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

[Sokel]

Why?

Just have them do the job properly in the first place.

Because tight QC does not come for free.

And when margins are small (as Orbit has lots stuffed in there), components are average or low cost and mass produced with low cost in mind, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

As evident by the test and people's posts here.
The overall design may be solid as some experience very low noise, it's the production that suffers obviously.

 

[BVK]

The first owners subjective reviews should've made us suspicious about that. The kind of stuff that might degrade the stereo performance. Good luck with the PR Palmer.

Another observation about (IIRC a single) mentioning of fuzzy phantom center images.
This could result from (on axis) FR deviations between units. And again one needs several units to investigate this.
And these deviations do exist as your measurement shows. Thank you!

Well, I did mention the "stereo image of the 8030s with a sub is just on another level for me" and it didn't really go down with the crowd too well...

 

[dickiefunk]

View attachment 517317
I was just able to obtain three additional Palmer Orbit11 units for measurement.





View attachment 517318
For an accurate comparison, I kept the microphone position fixed and simply swapped the speaker samples one by one during the measurements.





View attachment 517319
View attachment 517320

To clarify any questions regarding the self-noise measurement conditions and equipment, I am sharing a photo of my measurement environment.
I use a Larson Davis CAL250 SPL calibrator together with an Earthworks M30 microphone. On the measurement day (today, Friday, March 13, 2026), the lowest ambient noise floor at the measurement site was 22.1 dB(A).





View attachment 517321
Here I overlaid the graph of the sample I previously reviewed (measured on March 6, shown in gray) with the measurements of the three samples tested today.

Red – Sample #1
Blue – Sample #2
Green – Sample #3

I also recorded the environmental noise floor before and after the measurements, and can confirm that the measurement environment noise floor did not change in any meaningful way during the tests.

Interestingly, even among the three samples measured today, the self-noise differences are quite noticeable.






View attachment 517322
View attachment 517323
View attachment 517324
I also compared the measurements with the −20 dB PAD engaged.
(The speaker position was kept fixed, and the adjustment was made using the top control.)





View attachment 517325
This figure shows only the −20 dB PAD measurements.
Interestingly, the sample measured on March 6 shows a level similar to Sample #1.







View attachment 517326
View attachment 517327
View attachment 517328
Since these differences might potentially be related to sensitivity variations between units, I also compared far-field measurements.

If this were simply a sensitivity issue, the green sample (#3), which showed the lowest self-noise, should also have measured the lowest output level. However, that was not the case.

As a result, contrary to the initial impression based on a single unit, there appears to be a meaningful variation in self-noise between individual units.
Considering that the three samples I obtained at the same time showed up to about a 5 dB difference, it seems difficult to rule out the possibility that there may be a noticeable unit-to-unit variation in the self-noise of Palmer Orbit11 speakers distributed worldwide.

Given this situation, it actually seems quite natural that different ASR members report mixed impressions such as “the hiss is quite noticeable” versus “the hiss is audible but not really bothersome.”

Thanks for sharing this info! So it looks like the self noise varies quite a bit between different units?

If it is possible that the Palmer could potentially match the self noise of my Neumann KH120's I would definitely get a pair to try. However, the higher reported self noise on some units is a deal breaker for my work.

 

[b73i57dc3f]

If this were simply a sensitivity issue, the green sample (#3), which showed the lowest self-noise, should also have measured the lowest output level.

Not necessarily. They might be compensating for sensitivity differences in the transducers by adjusting gain somewhere in the electronics, which might not affect the difference in hiss.

 

[Bwaslo]

View attachment 517317
I was just able to obtain three additional Palmer Orbit11 units for measurement.





View attachment 517318
For an accurate comparison, I kept the microphone position fixed and simply swapped the speaker samples one by one during the measurements.





View attachment 517319
View attachment 517320

To clarify any questions regarding the self-noise measurement conditions and equipment, I am sharing a photo of my measurement environment.
I use a Larson Davis CAL250 SPL calibrator together with an Earthworks M30 microphone. On the measurement day (today, Friday, March 13, 2026), the lowest ambient noise floor at the measurement site was 22.1 dB(A).





View attachment 517321
Here I overlaid the graph of the sample I previously reviewed (measured on March 6, shown in gray) with the measurements of the three samples tested today.

Red – Sample #1
Blue – Sample #2
Green – Sample #3

I also recorded the environmental noise floor before and after the measurements, and can confirm that the measurement environment noise floor did not change in any meaningful way during the tests.

Interestingly, even among the three samples measured today, the self-noise differences are quite noticeable.






View attachment 517322
View attachment 517323
View attachment 517324
I also compared the measurements with the −20 dB PAD engaged.
(The speaker position was kept fixed, and the adjustment was made using the top control.)





View attachment 517325
This figure shows only the −20 dB PAD measurements.
Interestingly, the sample measured on March 6 shows a level similar to Sample #1.







View attachment 517326
View attachment 517327
View attachment 517328
Since these differences might potentially be related to sensitivity variations between units, I also compared far-field measurements.

If this were simply a sensitivity issue, the green sample (#3), which showed the lowest self-noise, should also have measured the lowest output level. However, that was not the case.

As a result, contrary to the initial impression based on a single unit, there appears to be a meaningful variation in self-noise between individual units.
Considering that the three samples I obtained at the same time showed up to about a 5 dB difference, it seems difficult to rule out the possibility that there may be a noticeable unit-to-unit variation in the self-noise of Palmer Orbit11 speakers distributed worldwide.

Given this situation, it actually seems quite natural that different ASR members report mixed impressions such as “the hiss is quite noticeable” versus “the hiss is audible but not really bothersome.”

I might have missed it, but were these measurements made with analog input or digital? With an input cable plugged in or not (or input shorted)?

 

[Andreas007]

Thanks to the capacitors there is a chance for real dead silence. Maybe some smoke too.

KR

Have you been eating too many capacitors lately? My KH120s have been running for 10 years without any problems.
The whole studio world doesn't seem to have any big issues with these speakers either.
What kind of capacitors does Palmer use?

 

[Bwaslo]

I might have missed it, but were these measurements made with analog input or digital? With an input cable plugged in or not (or input shorted)?

This is kind of important.

Analog vs digital input selection because it will likely be different for different users and involve different internal paths in the speaker.

Input connector state because (if analog input selected) noise can vary based on input noise OR on source impedance. Worst case would be open input, as some circuits (particularly with bipolar input IC devices) noise could be expected to vary all over the place in not a realistic test condition.

For digital input selected probably input connector state is less important. Though a clever speaker design could disable/mute the amplifier when a digital input stream isn't detected (some DACs do that). Probably a fair test to get around that would be to test driving digital input with an LSB level signal applied. (Given the Orbit's noise in the report, that's not likely the case with it, though!).

 

[Salt]

Hiss at input set to AES it the same as with XLR and PAD at - 20dB.

 

[Bwaslo]

Thanks

 

[amirm]

But if you get 20dB and someone else 45dB somethings up with the speaker.

It is not that easy. I tried a couple of years ago. Due to very low levels of noise, and the need to reduce the impact of room noise, you have to make measurements very close to the tweeter. Slight differences in distance then makes a large difference. Further, what do you do with different shaped waveguides? Measure from face of the speaker or the driver itself? What if you can't get close to the driver due to phase plugs and such?

 

[tonyrob]

sounds like, there is not a standard for the speaker self-noise measurement, only common sense works.

 

[BVK]

Thomann has both white and black pairs available as customer returns right now.

 

[JoeDiMEG]

Thomann Germany is still sold out on black and white B-Stock.

Fun thread.



KR

 

[Downsideup]

Wow they were available a few minutes ago. they went fast!
My returned pair arrived at Thomann today, it will be available next week I suppose

 

[Mnyb]

It is not that easy. I tried a couple of years ago. Due to very low levels of noise, and the need to reduce the impact of room noise, you have to make measurements very close to the tweeter. Slight differences in distance then makes a large difference. Further, what do you do with different shaped waveguides? Measure from face of the speaker or the driver itself? What if you can't get close to the driver due to phase plugs and such?

I see ideally one wants some more distance and a very very quiet room .

I think Nuyes finds are interesting but then only in a relative sense not as an absolute noise value.

Back to if you hear noise in your use case it’s your decision, try for yourself

 

[Salt]

The 'quick and dirty' spectral analysis revealed some random noise over all frequencies, but three permanent bands around 320 Hz, 11 kHz and 19 kHz, whereas the latter me be a 2nd harmonic that is cutoff by filter. Setting the PAD to -20dB reduced them.
So my uneducated guess is, that is not genuinly produced by the power amplifiers, but gain/pre-amp stage or DSP-out (latter would be suported by same hiss with AES vs. XLR input).
Maybe there's some tiny cap or even op-amp not quiet right...?

 

[amirm]

The 'quick and dirty' spectral analysupport sis revealed some random noise over all frequencies, but three permanent bands around 320 Hz, 11 kHz and 19 kHz, whereas the latter me be a 2nd harmonic that is cutoff by filter. Setting the PAD to -20dB reduced them.
So my uneducated guess is, that is not genuinly produced by the power amplifiers, but gain/pre-amp stage or DSP-out (latter would be suported by same hiss with AES vs. XLR input).
Maybe there's some tiny cap or even op-amp not quiet right...?

The broadband noise likely has more energy than those spikes. And at any rate, we are much more sensitive to the region from 2 to 5 kHz.

 

[Salt]

The broadband noise likely has more energy than those spikes. And at any rate, we are much more sensitive to the region from 2 to 5 kHz.

My annotation was more directed to the source of hiss, not the audibility of it.

 

[illusonic]

at 0.1 m from the tweeter

So at 0.4m distance, broadband noise level of all speakers (PAD -20dB) will be at or below room noise.
To me these measurements suggest that there is no noise issue in the vast majority of use-cases including most near-field scenarios.
And that's what I hear from my pair of speaker (yes I could not resists to buy a pair from a small web-shop after Thomann was sold out).

 

[amirm]

So at 0.4m distance, broadband noise level of all speakers (PAD -20dB) will be at or below room noise.

There is no way you can state that. Noise has a spectrum and the directional noise (from a speaker) is more audible than diffused. Such noise can be audible well below noise floor of the room.