Palmer Orbit 11 Monitor Review

[illusonic]

The Orbits might use an 8" version of the Kii bass speakers.
At least these look quite similar.

 

[Karmacoma]

I would really like to know the performance of that new Devialet Phantom Ultimate 108db... it has a monitoring mode now

Wrong thread for the request, but yes, I'd definitely love @Amir to get his hands on one of these!

 

[Bwaslo]

Just played 35/40/50Hz sine wave over the Palmers in my 5 x 7m living room at 2.5m distance.
When clipping indicator becomes red, levels are simply uncomfortable to me.
And speakers could and should move even closer to the wall which further increases room gain.

So I can fully recommend these speakers for home audio use.
They provide some EQ adjustment which will be sufficient for many users.
For better tonality control some manual or auto-EQ is shurely a very good idea.

So, it would've been better overall if Palmer had chosen ~35Hz for the low frequency corner, which is about what would make sense for a couple of 8s, even in a larger box.

Wondering, when Amirm was hearing/seeing clipping with rowdy program material, was the 86dBSPL the average spl meter read or peak? Because it's been stressed elsewhere here that peaks can be about 20dB above average. Was the peak LED lighting at 86dB peak or at 100&something dB? Quite a differencce. Not to mention that this occurred "without* turning down the bass by 6dB to accomodate the omni pattern the speaker has down there.

 

[illusonic]

Might be these speakers. Outer diameter of the surround would fit.

Tymphany SBS-200F35AL01-04 8

- 200 mm Subwoofer, 4 Ohm - stabile Aluminiummembran - inverse Sicke - sehr langhubig und belastbar

quint-store.com

 

[dfuller]

Might be these speakers. Outer diameter of the surround would fit.

Tymphany SBS-200F35AL01-04 8

- 200 mm Subwoofer, 4 Ohm - stabile Aluminiummembran - inverse Sicke - sehr langhubig und belastbar

quint-store.com

View attachment 517964

Probably a customized version of this yeah

 

[jhaider]

That's kind of the problem right there.

All these drivers stuffed together sure imply lots of things.

Two 8" drivers should go low with low distortion and high SPL, that is what intuition suggests.
But as with a ton of things in audio, when measurements get in the room intuition gets out the window.

And measurements clearly show that the 2 8" can go low (with brute DSP force) but physics laugh about clean SPL.
To get a proper intuition about drivers, all one can do is play a 8"-10"-12" driver on its own, with no enclosure. Yep, no lows.
About the drivers themselves, price usually goes up with the tech and voice coil size. At low cost, compromises get seriously in the way.

Not that is a bad speaker, not at all.Is just fine at nearfield with some scrutiny probably. But that's that.
You get what you pay for.

Thanks Amir!

I’m reminded by this thread that, per Sound und Recording’s bass headroom metrics, JBL’s pint sized 705 and Neumann’s similarly sized KH 120 II, with their no holds barred 5” midwoofers, beat the much larger entry-level JBL 308. Palmer is likely using woofers of similar quality as JBL 308, because they’re fitting a lot of parts at a very aggressive price. And they’re sealed, so you don’t get the narrow boost from a port. And they’re in very small cabinets, which given the aforementioned lots of parts and aggressive pricing, means limited BL motors and thus high-Q alignment.

So it’s not actually a big surprise that the elite 5” 2-way monitors are output competitive until their port tunings. That doesn’t make this speaker a less interesting package with different trade offs, for those willing to live with the degraded real human use factors (no grilles), but just shows the tradeoffs.

 

[MZKM]

Preference Rating
SCORE: 6.4
SCORE w/sub: 7.2

Frequency response: ±3.7dB 28Hz-20kHz

​

 

[illusonic]

I’m reminded by this thread that, per Sound und Recording’s bass headroom metrics, JBL’s pint sized 705 and Neumann’s similarly sized KH 120 II, with their no holds barred 5” midwoofers, beat the much larger entry-level JBL 308. Palmer is likely using woofers of similar quality as JBL 308, because they’re fitting a lot of parts at a very aggressive price. And they’re sealed, so you don’t get the narrow boost from a port. And they’re in very small cabinets, which given the aforementioned lots of parts and aggressive pricing, means limited BL motors and thus high-Q alignment.

So it’s not actually a big surprise that the elite 5” 2-way monitors are output competitive until their port tunings. That doesn’t make this speaker a less interesting package with different trade offs, for those willing to live with the degraded real human use factors (no grilles), but just shows the tradeoffs.

You are talking 2-way speakers here. For 3-way IMD plays a much lower role hence bass speaker quality is less important. Anyways, what you write is highly speculative.

 

[RDoc]

I've been wondering if it wouldn't make sense for companies to assume people buying such speakers will have subwoofers in many cases. That would allow them to concentrate on the >80Hz or so range for linearity and directivity which I'd think would simplify the whole problem.

 

[jhaider]

You are talking 2-way speakers here. For 3-way IMD plays a much lower role hence bass speaker quality is less important. Anyways, what you write is highly speculative.

Who said anything about IMD? IIRC the S&R bass headroom metric is SPL at 10% THD.

Also, the only bit of “speculation” above (which is more reasonably described as inference based on analysis of published 3rd party data) is that an $800 speaker with a coax and twin 8” woofers is going to use a similar quality 8” woofer as a $300 2-way.

 

[Audionaut]

Might be these speakers. Outer diameter of the surround would fit.

Don't think so

As there was no driver on the market able to handle the requirements we had it's all custom made drivers specially developped for this Product. The development of the driver was a huge part of the project and was done with the latest simmulation and measurement technologies. We developed everything from ground up [Basket, Motor, Cone] to meet the requirements of this product.
Fortunately, as Palmer is part of the Adam Hall Group, we have a great team of acoustic engineers with many years' experience in developing these drivers and didn't have to start from scratch.
[/QUO TE]

 

[illusonic]

Who said anything about IMD? IIRC the S&R bass headroom metric is SPL at 10% THD.

Also, the only bit of “speculation” above (which is more reasonably described as inference based on analysis of published 3rd party data) is that an $800 speaker with a coax and twin 8” woofers is going to use a similar quality 8” woofer as a $300 2-way.

IMD it is the actual limiting factor for a low-quality woofer in 2-way speakers. Harmonic distortion (THD) of bass frequencies is acceptable to very high levels but the IMD that comes with it in 2-way speakers is not. Speaker quality depends more on engineering than on price. Low-cost speaker drivers can be quite high performance if done right. And in a limited frequency range (e.g. bass only) requirements are relaxed. In any case, a 2-way with 5" woofer will have a very hard time to beat 2 x 8" even in sealed enclosure.

 

[illusonic]

Don't think so

UffdiePalme said: As there was no driver on the market able to handle the requirements we had it's all custom made drivers specially developped for this Product. The development of the driver was a huge part of the project and was done with the latest simmulation and measurement technologies. We developed everything from ground up [Basket, Motor, Cone] to meet the requirements of this product.
Fortunately, as Palmer is part of the Adam Hall Group, we have a great team of acoustic engineers with many years' experience in developing these drivers and didn't have to start from scratch.
[/QUO TE]

Besides every manufacturer making such claims, it could very well be that they adapted an existing driver. This will keep tooling cost low. They must have saved money somewhere....

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I've been wondering if it wouldn't make sense for companies to assume people buying such speakers will have subwoofers in many cases. That would allow them to concentrate on the >80Hz or so range for linearity and directivity which I'd think would simplify the whole problem.

Excellent point. I don't think any company has ever designed a 3-way that naturally rolls off at 80 hz. If it were designed to play loud, be cardioid, low distortion, and have exemplary directivity and flat on axis FR, they would have a real winner on their hands. I know I'd pay up $3k for a pair.

 

[levimax]

The big hope is that somehow, some way, Hoffman's Iron Law can be defeated but so far the physical realities Hoffman's Law is based on have not changed.

Josef Anton Hofmann - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"...three parameters that cannot all be had at the same time. They are low-bass reproduction, small (enclosure) size, and high (output) sensitivity."

 

[Matt_Holland]

Door is open for Palmer to release a similarly styled subwoofer that works with the Orbit set to 80Hz HPF.

 

[illusonic]

The big hope is that somehow, some way, Hoffman's Iron Law can be defeated but so far the physical realities Hoffman's Law is based on have not changed.

Josef Anton Hofmann - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"...three parameters that cannot all be had at the same time. They are low-bass reproduction, small (enclosure) size, and high (output) sensitivity."

Technology – GSS Audio

gss-audio.com

Edit: Nobody needs to defeat Hoffmans law. We just don't care too much about low sensitivity anymore.

 

[Bwaslo]

A subwoofer at ear height in a room is maybe not the best place for it anyway. Separate sub(s) makes sense in several ways, place the room modal and pressure driven subs where they work best.

 

[RDoc]

Excellent point. I don't think any company has ever designed a 3-way that naturally rolls off at 80 hz. If it were designed to play loud, be cardioid, low distortion, and have exemplary directivity and flat on axis FR, they would have a real winner on their hands. I know I'd pay up $3k for a pair.

I'd think limited frequency band 2 ways would work very well.

 

[goat76]

The reason is simply that bass distortion is not very audible. With that said, I would not use such speakers to judge mixes at high playback level. Harmonic distortion creates the impression of higher bass levels (also known as virtual bass). And you don't want the speaker to do this (rather the mixing engineer might do it to get more bass from small devices). But for home use I don't see any issue. People are listening to lot's of Low-frequency distortion without noticing.

But still, Amir says he heard it, and I’m pretty sure I would to.