Palmer Orbit 11 Monitor Review

[amirm]

Wondering, when Amirm was hearing/seeing clipping with rowdy program material, was the 86dBSPL the average spl meter read or peak?

I didn't use a SPL meter during listening. Only during measurements.

It wouldn't make sense to use a SPL meter anyway as that is spectrum blind. And here, we have a speaker with variable bass limiting.

 

[illusonic]

It is different from passives in the sense that taking a small box with smallish drivers and boosting its low end response requires much more power input and driver excursion, therefore limits the maximum SPL possible are run into rather than overall sensitivity. It's the other side of the same coin basically.

I guess you are referring to typical passives with at least average sensitivity compared to relatively small actives. My remark (no different from passives) simply adressed that lower sensitivity also limits maximum output for passive speakers and that low sensitivity is not exclusive to active speakers. And while lower sensitivity limits maximum output, there are lots of speakers that are small but still provide sufficient output for various use-cases.

Every speaker is a set of compromises. It just so happens that I consider the Palmer speaker a particularly favorable set of compromises for the use-case I'm most intrested in - home audio. Many forum members have epressed different opinions mainly based on measurements. This is in my view partly wrong interpretation of measurement results. In other cases it's correct interpretation of measurements combined with high expectations that can only be served by larger speakers.

My assesment is based on consideratons of all measurement results I've seen so far and the fact that the speakers play really nice in my living room even without external EQ. Surely large floor standers would produce bass more effortless and maybe play somewhat louder. But these are large and potentially more epensive so simply another speaker category.

Considering the exceptional value for money that the Palmers present, I don't feel the way measurement results and the product itself are discussed here do them justice. While these results will keep Palmer grounded and hopefully avoid timely price increase, they don't help to get speaker prices down. Companies like D&D and Kii Audio are not interested to sell to normal people that don't buy speakers for at least 7kEUR (Kii 7) or even 10kEUR (D&D 6C). If products like the Orbit 11 become a comercial success, we will see more of these. ASR can support that and it would be good for most music lovers - even on this forum.

 

[Mort]

I don't feel the way measurement results and the product itself are discussed here do them justice.

You've been heard. Time to move on?

 

[amirm]

Considering the exceptional value for money that the Palmers present, I don't feel the way measurement results and the product itself are discussed here do them justice. While these results will keep Palmer grounded and hopefully avoid timely price increase, they don't help to get speaker prices down. Companies like D&D and Kii Audio are not interested to sell to normal people that don't buy speakers for at least 7kEUR (Kii 7) or even 10kEUR (D&D 6C). If products like the Orbit 11 become a comercial success, we will see more of these. ASR can support that and it would be good for most music lovers - even on this forum.

What? It is not my job to bend my review criteria to help a company sell more products. My job is to find the real story of a product and present it. Good, bad or indifferent. Here, the message is mostly positive. There are limitations that folks didn't know about reading the specs. But now they do and can decide to support the product or not.

If you look at the poll, nearly 80% is positive and supportive of the product (either Fine or Great). So I don't know why you think I am working against the success of the product.

As to other products you list, I have not tested them so don't know how they perform. The fact that they are more expensive is neither here, nor there.

 

[nbot]

Hey @amirm - thanks a lot for the review! Any chance to upload the data to spinorama website in the near future?

 

[amirm]

Hey @amirm - thanks a lot for the review! Any chance to upload the data to spinorama website in the near future?

My pleasure. I have provided the data in the review so hopefully it will show up there very soon (I don't run that site ).

 

[phoenixdogfan]

People are getting very emotional about this speaker, and I kind of understand that, but they need to cool it a little bit. I too had high expectations-apparently unrealistic expectations--for this speaker, thinking it could be a slightly smaller version of D&D 8c's or something crazy like that. Obviously not to be.

But it's hardly the fault of this review or the reviewer. Amir's job is to find the facts, and he's done that. He's not here to be a cheerleader, or provide an incubator for certain designs, no matter how promising. And Palmer Orbits are a promising design. Perhaps a follow on model will address the issues with the directivity, limited output, high distortion bass, and self noise at a still affordable price. If a mod could come out in short order, it could create a real category killer.

Still, even as they are, the Palmers do check a whole lot of boxes and do things many right for their intended audience, so it's very hard to throw stones because they fall short of being an answered prayer. They are exactly what their manufacturer said they would be. Now if they could just become something greater....

 

[illusonic]

What? It is not my job to bend my review criteria to help a company sell more products. My job is to find the real story of a product and present it. Good, bad or indifferent. Here, the message is mostly positive. There are limitations that folks didn't know about reading the specs. But now they do and can decide to support the product or not.

If you look at the poll, nearly 80% is positive and supportive of the product (either Fine or Great). So I don't know why you think I am working against the success of the product.

As to other products you list, I have not tested them so don't know how they perform. The fact that they are more expensive is neither here, nor there.

First of all, thank you for your review, armirm! My view is that measurements are mostly worthless without competent interpretation. So most people reading this forum basically rely on your interpretation or the assesment of other forum members. To me the overall impression from your comments is that of a quite limited and hard to handle speaker with some potential. For me it was absolutely easy to handle and gives good results with only intenal EQ. With two speakers bass is actually shaking the room.

My remarks above were also about the way some members seem to regard the speakers as very limited to e.g. specific use cases like near-field which I don't see. These measurement-based assesments are often presented as facts while people that actually own the product gave different feedback. As a result one forum member thought the Palmer requires 65Hz high-pass for low volume listening. That's just not reality.

Anyways, thanks again for all of the reviews you have postet. This forum is very informative and I have taken advantage of this since quite some time. Giving feedback on this prduct is my way to return something to the community. I'm not a Palmer brand ambassador and I think I made my point clear. So I don't intend to get into further discussion.

 

[shuppatsu]

I voted "fine," even though these would be nearly ideal for my preferences in a near-field speaker. I simply feel uncomfortable listening to music at concert levels. The price is very reasonable for what you get. They would fit nicely on my small-ish desk. Still, doesn't quite play in the same league as the Neumanns and Genelecs.

 

[amirm]

Video review posted: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/palmer-orbit-11-monitor-review-video.70084/

 

[Mort]

I did not realize it was class A/B. That's not a cost savings is it? D is the cheapest generally, right?

 

[1st.Virtual.Me]

Excellent Video!
These are quite revolutionary, and your video makes this clear.

I note that Palmer says it's 400w RMS Class-D, and their video shows the top panel control panel with presets for the DSP. This looks like an excellent feature.
It would seem to me that cardioid would use some of the acoustic power for directivy, so maybe if the cardioid could be turned off these could be louder in cases when needed.

Thomman has these for $759

 

[Xibal]

So, sorry for the newbie comment, but what's the purpose of such an amplification power, if distortion and power limit makes it for a suggested near field listening (which itself seems to contradict the scope of a cardioid configuration)?

 

[capslock]

I did not realize it was class A/B. That's not a cost savings is it? D is the cheapest generally, right?

Depends on the power. A switching power supply combined with a chip amp (LM3886 or TDA7293) might end up offering lower distortion for the same or lower cost than a small class D but only up to 50 or maybe 100 W (paralleling chips). At 200 or 400 W, no way because you'd need discrete transistors, safe area protection and adequate cooling for class AB.

 

[Waxx]

It is what i expected, quiet good but not perfect, and limited in clean volume. But for that price this is very good. Kii & D&D need to start watch out, it's not in their league yet, but it gets close for a fraction of the price.

 

[amirm]

I did not realize it was class A/B. That's not a cost savings is it? D is the cheapest generally, right?

That was my mistake. It is class D. I confused it with the PSI speaker I just tested. I put a sticky comment under the video.

 

[illusonic]

Video review posted: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...s/palmer-orbit-11-monitor-review-video.70084/

Thanks for a very honest review. Now it's up to the community to figure out how to get the best out of this speaker.

Thankfully build-in DSP already helps alot. I used the -6dB setting of the bass EQ (low-shelve filter) and -2dB for treble (high-shelve filter).
While I never got these into clipping with music (but with sine waves), I did not play any special low-frequecy music with sub 30Hz content.
Obviously the -6dB bass shelve + the second speaker give me 12dB more headroom than a single speaker w/o EQ.

Clipping should be avoided as the limiter produces high distortion (Palmer should address this).
So people playing with high bass-levels need some sort of high-pass filter with the corner freequency depending on the expected output level.
For my listening habits there is no limitation in playback levels.

The effectiveness of the cardiod dispersion in avoiding a rear-wall (behind the speaker) cancellation notch should be explored.
From my calculation this should only work with the speaker positioned right at the wall (passive cardioid effective in the lower frequency range of the midrange speaker which plays down to 250Hz).

Narrow dispersion angle means a more focussed sound image than wide dispersion.
I personally did not like this as much as the wider image of my other speakers which have neither waveguide nor cardioid.
For me it helped to make the speaker point straight instead of toed in toward the listening position.
This way you get more side reflections which widens the sound stage.
It's a matter of taste weather the result is wide enough.

 

[capslock]

So, sorry for the newbie comment, but what's the purpose of such an amplification power, if distortion and power limit makes it for a suggested near field listening (which itself seems to contradict the scope of a cardioid configuration)?

Yes, I wondered about that, too. It's quite clear the woofers are running out of excursion, and I wonder why they didn't include an optional high pass. If you use a high pass, there is still the distortion at 100 - 300 Hz, but at 86 dB/ 1 m, it is mostly HD2. There is also a little HD3 peak at 1.4 kHz even at 86 dB / 1 m. Wonder if that is the tweeter XO frequency. We don't have the near field graphs in this review to tell.

 

[illusonic]

Yes, I wondered about that, too. It's quite clear the woofers are running out of excursion, and I wonder why they didn't include an optional high pass. If you use a high pass, there is still the distortion at 100 - 300 Hz, but at 86 dB/ 1 m, it is mostly HD2. There is also a little HD3 peak at 1.4 kHz even at 86 dB / 1 m. Wonder if that is the tweeter XO frequency. We don't have the near field graphs in this review to tell.

I once had a demo of a system that reduces speaker distortion. There are not too many options to do this but I can't speak about the actual system. We had a 20cm woofer prepared for that demo which had high distortion. Being engineers, me and my collegues expected great improvements with the low-frequency distortion removed. After all it looks terrible in distortion graphs. Distortion cancellation could be turned on and off for direct comparison. It came as a big surprise that the difference was rather small and most of us preferred to keep the distortion which sounds like having more bass.

You may compare THD in 100-300Hz range with Kii 3/7 and D&D 8C for another perspective on the Palmer performance.

 

[Tovarich007]

Thanks for your review, Amir, very informative.

The Orbit 11 is indeed a very good good speaker with a great VFM. It has obvious limitations of course, who could reasonably think it hasn't ? The merit of your review is to show and explain them clearly.
"A frog can't turn out itself in an ox" as we used to say in french. Law of physics are always there.

Maybe the cardioîd effect is a bit too strong, as I guessed it was in a previous post, reinforcing too much the bass "plateau" below around 300hz. It's not a problem for nearfield rather low SPL, but for listening at 2/2,5 m on large specter and higher SPL music, it is. To tell MY truth (I mean, my intuition) on this subject, I am not sure that this contemporary trend for cardioïd pattern in the mids is really an advantge in most configurations. It's the bass who causes the more damaging room interractions, not the mids.

The compression limiter is maybe too strong too, and the wave guide around the coax isn't fully symetric, the transition between tweeter and medium good but not perfect for constant directivity. Well, that's not Genelec (or KEF for amateur hifi) expertise nor price of course, but it's better than the vast majority of speakers out there

All this could be easily improved by small changes in as second improved iterration of this speaker.

Careful placement and EQ can largely fix things even with this version, assuming listeners don't think they have a large speaker capable of heavy SPL in the deep bass.
Deep yes, but loud no !
"A frog can't turn out itself in an ox" as we used to say in french. I hope nobody was dreaming that this speaker could violate the law of physics.

Of course, a larger version with two 10 inches (25 cm) and a bit more powerful amps would be super fine. Maybe Palmer thinks about it ? Anyway, with bigger boomers and extended deep bass, Palmer should absolutely fix the excess of bass plateau.