I see that some European stores still seem to have them available anyway.



I wanted to reply to this for a while, but couldn't due to workload. Excellent observation(s)! I have very little to add - this lines up almost perfectly with my assessment. You will also see the main point, bass performance, evaluated more closely in the follow-up video.
One comment: looking at phase behavior as group delay can sometimes be valuable. The Orbit 11 has quite high group delay in the bass region, up to 100 Hz. 10 ms at 100 Hz is something I believe I've never seen in a speaker before.. 2 or 3 ms would be more typical. Audibility is the next question, but it's definitely something to point out.

Thanks for the reply.

10ms at 100hz is right at 1cycle, which is just beginning to be audible if we go by the 1.5 cycles is audible theory.

I may be approaching academic pedantic-ness again but this little niggle doesn't sit well with me, especially considering that many other monitors (in the budget price range even) are around 3ms of GD at this point, as you called out. My belief is that this could slightly detriment transient attack (even in a reflection dominated environment) because the ear-brain is very good at perceiving transient envelopes of direct sounds (for evolutionary reasons: determining sound source location, distance, and size). Also, music with violent transients may be softened a bit with excessive mid bass group delay.

But again, I'm mostly nit picking here lol. The GD / phase issues could probably be corrected via ground plane measurements and DSP if one really wanted to. Or just crossover to a capable high bandwidth subwoofer. But even if one didn't want to go through these efforts, the monitor out of the box is still generally very performant, regardless of price.

 

[Caldera]

Can you hear any hissing at your listening distance? I want to order three of these to replace my HT setup.

I do not hear any hiss. See also here:

Palmer Orbit 11 vs Neumann KH120a

In this thread, I would like to compare the Palmer Orbit 11 with the Neumann KH120a. I will also compare a near-field setup (1.1m) with a mid-field setup (2.5m). Furthermore, I would like to test pair matching in the near field and address other matters. But actually, they were supposed to...

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[TimVG]

This is the modal region though. While on the verge of audible under ideal conditions, this goes out the window in 99% of real world scenarios where the effect of the room will be superimposed on what the speaker is doing.

 

[pierre]

Hello @stoneeh ,

if you send me your measurements I can add them to spinorama.org. No pressure no expectation.

Pierre

p.s. i tried to reach you via DM but got denied.

 

[Matt_Holland]

Thanks for the reply.

10ms at 100hz is right at 1cycle, which is just beginning to be audible if we go by the 1.5 cycles is audible theory.

I may be approaching academic pedantic-ness again but this little niggle doesn't sit well with me, especially considering that many other monitors (in the budget price range even) are around 3ms of GD at this point, as you called out. My belief is that this could slightly detriment transient attack (even in a reflection dominated environment) because the ear-brain is very good at perceiving transient envelopes of direct sounds (for evolutionary reasons: determining sound source location, distance, and size). Also, music with violent transients may be softened a bit with excessive mid bass group delay.

But again, I'm mostly nit picking here lol. The GD / phase issues could probably be corrected via ground plane measurements and DSP if one really wanted to. Or just crossover to a capable high bandwidth subwoofer. But even if one didn't want to go through these efforts, the monitor out of the box is still generally very performant, regardless of price.

Keith at @Purité Audio noted in his listening impressions that the bass was a little bit “thuddy” which is backed up by less than ideal GD. It’s the main compromise with the Orbit in my opinion.

 

[cammyt]

This is the modal region though. While on the verge of audible under ideal conditions, this goes out the window in 99% of real world scenarios where the effect of the room will be superimposed on what the speaker is doing.

Agreed!

What of the notion that room modes mostly affect tonal balance (loudness of various frequency bands) and decay perception, which take dozens of milliseconds to develop out?

The precedence of a direct broadband transient, however, contains information that the auditory system can perceive before it even knows what the timbre and decay is, such as azimuth (assuming there's an ITD), and attack envelope, aka the sharpness of the transient. And this information is decoded from a window that lasts several microseconds to a few milliseconds, far before first reflections happen and room modes develop.

Therefore, here's my hypothesis:
If playback through a speaker causes a percussion hit's 120hz component to be 5ms out of time with it's higher spectral components, then the human will perceive that as a softer attack, in room or not. With room modes or not. I liken this to how we can identify the signature of authentic sound sources no matter how reflective and resonant a room is. But imagine if the broadband transient source itself is phase distorted or artificial. Then it doesn't sound authentic anymore, which could be perceived no matter how reflective the environment is.

This is just my hunch anyway. I could be dead wrong

 

[TimVG]

Keith at @Purité Audio noted in his listening impressions that the bass was a little bit “thuddy” which is backed up by less than ideal GD. It’s the main compromise with the Orbit in my opinion.

Unlikely imho. This speaker is (3rd party verified) flat (-3dB) to 30Hz. Even many "full range" speakers are designed with some sort of extended bass shelf approach, meaning its output will taper off down to the tuning frequency in case of ported speakers. Salon 2 and other Revels comes to mind, KEF Reference is supplied with a short and long port.. just to name a couple of examples. I'm 99% sure the culprit will be found in the steady state room response.

I will see if I can upload some pictures later this day, but in my small room, with the 80Hz HPF engaged + the first boundary setting, I still had good output down to the mid 30s.

 

[TimVG]

Agreed!

What of the notion that room modes mostly affect tonal balance (loudness of various frequency bands) and decay perception, which take dozens of milliseconds to develop out?

The precedence of a direct broadband transient, however, contains information that the auditory system can perceive before it even knows what the timbre and decay is, such as azimuth (assuming there's an ITD), and attack envelope, aka the sharpness of the transient. And this information is decoded from a window that lasts several microseconds to a few milliseconds, far before first reflections happen and room modes develop.

Therefore, here's my hypothesis:
If playback through a speaker causes a percussion hit's 120hz component to be 5ms out of time with it's higher spectral components, then the human will perceive that as a softer attack, in room or not. With room modes or not. I liken this to how we can identify the signature of authentic sound sources no matter how reflective and resonant a room is. But imagine if the broadband transient source itself is phase distorted or artificial. Then it doesn't sound authentic anymore, which could be perceived no matter how reflective the environment is.

This is just my hunch anyway. I could be dead wrong

RE bold: except it doesn't work like this under non-anechoic conditions. The steady state response can be regarded as minimum phase in the modal region of a room. This is why multiple subwoofers optimised with SFM (Harman) or MSO work so very well and affects both the frequency and time domain behaviour.

 

[cammyt]

RE bold: except it doesn't work like this under non-anechoic conditions. The steady state response can be regarded as minimum phase in the modal region of a room. This is why multiple subwoofers optimised with SFM (Harman) or MSO work so very well and affects both the frequency and time domain behaviour.

No doubt regarding your minimum phase and MSO statements. MSO defo improves room tonality and time domain behavior.

However, minimum phase room modes do not mean subwoofer time behavior are inaudible or irrelevant. It only means the system's steady state phase response is mathematically linked to its steady state magnitude response. Again, applicable to steady-state which is NOT the transient attack window that I've been referring to this whole time.

I'm not arguing that room modes are not the dominant perception of bass tightness, because they probably are, at least in some rooms. I'm just saying the speaker's time domain behavior should not be ignored. There's a reason why people can still perceive "tight", "fast", or whatever subwoofers despite whatever minimum phase GD the room's modes add on top.

 

[TimVG]

No doubt regarding your minimum phase and MSO statements. MSO defo improves room tonality and time domain behavior.

However, minimum phase room modes do not mean subwoofer time behavior are inaudible or irrelevant. It only means the system's steady state phase response is mathematically linked to its steady state magnitude response. Again, applicable to steady-state which is NOT the transient attack window that I've been referring to this whole time.

I'm not arguing that room modes are not the dominant perception of bass tightness, because they probably are, at least in some rooms. I'm just saying the speaker's time domain behavior should not be ignored. There's a reason why people can still perceive "tight", "fast", or whatever subwoofers despite whatever minimum phase GD the room's modes add on top.

An argument could be made for extreme cases (bad design) where the effect of the loudspeaker outweighs that of the room. In this particular case (and most others), I don't see it being an issue. The GD approaches one cycle, which is not uncommon. Most people perceiving "tight, fast, .. " bass are perceiving either diminished extension or loudness.
Ported speakers can also add other unwanted noises or interfere with the midrange response, the latter which is objectively far more detrimental but gets mentioned rarely.
This is basically full range extension in a tiny package - and there is no such thing as a free lunch - however, most people using these will either use the internal filters, or external (or both in my case) to even out the room response, which will also affect GD (as in lower it).

 

[Matt_Holland]

Unlikely imho. This speaker is (3rd party verified) flat (-3dB) to 30Hz. Even many "full range" speakers are designed with some sort of extended bass shelf approach, meaning its output will taper off down to the tuning frequency in case of ported speakers. Salon 2 and other Revels comes to mind, KEF Reference is supplied with a short and long port.. just to name a couple of examples. I'm 99% sure the culprit will be found in the steady state room response.

I will see if I can upload some pictures later this day, but in my small room, with the 80Hz HPF engaged + the first boundary setting, I still had good output down to the mid 30s.

As per @cammyt post below. And Keith would have tried the Orbit in a similar room position to the other bass capable speakers he has on demo, so the comparison would have some validity.

I'm surprised you are getting good output into the mid 30s with the HPF on. What's the slope on the HPF?

 

[TimVG]

As per @cammyt post below. And Keith would have tried the Orbit in a similar room position to the other bass capable speakers he has on demo, so the comparison would have some validity.

I'm surprised you are getting good output into the mid 30s with the HPF on. What's the slope on the HPF?

I would add though that "bass capable" is not the same as identical - that's why I say you need to look at the steady state room curve before making assumptions about anything else.

I think it's a 2nd order filter.

Edit: from @stoneeh video

I won't ask him for yet more data, but I'm quite sure using the on board filters will lower the GD, and most users will be employing them (or external solutions).

 

[sharock]

I could order these right now to replace my 8030. I just know my partner would clearly notice and then kill me.

 

[mariodorianc]

aren't this group delay graphs looking worse than the one @stoneeh measured in his yt video for the orbits 11?