PS Audio FR30 speakers

[Doodski]

What does WAF have to do in the big picture of this?
How many serious audiophiles at the income level that lets them afford $10-50k+ speakers don't have a dedicated room in their home where WAF is still an issue? Much of the photos I see on the net from these folks have beautiful listening rooms with handsome but not too WAF room treatments and such, man caves in street language filled to the brim with gear. Why would anyone put this kind of investment into HiFi and then have it turn out sounding like crap because of a lousy sounding room?
WAF may be a huge factor at the mid-fi level of income/expenditure but when you step into the very top levels of the hobby, WAF is a non-issue.

My 2nd wife had a ax to grind on my tri-amp'd big KEF transmission line cabinets that where about 4.5 feet tall. I simply ignored her plight and she eventually came around and enjoyed them in the living room with the TV and rack of gear. I think it was all a test to see what I would do. I never passed I simply got her to adjust.

 

[Sal1950]

I can only assume that you are single.

You mean to tell me you have a High End audio system worth a total of $75,000 or more, and only have one room in your house for your audio system which you must share with wife and family?

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

I would think that one thing which would complicate any characterization of the FR-30 would be that HF driver which fires out the back of the cabinet, so that the speaker is a quasi di-pole or bi-pole. I'm not a fan of the rear firing driver concept but I do have tweeter horns which fire backwards on my main speakers. I rarely use them and they're there mostly because I already had them and the amplifier, so why not.

 

[Doodski]

I would think that one thing which would complicate any characterization of the FR-30 would be that HF driver which fires out the back of the cabinet, so that the speaker is a quasi di-pole or bi-pole. I'm not a fan of the rear firing driver concept but I do have tweeter horns which fire backwards on my main speakers. I rarely use them and they're there mostly because I already had them and the amplifier, so why not.

I've used the Polk SRS and Definitive Technology towers and I never was into either of them as good as they where. There was just so much going on it seemed too much. Some songs they excelled @ and others it was phony sounding.

 

[Sal1950]

I've used the Polk SRS and Definitive Technology towers and I never was into either of them as good as they where. There was just so much going on it seemed too much. Some songs they excelled @ and others it was phony sounding.

I've got a buddy down around Tampa that builds speakers that mostly all use some type of rear firing tweeter, etc to add a bit of air and spaciousness to the soundstage, which in most cases sounds excellent. But there's just so many variables involved that the approach just never grabbed me enough to get me excited.

My 2nd wife had a ax to grind on my tri-amp'd big KEF transmission line cabinets that where about 4.5 feet tall. I simply ignored her plight and she eventually came around and enjoyed them in the living room with the TV and rack of gear. I think it was all a test to see what I would do. I never passed I simply got her to adjust.

My place of 32 years up in Chicago was a very modest bungolow with 3 bedrooms and one bath on the first floor and one bedroom and bath downstairs in the basement, plus a full empty attic. I had always planed on building a full blown mancave in the basement but the funds and time just never appeared. My deal with the lady's of the house was always - you can do whatever you wish with the entire house, but the living room is mine for my hi-fi and video gear, no argument. I've never understood how that couldn't be a fair arrangement?

 

[Doodski]

I've got a buddy down around Tampa that builds speakers that mostly all use some type of rear firing tweeter, etc to add a bit of air and spaciousness to the soundstage, which in most cases sounds excellent. But there's just so many variables involved that the approach just never grabbed me enough to get me excited.


My place of 32 years up in Chicago was a very modest bungolow with 3 bedrooms and one bath on the first floor and one bedroom and bath downstairs in the basement, plus a full empty attic. I had always planed on building a full blown mancave in the basement but the funds and time just never appeared. My deal with the lady's of the house was always - you can do whatever you wish with the entire house, but the living room is mine for my hi-fi and video gear, no argument. I've never understood how that couldn't be a fair arrangement?

I just manipulated her to get my wants full filled. I have my ways that are irresistible for a woman... lol. She was a cutie pie so it made it easier to manipulate her. RFLMA

 

[DWI]

What does WAF have to do in the big picture of this?
How many serious audiophiles at the income level that lets them afford $10-50k+ speakers don't have a dedicated room in their home where WAF is still an issue? Much of the photos I see on the net from these folks have beautiful listening rooms with handsome but not too WAF room treatments and such, man caves in street language filled to the brim with gear. Why would anyone put this kind of investment into HiFi and then have it turn out sounding like crap because of a lousy sounding room?
WAF may be a huge factor at the mid-fi level of income/expenditure but when you step into the very top levels of the hobby, WAF is a non-issue.

Me, for one.

In many urban areas a dedicated room is often an unaffordable luxury. Lots of people have speakers over $10k in their shared living areas, as I do, I’ve seen over $100k. My acoustic treatment was installed in the building phase, so is not visible. Acoustic panels were out of the question. Some leading brands like Sonus Faber, Focal and Franco Serblin, there are many, even Wilson, mostly cost well over $10k and are designed to look good in shared living areas.

The FR-30 cost $30k and are clearly designed with high WAF factor, and I would expect to see in many living rooms. you only have to look at their publicity pictures.

 

[Mart68]

lets's remind ourselves of what the FR30 looks like:



Personally I like the appearance. If it would not look out of place on the set of 'Space: 1999' then I'm there.

Clearly they have been designed to look a certain way. But I cannot see that they have been 'designed for WAF'. As with all aesthetic considerations it is down to the individual, there is no 'One size fits all'. You cannot 'design for WAF'.

IME many women would not have a speaker that size in their living rooms regardless of what it looked like.
Some would not have any loudspeakers in their living room regardless of size or appearance.
Some may tolerate small loudspeakers providing the colour and design fits with the existing aesthetic.
Some may tolerate a larger loudspeaker, but again must blend in to the aesthetic.
Wives who are seriously into music and good sound would be fine with anything as long as it sounded good, however they are a small minority.

A surprising number of males also have lines they will not cross when it comes to the aesthetics. I know some who would not consider a loudspeaker that does not have a superbly crafted real-wood veneer regardless of the sound quality.

I know if I were to show the picture above to my female work colleagues I cannot think of a single one who would say 'Yes, I'd be fine with those in my lounge.' Sadly I can't put that to the test now as I've retired but perhaps some others could try it and poll the responses?

My bet will be no more than one in ten will say 'Yes, I would have them in my lounge.'

That will also be true for any loudspeaker of that sort of size that you want to show them.

 

[amirm]

The FR-30 cost $30k and are clearly designed with high WAF factor, and I would expect to see in many living rooms. you only have to look at their publicity pictures.

I suggest you consult with your wife. And if you are not married, then we know why you said that....

 

[DWI]

The list of customers with Klippel NFS is confidential.

There is a customer list on their website.

References

Customers of KLIPPEL Products

www.klippel.de

Klippel appears to be a modular system and NFS is package of 9 modules. Seems every system is likely to be bespoke, but NFS is clearly the package for home and studio speakers.

Product Brochure & Price Lists

www.klippel.de

PS Audio is a small company and I'm not sure working at Sony is comparable when it comes to how businesses spend money. Looking at that list and seeing Fane on it reminded me of a client back in the late 1980s, a small public company that owned Wharfdale and Fane, major brands at the time, had a record label, some artists under management and sold a few other products. It was doing very well and then went bust almost overnight, very publicly and spectacularly. On the right is a guy called Barnes, the MD of Fane, who built it into a top international monitor brand, the two in the middle were joint CEO's (accountants by trade) who have no idea what Barnes is talking about. On the left is a young A&R guy also used to sell the language tapes, he bought into the business and lost everything, but he's done OK since.

Just because one small company buys something like Klippel, doesn't mean thousands more have to. I've been working with small businesses for 40 years and if I've learned anything it's that there's no one right way to do anything, there are loads of different ways of making good products, offering good services and being successful.

 

[amirm]

There is a customer list on their website.

Didn't I just explain to you that such a list is for Non NFS customers?

 

[DWI]

I suggest you consult with your wife. And if you are not married, then we know why you said that....

I do consult with my wife, she makes those aesthetic decisions. I haven't seen the FR-30 in real life so have no opinion, it is on demo at the UK Audio Show in September. It doesn't have to appeal to everyone, as long as it appeals to enough people to make it profitable. Apparently the first production run was for trade and the next two are sold out.

I wish any new business success. Bringing out just one speaker is quite unusual. Speakers are a long game and "low and slow" without spending too much money makes sense to me.

 

[xaviescacs]

I know if I were to show the picture above to my female work colleagues I cannot think of a single one who would say 'Yes, I'd be fine with those in my lounge.' Sadly I can't put that to the test now as I've retired but perhaps some others could try it and poll the responses?

My bet will be no more than one in ten will say 'Yes, I would have them in my lounge.'

That will also be true for any loudspeaker of that sort of size that you want to show them.

Personally, I'm not sure if this is going to knock me down in TARS style or prepare my a coffee and some fried potatoes... I hope the latter, but I don't dare to ask, juts in case...

My wife says vulgar, a giant USB stick, so her answer is no...

 

[Sal1950]

lets's remind ourselves of what the FR30 looks like:

Yep, ain't she purdy?
IME for a speaker or any component to have a high WAF it must be as small and disappear into the room as much as possible. The great majority just don't want to see them, period.

In many urban areas a dedicated room is often an unaffordable luxury. Lots of people have speakers over $10k in their shared living areas, as I do, I’ve seen over $100k. My acoustic treatment was installed in the building phase, so is not visible. Acoustic panels were out of the question

Nice that you have the funds and ability to custom build the room itself like that.
Seeing as you bring home that high end income, maybe it's time you put on your grown up adult pants and take control of the decisions made on one lousy bit of living space in your home?

 

[audiofooled]

I'm not going to comment on certain people over here using their keyboard for some other than constructive purposes. Nor I'm gonna say anything about Mr. McG.

As much as I would love to see the FR-30 (and some other expensive brands) put under the scope of the NFS, in all fairness, people have designed good loudspeakers prior to the existence of the Klippel system. I hope some day this is going to happen so that we all can see how do these objectively perform but until then, I'm sorry but you all saying negative things about it haven't got a case.

Personally, as a humble DIY-er I could only dream of putting together something like @Chris Brunhaver did. I think many of us who are less knowledgeable in the field could have a lot to learn from him. But I know just about enough to see how much effort and design compromises he had put into development of the FR-30.

As for the aesthetics, I find them contemporary and very pleasing to look at.

 

[DWI]

The room was being rebuilt anyway. Plenty of people do loft or garage conversions, I had to wait a long time for the opportunity. I don't have a loft or a garage. Robert Harley describes at length how to build a high quality acoustic space with cavity walls, he did it himself. As our walls are brick, so we had to take a different approach, lining the walls with a 3-part product that is about $45/sqm and a split level ceiling with soundbloc, which is about 50% more expensive than regular plasterboard. We had to soundproof the walls anyway. People use garages and lofts because they are easier to control noise flow around the house, but my room is on the ground floor. It's pretty straightforward these days, these products are commonplace in offices, schools, restaurants, all sorts of public spaces, as well as homes.

For example, you stop noise flow through the ceiling by not drilling holes in it. We did this with a false ceiling for the lighting, so virtually no sound goes up. Simple, cheap, effective.

For monitors how loud they go is very important. Because of noise issues, for speakers in a living room a critical thing is how good they sound at low volume. Harbeth were brilliant at that, which may be why they are so popular, and the M40 cost well over $10k, closer to $20k.

We agreed on speakers easily. A friend has just spent about $25k on speakers in his newly designed and very beautiful house and his wife is not happy with them at all.

 

[Purité Audio]

Having now seen Chris I will not be picking a fight with him!

Keith

 

[DWI]

Didn't I just explain to you that such a list is for Non NFS customers?

No you didn't.

That is a list of Klippel system users. It says so. They do two systems, R&D and QC. The NFS is a package of modules on the R&D side, but the core component to R&D is the KA3 Analyser. It says so on the website.

Indeed, even manufacturers have stopped measuring in any serious way the products before releasing them.

The nearest user to me is PMC, met them many times and owned a product. They say a lot about their R&D.

https://pmc-speakers.com/technology/research-and-development

They use a range of Klippel products because they are there to be seen. The describe how they use NFS to speed up the design process.

"In reality, any speaker will radiate different levels of sound at different frequencies in all directions. To fully characterise this behaviour, it is necessary to take measurements at many different points in a sphere around the speaker under test to build up a complete picture of how it performs. It is possible to use motorised turntables and robotic control systems to automate the process of taking very large numbers of measurements in an anechoic chamber to speed up this process, which is incredibly useful when making iterative design changes as it lets us rapidly determine what effect the latest design iteration of a part is having on the performance of the product as a whole."

They also use external testing facilities, the best available. In a video on that page they are testing a monitor, which costs €149,000 (a lot more than a Klippel NFS) at the Salford University Acoustic Research Centre facilities, which is world renowned and where the BBC do much of their acoustic research. You can't test there every day and it is a 5 hour round trip from PMC, but it is better for final testing and better for low frequencies.

Acoustic Testing, Calibration and Consultancy | Acoustics | University of Salford

The specialist acoustics testing team at the University of Salford deliver innovative solutions in acoustic measurement, modelling, and development.

acoustictesting.salford.ac.uk

So please don't paint all manufacturers with the same brush or that they consider Klippel, whilst a great design tool, the last word in measurement.

 

[restorer-john]

Having now seen Chris I will not be picking a fight with him!

He's great. You look at him and think... and then he opens his mouth and he's totally the opposite.

Great video, thanks for linking it.

 

[MaxBuck]

You mean to tell me you have a High End audio system worth a total of $75,000 or more, and only have one room in your house for your audio system which you must share with wife and family?

I'm telling you that the size of the house, dedicated audio room and the costliness of the audio system would all be irrelevant to my wife's insistence on aesthetics.

Hell, she has criteria for what stuff is allowed in our garage, and where I need to put it.