• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

PS Audio FR30 speakers

DSJR

Major Contributor
Joined
Jan 27, 2020
Messages
3,312
Likes
4,425
Location
Suffolk Coastal, UK
Having now seen Chris I will not be picking a fight with him!

Keith
I think it's great Chris came here and offered his expertise and thoughts on speaker design. I hope we haven't as a group put him off.

I suspect this speaker is the flagship they can use for the brand faithful. Future models may well be smaller as he's suggested and of course even highly experienced designers learn as they go down a particular path. Shutting off in terms of learning and adaptation (as I almost witnessed one respected designer do) can lead to products being left behind and when the core business shrinks (people placing the orders shutting up shop or no longer having a need for the product) then it becomes a huge issue.

So, if Chris reads this, please stick around. I don't think any of the angst is against you personally at all. Too many manufacturers dislike audio forums and brush us 'all' off as a bunch of ignorant idiots, so it's really cool in my opinion if you can contribute and offer your opinion based on your own practical and technical experience :)

P.S. I'm so envious of you lot with large rooms. My sitting room would be akin to a study or large broom closet in your houses :D
 

YSC

Major Contributor
Joined
Dec 31, 2019
Messages
3,194
Likes
2,570
There is a customer list on their website.
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.

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.
View attachment 206186
I think it's not the arguement of whether PS audio buy the NFS, nobody here asked them to do so, most are asking to make a well measured speaker, one way or the other. how or what tool they are using is something that nobody here actually cares, if they can do that by ear or by some black magic or so the well measured speaker will be praised also, but if you buy a NFS and create something with weird FR or distortion or directivity behaviour, even you bought a NFS and used a dozen anechoic chamber will still get the same blame. We are bashing anything with poor performance but not brands, less so for what tools they use. hell if say one day Genelec/Neumann/JBL/Revel produce some bad measuring speakers they will be trashed here also.
 

DWI

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2021
Messages
495
Likes
437
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.
Can someone put up a poll:
Where is your main stereo system located?
- Loft or garage
- Dedicated treated music room
- Dedicated untreated room
- Living room
- Office
- Bedroom (for the truly unfortunate)
- Headphones etc
I reckon the results would be rather different with separate married and single polls.

Then we might know what ASR members actually have to deal with acoustically before the measurements start to kick in.
 

MakeMineVinyl

Major Contributor
Joined
Jun 5, 2020
Messages
3,558
Likes
5,871
Location
Santa Fe, NM
Heretic! I will start gathering the wood for your appointment with burning at the stake. Please wear appropriate clothing!:)
Yes indeed I do; JBL 2405H firing off the back of each main. But like I said before, I rarely use them and they only are there because I had them on hand, along with a willing power amplifier. It was basically a failed experiment which just confirmed my belief that using the room's walls to create "soundstage" and/or "ambience" creates neither and just confuses the imaging which is already in the recording. With highly directional full range horns like mine, the coherence of the imaging already in recordings is so strong and unpolluted that I can play tracks intended for headphone listening (like binaural or 'spatial audio') with just as much imaging precision as if I were actually wearing headphones.

In my view, using devices like rear firing drivers or bipolar/dipolar speakers (like Magnepans) is not the way to go if the intention is to listen to what is in the recording without the 'distortion' of spatial cues already in the recording.

But then I'm a hard ass about these things, so feel free to ignore me. :oops::facepalm:
 
Last edited:

DWI

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2021
Messages
495
Likes
437
Actually, Amir was saying that PS Audio should buy Klippel.
We already see the effect. Post my review of Ascend speaker, they purchased a Klippel NFS. If that one-man company can do it, then larger companies like PS audio should as well.
What is regularly bashed is that listening is a tool at all, even for extreme monitors. Here's the designer from my previous post explaining, and he's designed some of the world's best monitors, including the ones at the end of this video, first installed at Capitol Records Studios A and B. They are the size of a fridge and cost close to $200k. He makes his point from 2:15.
peter-rnd.mp4
 

Purité Audio

Master Contributor
Industry Insider
Barrowmaster
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 29, 2016
Messages
9,049
Likes
12,147
Location
London
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.


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

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.
They use, or at least there is a photograph of a Klippel laser measurement system but not the NFS ( near field scanner)
PMC’s domestic speakers at least do not measure well.
Keith
 

MakeMineVinyl

Major Contributor
Joined
Jun 5, 2020
Messages
3,558
Likes
5,871
Location
Santa Fe, NM
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.
The Polk is doing too much manipulation for my taste, even though the intention is to more effectively eliminate the room's influence. Eliminating the room (or minimizing) it is difficult to do with 99.999% of speakers today and the reality of real-world rooms and real-world wives/significant others.
 

YSC

Major Contributor
Joined
Dec 31, 2019
Messages
3,194
Likes
2,570
Actually, Amir was saying that PS Audio should buy Klippel.

What is regularly bashed is that listening is a tool at all, even for extreme monitors. Here's the designer from my previous post explaining, and he's designed some of the world's best monitors, including the ones at the end of this video, first installed at Capitol Records Studios A and B. They are the size of a fridge and cost close to $200k. He makes his point from 2:15.
peter-rnd.mp4
well from what I read this is just picking a phrase out of the whole discussion. From my memory this is referring to the fact that PS audio apparently didn't do detailed enough measurement during R&D phase, and buying a NFS is replying to one of the solutions they could do during R&D which you (*if I remember correctly) suggested that PS is a small company and couldn't afford a Klippel, so Amirm bring out that Ascend being one man company can do, so it's not the company size to be used to justify why they didn't go for more detailed scientific based R&D.

Although I have next to nothing in actual speaker design experience, I would imagine that it would be a better approach to be able to do regular measurement -> go back to drawing board fine tune -> measure again at as high a resolution as it is possible and affordable, to achieve whatever "house curve" the designer likes, and FYI I can understand the appeal of a elevated Treble or Bass or Bat shaped curve, but AFAIK we shouldn't have a target curve having some high variation peaks and nulls withing either bass/treble, directivity is preferred to make on axis and listening window as close a signature as possible and the roll off off axis should be smooth. I will stop it here as I don't wanna go into a brand defend/bashing endless discussion, but truth be told I generally hate those brands who defend out of hell for whatever flaws they have in their products and just claiming it is a different design choice.

For example I was first into headphones, and got into the early Hifiman HE-500 which follows the diffuse field curve very neatly and felt is sounded great while cheap (relatively), and in that era I am a hifiman fans, but then seeing how their DAP goes into gimmick or R2R fantasy measuring poorly and costing an arm and a leg, and with subsequent headphone/ in ear pricing shooting off the chart but with poorer measurement compared to the HE6/HE500 era I turned into hating the brand. No brand loyalty here and I am more into whatever reasonably and objectively performs and with price/gimmick/nostalgia/design appeal.

Now I am using Genelecs with REW to achieve some good results in room (+/- 1db below 400hz and the rest untouched). But when a friend asked for suggestion for budget/entry level I suggested her a pair of Adam T5V with treble -2db setting (which she enjoyed).
Then one of my rich friend have a $200k setup with fancy tube amp, very expensive turntable, $3000 cables and a pair of Vivid Giya G1, (which he ended up with by listening exp and coincidently, measured very flat anechoically) I won't say he's ripped off or laugh at him spending 100 times I did and ended up with similar in room sound.

As said before, if Chris's ended up sharing a smooth and nice listening window measurement curve, with it's design appeal I would say that can be a fair purchase, but if ended up all measurement aspects looked chewed up, I don't think one could convince most members here that it is still a good speaker.
 

CtheArgie

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Jan 11, 2020
Messages
509
Likes
773
Location
Agoura Hills, CA.
Again, people have to realize and observe the decisions that PS Audio made during the development process.

  • They hired Chris, who seems a very knowledgeable guy with experience.
  • They continued to invest heavily, money wise and promotion, in the DSD aspect for the business. Octave Records is unlikely to ever pay off its investment but they intend it to be a halo effect on the overall brand and especially on their DAC.
  • They decided to trade-off investments in Octave and DSD over "asset" investments in speaker design.
  • You can see this because PS Audio shows you the videos of the contraptions that Chris has to implement to measure the speakers, which means he IS trying, to the set up in Octave where they continue to invest, now on a mixing console and other stuff.
  • Klippel NFS or other VALIDATED measurement systems are essential for development of any product. It is the VALIDATION of the testing instrument that matters here.

Again, it is like the old Watergate story. Follow the money. If they can invest so much in Octave and DSD, they could probably invest in a validated testing rig, like the Klippel NFS.

This is why I insist that true validated measurements are not important to them. They position the product to sound similar to others in that category, they spent in "WAF design" issues, like that silly aluminum single leg, and as an alternative to IRS.

It is quite simple.
 

DWI

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2021
Messages
495
Likes
437
well from what I read this is just picking a phrase out of the whole discussion. From my memory this is referring to the fact that PS audio apparently didn't do detailed enough measurement during R&D phase, and buying a NFS is replying to one of the solutions they could do during R&D which you (*if I remember correctly) suggested that PS is a small company and couldn't afford a Klippel, so Amirm bring out that Ascend being one man company can do, so it's not the company size to be used to justify why they didn't go for more detailed scientific based R&D.

Although I have next to nothing in actual speaker design experience, I would imagine that it would be a better approach to be able to do regular measurement -> go back to drawing board fine tune -> measure again at as high a resolution as it is possible and affordable, to achieve whatever "house curve" the designer likes, and FYI I can understand the appeal of a elevated Treble or Bass or Bat shaped curve, but AFAIK we shouldn't have a target curve having some high variation peaks and nulls withing either bass/treble, directivity is preferred to make on axis and listening window as close a signature as possible and the roll off off axis should be smooth. I will stop it here as I don't wanna go into a brand defend/bashing endless discussion, but truth be told I generally hate those brands who defend out of hell for whatever flaws they have in their products and just claiming it is a different design choice.

For example I was first into headphones, and got into the early Hifiman HE-500 which follows the diffuse field curve very neatly and felt is sounded great while cheap (relatively), and in that era I am a hifiman fans, but then seeing how their DAP goes into gimmick or R2R fantasy measuring poorly and costing an arm and a leg, and with subsequent headphone/ in ear pricing shooting off the chart but with poorer measurement compared to the HE6/HE500 era I turned into hating the brand. No brand loyalty here and I am more into whatever reasonably and objectively performs and with price/gimmick/nostalgia/design appeal.

Now I am using Genelecs with REW to achieve some good results in room (+/- 1db below 400hz and the rest untouched). But when a friend asked for suggestion for budget/entry level I suggested her a pair of Adam T5V with treble -2db setting (which she enjoyed).
Then one of my rich friend have a $200k setup with fancy tube amp, very expensive turntable, $3000 cables and a pair of Vivid Giya G1, (which he ended up with by listening exp and coincidently, measured very flat anechoically) I won't say he's ripped off or laugh at him spending 100 times I did and ended up with similar in room sound.

As said before, if Chris's ended up sharing a smooth and nice listening window measurement curve, with it's design appeal I would say that can be a fair purchase, but if ended up all measurement aspects looked chewed up, I don't think one could convince most members here that it is still a good speaker.
Well, Amir did come across as a bit of a Klippel salesman.

In the scale of things, most consumer audio companies are pretty small. Amir spending money at Sony was coming from an R&D budget that he had to argue with management in a multi-$B company. PSA spending $100k is money from Paul's pocket. They are very different.

As explained in HFN, sadly Arnie Nudell started this project years age before passing and he managed to design some pretty good speakers without Klippel, so I understand. So Chris came along, knocked on Paul's door, became Chief Speaker Designer, but effectively a one-man team. The project could have been abandoned completely at various stages, they had various working prototypes that got scrapped. They were also spending big bucks elsewhere. So Chris spending a few days taking measurements seems much more sensible than spending $100,000 on R&D hardware for a project that might never be completed. Klippel really is and R&D designed for time-critical projects, as described by PMC who have dozens of speakers and projects in production or development. The FR-30 was not up against time constraints.
 

YSC

Major Contributor
Joined
Dec 31, 2019
Messages
3,194
Likes
2,570
Well, Amir did come across as a bit of a Klippel salesman.

In the scale of things, most consumer audio companies are pretty small. Amir spending money at Sony was coming from an R&D budget that he had to argue with management in a multi-$B company. PSA spending $100k is money from Paul's pocket. They are very different.

As explained in HFN, sadly Arnie Nudell started this project years age before passing and he managed to design some pretty good speakers without Klippel, so I understand. So Chris came along, knocked on Paul's door, became Chief Speaker Designer, but effectively a one-man team. The project could have been abandoned completely at various stages, they had various working prototypes that got scrapped. They were also spending big bucks elsewhere. So Chris spending a few days taking measurements seems much more sensible than spending $100,000 on R&D hardware for a project that might never be completed. Klippel really is and R&D designed for time-critical projects, as described by PMC who have dozens of speakers and projects in production or development. The FR-30 was not up against time constraints.
Man you are completely derailing, before you come in for the brand defensive side, nobody said that "O, Chris and Paul need to buy this magical Klippel NFS or else the speaker is bad", rather than that it's said "the wild peaks in the highs in bad from the measurment published thus far" and subsequent discussion followed by Chris's explaination that the on axis response is to create a smooth listening window. So basically the bashing goes into "let's see if further measurement return justice to this particular design". then it got derailed multiple time into claiming Amirm being a "Klippel salsesman". Comon, I think everyone agreed here or elsewhere Klippel is a great tool overall, and this is merely saying that "it could've done better if this bloody system is utilized".

As you've said previously, a lot of designers did designed subjectively and objectively great speakers with very good measured results. Please stop finger pointing and derailing or defending anything. If I suddently got a magical dream and put out a 20-20khz flat magical speaker without any R&D and it is made in the cheapest place on earth, costing me $1 and yet looking fantastic and I sell it for $100k, nobody sensible would bash me for producing a bad speaker, only can bash my greed.

But if I spend within my personal financial capability and produced a speaker with nice look, yet measured badly due to my limitations in whatever part of the R&D process, and I sell it in a price bracket where much better speakers are available and tell everybody yes, I overpriced it and it underperformed, but that should be justified as I don't have the budget to buy a calibrated mic. then I can expected to get crucified here in ASR. simple as that, full stop.
 

Everett T

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 2, 2020
Messages
648
Likes
486
Well, Amir did come across as a bit of a Klippel salesman.

In the scale of things, most consumer audio companies are pretty small. Amir spending money at Sony was coming from an R&D budget that he had to argue with management in a multi-$B company. PSA spending $100k is money from Paul's pocket. They are very different.

As explained in HFN, sadly Arnie Nudell started this project years age before passing and he managed to design some pretty good speakers without Klippel, so I understand. So Chris came along, knocked on Paul's door, became Chief Speaker Designer, but effectively a one-man team. The project could have been abandoned completely at various stages, they had various working prototypes that got scrapped. They were also spending big bucks elsewhere. So Chris spending a few days taking measurements seems much more sensible than spending $100,000 on R&D hardware for a project that might never be completed. Klippel really is and R&D designed for time-critical projects, as described by PMC who have dozens of speakers and projects in production or development. The FR-30 was not up against time constraints.
Automating the process allows for several things, time and consistency being a couple. I don't recall @amirm ever stating that speakers can't be designed well without one, but he did state the benefits of using one and the cost analysis/benefit will pay for the unit fairly quick.

As for Paul paying out of pocket, all I can say is that its the cost of doing business. This one makes sense if you're gonna be designing speakers from a cost effective standpoint. If Paul is gonna build a speaker here and there, no it probably doesn't, unless he leases time with it.

I'm not sure what Arnie designing speakers has to do with the discussion with regards to the klippel, as they didn't incorporate as a company until 1997?
 

CtheArgie

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Jan 11, 2020
Messages
509
Likes
773
Location
Agoura Hills, CA.
@DWI, why are you saying a project that could have been abandoned so this is why they didn't invest in sufficient needs? I presume that Chris' salary per year is more than the cost of the Klippel. But McG can charge to expenses the entire salary costs every year and only amortize the machinery over time. McG has stated unequivocally that he wanted a line of speakers. If you say that, put your money.

Instead, he put HIS money somewhere else. That should communicate to you what he truly believes in. Rigged testing or as they say here, tied with duct tape.

If the project was abandoned, then the sunk cost of hiring Chris would have been much larger that the validated testing rig.
 

ahofer

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jun 3, 2019
Messages
4,947
Likes
8,694
Location
New York City
Of course people should listen as part of their evaluation and design efforts. The ridiculous idea is that measurements and listening are in any way at odds.

If you listen and decide you prefer to depart from linear, or constant/gradual directivity, why on earth wouldn’t you want to know exactly how to measure the differences you prefer, instead of pretending it’s magic or umneasurable. And why wouldn’t you defend it publicly? Yet many designers take that ’secret sauce” route.

I’m not naive, I know the ‘magic’ approach works for brand value, and allows a lot of looseness in design, but I don’t know why our hobby supports it.
 

Chris Brunhaver

Active Member
Audio Company
Joined
Nov 16, 2021
Messages
132
Likes
612
Sure, I would like an automated setup and additional tools to make certain things quicker and easier and I said before that's on the wish list. There a lot of incorrect assumptions about the inner workings of the company and design process but that's neither here nor there.

As it stands, I do horizontal and vertical polar response measurements gated to about 200 Hz resolution on a turntable rig and splice in low frequency ground plane measured data (which is good to about 500 Hz), so there's good overlap and correlation. We are using labs and outside measurement resources as need (which I've mentioned before).

Attached is some horizontal directivity data I measured from a prototype. This isn't something I'd publish (because we are getting higher resolution lab testing done). Also, in this instance, I was able to solve the little off-axis dips at 1.2 and 5 kHz with some gasket and assembly tweaks on our waveguides. I don't like publishing data with any qualifications and so that's why I'm waiting on this set of measurements of the production units to publish.

However, you can see that we have very even and wide (about 140 degree) horizontal coverage until the tweeter starts to beam above 12-13 kHz. It beams a little more vertically.

There is a small notch in our waveguide at 7 kHz, which is why there is a small axial lifted area in our final crossover to flatten the listening window and in-room response here.

We do use the klippel distortion analyzer in our r&d and driver production and here is a sneak peak at some Klippel LSI data on another woofer that I've been working on (for some smaller models). It confirms my FEA work well but, but we need to push the test out a little further to resolve the curve data our to +/- 15 mm instead of +/- 10 mm. I ended up tweaking the coil to get a little flatter and more extended BL but you can see how broad and symmetrical the curves are and how well centered everything is (we use this in production as well to verify the physical alignment of everything)
 

Attachments

  • fr-30 crossover proto (hor).jpg
    fr-30 crossover proto (hor).jpg
    26.6 KB · Views: 139
  • klippel data new FR woof.JPG
    klippel data new FR woof.JPG
    234.6 KB · Views: 141

Everett T

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 2, 2020
Messages
648
Likes
486
Sure, I would like an automated setup and additional tools to make certain things quicker and easier and I said before that's on the wish list. There a lot of incorrect assumptions about the inner workings of the company and design process but that's neither here nor there.

As it stands, I do horizontal and vertical polar response measurements gated to about 200 Hz resolution on a turntable rig and splice in low frequency ground plane measured data (which is good to about 500 Hz), so there's good overlap and correlation. We are using labs and outside measurement resources as need (which I've mentioned before).

Attached is some horizontal directivity data I measured from a prototype. This isn't something I'd publish (because we are getting higher resolution lab testing done). Also, in this instance, I was able to solve the little off-axis dips at 1.2 and 5 kHz with some gasket and assembly tweaks on our waveguides. I don't like publishing data with any qualifications and so that's why I'm waiting on this set of measurements of the production units to publish.

However, you can see that we have very even and wide (about 140 degree) horizontal coverage until the tweeter starts to beam above 12-13 kHz. It beams a little more vertically.

There is a small notch in our waveguide at 7 kHz, which is why there is a small axial lifted area in our final crossover to flatten the listening window and in-room response here.

We do use the klippel distortion analyzer in our r&d and driver production and here is a sneak peak at some Klippel LSI data on another woofer that I've been working on (for some smaller models). It confirms my FEA work well but, but we need to push the test out a little further to resolve the curve data our to +/- 15 mm instead of +/- 10 mm. I ended up tweaking the coil to get a little flatter and more extended BL but you can see how broad and symmetrical the curves are and how well centered everything is (we use this in production as well to verify the physical alignment of everything)
Thanks for sharing those. The whole Klippel conversation has become an a distraction from the thread for the most part and people should start a different thread if they feel the need to discuss. Appreciate you registering and participating

Everett
 

thewas

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Jan 15, 2020
Messages
6,735
Likes
16,158
As it stands, I do horizontal and vertical polar response measurements gated to about 200 Hz resolution on a turntable rig and splice in low frequency ground plane measured data (which is good to about 500 Hz), so there's good overlap and correlation. We are using labs and outside measurement resources as need (which I've mentioned before).

Attached is some horizontal directivity data I measured from a prototype. This isn't something I'd publish (because we are getting higher resolution lab testing done). Also, in this instance, I was able to solve the little off-axis dips at 1.2 and 5 kHz with some gasket and assembly tweaks on our waveguides. I don't like publishing data with any qualifications and so that's why I'm waiting on this set of measurements of the production units to publish.

However, you can see that we have very even and wide (about 140 degree) horizontal coverage until the tweeter starts to beam above 12-13 kHz. It beams a little more vertically.

There is a small notch in our waveguide at 7 kHz, which is why there is a small axial lifted area in our final crossover to flatten the listening window and in-room response here.
Thank you for showing them here, what I would be more curious though are the vertical data as due to the large mid driver they should be quite hard to optimise, would enjoy also hearing your experiences about that task.
 
Top Bottom