This is a review, detail review and listening tests of the Swan Hivi X3 active monitor. It was kindly sent to me by a member and costs US $249 for a pair.
As you see, this looks like a baby Genelec speaker down to the "Iso stand" and cast metal case. The former doesn't have a guide though so you can tell from the picture, you can wind up with it tilted left or right. I like the power switch on the side and volume control. Back panel also provides some tweaking of the response but it is limited to just 1 dB:
The port doesn't have clearance to go straight in so it almost immediate twists to the right and down into the enclosure. Overall the build is very solid making you easily confuse it with a top monitor brand.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
Likewise listening tests comply with the latest research into proper evaluation of speakers calling for mono, instead of stereo listening:.
Reference axis is approximately the center of the tweeter.
Swan Hivi X3 Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard:
Well, this is kind of disappointing. We have a lot of disturbance in the usual port region of 800 to 1.5 kHz. Then we have three distinct resonances lifting lower treble region with the latter being quite broad. This will make the speaker sound bright. A look at the near-field measurement of the radiating surfaces shows some of the problems:
I don't think I have seen a port/enclosure with so many resonances. Maybe the inside is empty. On top of that we have a woofer resonance and lack of baffle step compensation. Not pretty.
General directivity is good which then causes off-axis to be as bad as on-axis:
Making our predicted-in-room response rough and tilted up:
Despite the built-in waveguide for the tweeter, response proportionally gets narrower with frequency (beaming):
Vertical axis though is above average due to use of small drivers with close acoustic centers:
I had high hopes that distortion would be kept in check but I could here severe distortion during measurement sweep:
There is some kind of limiter in there though allowing me to even sweep at 96 dBSPL which is nice.
Waterfall display shows resonances with strong ringing in time domain:
Swan Hivi X3 Listening Tests and Equalization
This is a tough speaker to love. Out of the box it is bright and you have to keep messing with the volume to keep distortion at bay. I tried filtering it but overall, I am not sure I made much progress other than making it less bright:
I like EQ attempts to be quick and simple by eye and this definitely not one of those cases. The highs can still be piercing even though I tried to bring resonances down. A fancier EQ may help more but it was beyond the scope and patience I had.
Mind though, there were moments of good sound at low volume but there far more annoying ones to my ear.
Conclusions
A speaker this small presents may challenges to the designer. I think it requires superb engineering to master all of that and that simply is not there. Is it good enough for a "3 inch woofer and 0.8 inch tweeter?" I don't know. What I do know that its capability is below what I consider good enough. So I would step up to next larger size and get a much better monitor.
I can't recommend the Swan Hivi X3 even though I see a reasonable attempt to create something unique and above junk plastic computer speakers.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As you see, this looks like a baby Genelec speaker down to the "Iso stand" and cast metal case. The former doesn't have a guide though so you can tell from the picture, you can wind up with it tilted left or right. I like the power switch on the side and volume control. Back panel also provides some tweaking of the response but it is limited to just 1 dB:
The port doesn't have clearance to go straight in so it almost immediate twists to the right and down into the enclosure. Overall the build is very solid making you easily confuse it with a top monitor brand.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
Likewise listening tests comply with the latest research into proper evaluation of speakers calling for mono, instead of stereo listening:.
Reference axis is approximately the center of the tweeter.
Swan Hivi X3 Measurements
Let's start with our usual dashboard:
Well, this is kind of disappointing. We have a lot of disturbance in the usual port region of 800 to 1.5 kHz. Then we have three distinct resonances lifting lower treble region with the latter being quite broad. This will make the speaker sound bright. A look at the near-field measurement of the radiating surfaces shows some of the problems:
I don't think I have seen a port/enclosure with so many resonances. Maybe the inside is empty. On top of that we have a woofer resonance and lack of baffle step compensation. Not pretty.
General directivity is good which then causes off-axis to be as bad as on-axis:
Making our predicted-in-room response rough and tilted up:
Despite the built-in waveguide for the tweeter, response proportionally gets narrower with frequency (beaming):
Vertical axis though is above average due to use of small drivers with close acoustic centers:
I had high hopes that distortion would be kept in check but I could here severe distortion during measurement sweep:
There is some kind of limiter in there though allowing me to even sweep at 96 dBSPL which is nice.
Waterfall display shows resonances with strong ringing in time domain:
Swan Hivi X3 Listening Tests and Equalization
This is a tough speaker to love. Out of the box it is bright and you have to keep messing with the volume to keep distortion at bay. I tried filtering it but overall, I am not sure I made much progress other than making it less bright:
I like EQ attempts to be quick and simple by eye and this definitely not one of those cases. The highs can still be piercing even though I tried to bring resonances down. A fancier EQ may help more but it was beyond the scope and patience I had.
Mind though, there were moments of good sound at low volume but there far more annoying ones to my ear.
Conclusions
A speaker this small presents may challenges to the designer. I think it requires superb engineering to master all of that and that simply is not there. Is it good enough for a "3 inch woofer and 0.8 inch tweeter?" I don't know. What I do know that its capability is below what I consider good enough. So I would step up to next larger size and get a much better monitor.
I can't recommend the Swan Hivi X3 even though I see a reasonable attempt to create something unique and above junk plastic computer speakers.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome. Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
