OP
- Thread Starter
- #41
Sometimes hard decisions have to be made, if your wife doesn’t like the speakers she may have to go, I would point you to ‘Russian brides on line”.
Keith
Keith
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SoundStage’s review of Dutch&Dutch’s 8C
- Thread starter Purité Audio
- Start date
Those stands look disproportionately small to me.
Aaron Garrett
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indeed. Low couch.
We very much look forward to your review, which I'm sure will focus on the sound more than the domestic appeal.
I haven't heard that before, but it stimulated some thoughts,
Setting up and maintaining a high-end turntable is a competent training course and simulation of living with a lady of the manor (remember Hyacinth Bukée). Careful assembly, choice and tuning of vital accessories, impeccable fine tuning of tens of parameters, isolation from environmental schocks, changing worn-out parts, lubrication etc.
Actually I wonder if it is possible to be in possession of both...
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@DDF It's not that the NRC is knackered (lol) it simply is that the 8c's are not designed to be played or measured in such an environment with its cardioid design and rear facing subwoofers that leverage the front wall of a typical listening environment, which as part of it's design.
From the designer Martin Mensink:
"The tweeter and midrange on the 8c's are acoustically aligned. They are both delayed to be aligned with the subs, so you get what is often called a virtual point-source. The two subs get the exact same signal. The bass works best when the 8c is placed relatively close to the front-wall. Then the wall and the speaker become a single system, with a hemispherical radiation pattern (this matches well with the cardioid radiation pattern above 100 hz).
When the 8c is placed right up against the wall, the 'reflection' against the wall is not really a reflection, it is perfectly coincident with the direct sound from the drivers. When there is some distance between the 8c and the wall, the acoustic center of the combination of the woofers and the wall (the point from which the sound appears to emanate) shifts a little towards the wall. With the presets we add a little more delay to the tweeter and midrange to again align them with the bass, so the result is still a virtual point-source with both flat amplitude and phase."
Clearly the above design features won't properly work in an anechoic chamber, so not sure how accurate the measurements can be or what objective conclusions can be drawn....
My in-room nearfield measurements validates the design as described, even in my cluttered environment:
Maybe a bit too much smoothing (1/6 oct), but still with a 500ms window which lets a considerable amount of the room into the picture...
Virtually a flat phase response showing that the sound from all drivers (including the reflected front wall subs) are all arriving at the same time at the mic 30cm away.... That is properly using the presets... Unfortunately, the Soundstage measurements, for low frequency, turned the speakers around by 180 degrees to try and get a sense of what is happening, but defeats the (optimum) design purpose of the speakers.
Not sure about that bass to upper bass either. My issue is that there is too much high frequency energy coming from most speaker brands as compared to a handful, which some you have mentioned, like the Revel's PSB, 8c's and KEF LS50. The latter group sounds neutral to my ears. The small subset of speakers I have measured that don't have a downward tilt of in-room frequency response are typically +5 dB too bright from around 2 kHz to 20 kHz. Sounds way too bright to me, no matter what room they are in. Here is an example:
8c compared to the Devialet Phantom Gold at the LP. Aside from the 8c's doing a better job in the low end smoothness, the 8c's sound neutral to my ears, Golds too bright. Same goes for the Kii THREE's. Dynaudio 600 XD's and several other speakers that I have measured. Interestingly, they all exhibit the same amount of treble boost of 5 dB starting around 2 to 4 kHz to 20 kHz. For my ears, so bright as to be almost unlistenable without eq. And unfortunately, a shelving eq does not work, it needs a tilting eq to sound natural (to my ears anyway). If you have a theory as to why that is (i.e. why so many speakers measure and sound bright) as compared to the small list that sound neutral, I am all ears...
PS. I never noticed any audible hiss from the 8c's. PPS. In the recording studio/control room environment, there are several industry guidelines that outline specs for the monitoring environment and speakers (e.g. EBU, ITU, Dolby, etc.). While most of the spec still makes sense today, the target frequency response could use a refresh based on Toole's and Olive's research as to what sounds neutral for most folks based on their research and controlled listening tests. I would welcome that.
From the designer Martin Mensink:
"The tweeter and midrange on the 8c's are acoustically aligned. They are both delayed to be aligned with the subs, so you get what is often called a virtual point-source. The two subs get the exact same signal. The bass works best when the 8c is placed relatively close to the front-wall. Then the wall and the speaker become a single system, with a hemispherical radiation pattern (this matches well with the cardioid radiation pattern above 100 hz).
When the 8c is placed right up against the wall, the 'reflection' against the wall is not really a reflection, it is perfectly coincident with the direct sound from the drivers. When there is some distance between the 8c and the wall, the acoustic center of the combination of the woofers and the wall (the point from which the sound appears to emanate) shifts a little towards the wall. With the presets we add a little more delay to the tweeter and midrange to again align them with the bass, so the result is still a virtual point-source with both flat amplitude and phase."
Clearly the above design features won't properly work in an anechoic chamber, so not sure how accurate the measurements can be or what objective conclusions can be drawn....
My in-room nearfield measurements validates the design as described, even in my cluttered environment:
Maybe a bit too much smoothing (1/6 oct), but still with a 500ms window which lets a considerable amount of the room into the picture...
Virtually a flat phase response showing that the sound from all drivers (including the reflected front wall subs) are all arriving at the same time at the mic 30cm away.... That is properly using the presets... Unfortunately, the Soundstage measurements, for low frequency, turned the speakers around by 180 degrees to try and get a sense of what is happening, but defeats the (optimum) design purpose of the speakers.
Not sure about that bass to upper bass either. My issue is that there is too much high frequency energy coming from most speaker brands as compared to a handful, which some you have mentioned, like the Revel's PSB, 8c's and KEF LS50. The latter group sounds neutral to my ears. The small subset of speakers I have measured that don't have a downward tilt of in-room frequency response are typically +5 dB too bright from around 2 kHz to 20 kHz. Sounds way too bright to me, no matter what room they are in. Here is an example:
8c compared to the Devialet Phantom Gold at the LP. Aside from the 8c's doing a better job in the low end smoothness, the 8c's sound neutral to my ears, Golds too bright. Same goes for the Kii THREE's. Dynaudio 600 XD's and several other speakers that I have measured. Interestingly, they all exhibit the same amount of treble boost of 5 dB starting around 2 to 4 kHz to 20 kHz. For my ears, so bright as to be almost unlistenable without eq. And unfortunately, a shelving eq does not work, it needs a tilting eq to sound natural (to my ears anyway). If you have a theory as to why that is (i.e. why so many speakers measure and sound bright) as compared to the small list that sound neutral, I am all ears...
PS. I never noticed any audible hiss from the 8c's. PPS. In the recording studio/control room environment, there are several industry guidelines that outline specs for the monitoring environment and speakers (e.g. EBU, ITU, Dolby, etc.). While most of the spec still makes sense today, the target frequency response could use a refresh based on Toole's and Olive's research as to what sounds neutral for most folks based on their research and controlled listening tests. I would welcome that.
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Till balance & reason return to audio discussions, I shall not hear two words of sense spoken together.
Of course. You can (and do) judge the visual aspects from images here and elsewhere.
svart-hvitt
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Did NRC ever measure the ME Geithains? Do Geithains have the same anechoic issue?
That's clever, hadn't worked that out.
I don't see a problem with that approach, or any real alterative in a chamber, other than it cannot show how well integrated the bass and midrange is.
I'm interested in what causes the dip from 100 to 500 Hz with them backwards, do the cardioid vents only work up to 500hz, before they blend into normal directivity?
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That sounds about right. The mid's baffle-step transition is about 400Hz for a 27cm cabinet.
Definitely interesting to see the differences between NRC & the 8C's spec sheet. Perhaps @Martijn Mensink could explain a bit about how to measure this sort of speaker in a chamber.
Will you need to ship the whole speaker back or there could be some easy fix?
i like the stand too.
No, they sent a new DSP chip which my distributor will install.
I like the stand too, Is it custom made or did you buy it somewhere?
Aaron Garrett
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Thanks! I had them made by The Woodworking Wizard. He did a great job, they are oak and super sturdy, and they were very reasonably priced.
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Looking at the on-axis response, I’d put the difference at 1.5-2 dB, not 3-4 dB:
I too suspect it’s a deliberate voicing decision, since of all measurement methods, true anechoic is least likely to exaggerate the bass response, ie if the designers used ground plane or near field measurements in the design process you’d expect any measurement error to push them the other way.
Interesting.
