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Technics SB-C700 Review (Coaxial Bookshelf)

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 7 2.8%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 28 11.3%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 147 59.3%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 66 26.6%

  • Total voters
    248

Tangband

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I can understand from a visual point of view why coaxial designs are so popular.

Using a coaxial driver fullrange is however not a very good idea for good sound. The sound gonna be worse than the measurements shows because of the bassdriver modulating the tweeter like a variable waveguide when listening to real music. Can you hear this effect? - yes you can . Coaxial drivers done right , is crossed at 400 Hz to minimize this effect ( ie Genelec ) .

Im not suprised that Revel m105 sounded better when amirm did the listening comparison.

Read more about this here :

This shows the difference in directivity when the excursion is 3 mm or at rest. When playing music with bass tones and cymbals at the same time, you gonna have constant variations in the directivity .
805454F4-6542-453B-8D7D-26314BAD67F7.png
774B0EA3-EE2B-4821-818D-3E21E4EA552C.png
 
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laudio

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Also agree why this wouldn't be recommended if sadly it has been discontinued? Just me... Have always had a "soft spot" for the technics brand. Not for speakers I guess but they made some very interesting ones long ago.
 

abdo123

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Why do people want to bully Amir into recommending a speaker that he didn’t like? Specially a discontinued one?

If this was the other way around (speaker looks bad, recommended anyway) i would understand but this is ridiculous.
 

laudio

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Why do people want to bully Amir into recommending a speaker that he didn’t like? Specially a discontinued one?

If this was the other way around (speaker looks bad, recommended anyway) i would understand but this is ridiculous.
Bully? C'mon. Maybe because his subjective preferences are just that.. regardless of measurements. If the preference score is a 2 then ok :)
 

Moravid

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Sadly I think the SB-C700 is being discontinued, likely due to zero marketing.
Typical Panasonic, they make great consumer electronics with near 0 marketing, polar opposite to Sony
Also, it seems they recently announceda new model, the C600
 

napilopez

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I think the problems can mainly be traced to the SB-C700's on-axis tuning, with its slightly elevated highs and slightbroad scoop. seems simply giving it a mild bump in the upper mids as amir did and/or shelving the highs by a db or two would largely do the trick.

Let's take a look at the normalized horizontal response (there isn't much on-axis diffraction with the LS50 meta and SB-C700, so it's a useful comparison). Technics SB-C700:
1644047007366.png


LS50 Meta:
1644047101123.png


The meta is definitely less scoop-y, but it really is a lot narrower. To an extent I'm almost completely sure would be noticeable in a typical room. In my experience, audible enough that soundstage preference could well win over tonality. (my typical guess for these types of differences would be that the LS50 meta would have a more accurate soundstage overall, but the Technics would be more expansive in a normal room.)

Overall horizontal reflections are ~4 dB louder on the technics in the critical soundstage region from 2-8khz. Specfically, here's a comparison of their listening window and sidewall reflections( avg of ± H40, 50, 60, 80).

c700 ls50M sidewall.png


So if you have a strong preference for wide directivity, my inclination would be to doubt the LS50 Meta's possible tonality improvements would overcome the C700's wider directivity. But that's just an educated guess. I've mentioned it a few times here, so I'm sorry for those who see me repeating myself... but though the downward sloping off-axis response of most waveguide-y speakers like the meta looks pretty, I'm not fully convinced it actually 'sounds more similar' to the direct sound than, say, what the SB-C700 and other wide-directivity speakers present.

From my recollection, the precedence effect and expansion of apparent source width takes into account both SPL and frequency response and all things considered I tend to think a wider but slightly less even speaker will often be similarly or more appealing than a narrower one with prettier off-axis behavior. I mean, even Revels don't have the best off-axis response. What they do have is wider directivity than most deep waveguided speakers. In general Revel does seem to be sacrifice some prettiness in order to maintain some width.

(Just to be clear, I really like the LS50 meta. There's just almost nothing that measures like this technics both horizontal and vertical so I am quite fascinated).
 
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abdo123

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Bully? C'mon. Maybe because his subjective preferences are just that.. regardless of measurements. If the preference score is a 2 then ok :)
Why would he follow a model if he listened to the product right there and then?
 

laudio

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The LS50 speaker was the biggest fanboy speaker ever to hit the internet. Is this review about it or the technics?
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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laudio

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Why would he follow a model if he listened to the product right there and then?

Only because he pulls out the revels and destroyed them in the review and said that's that.

Honestly these are interesting to some as a coaxial and they are pretty rare and have decent objective measurements (pending the preference rating :))

You also have smart speaker people here saying maybe better than LS50.

Just being cranky... Spot checked some last sale prices and they hold value, was thinking ok I can find them cheap. That's just how I roll.
 

DSJR

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I'd say that's a pretty good performance for such an old design (from 2005?) Not sure KEF were in the same ball-park back then, with tizzy super tweeters tacked on and so on...

'That' turntable aside :D, I'm not sure Technics has been well represented in the UK since the 90's and maybe wider Europe too and even if there was a good range of products, many UK 'high end' dealers wouldn't touch it probably as it was perceived as a far eastern dubious make compared to our cottage industry manufacturers. As for 'WTF' magazine in Europe, it's been joked about in the industry for decades that most of the hacks writing for it are audio ignorant and aspire to What Car ( ;) ) and the audio (well, TV now) gig is but a stepping stone - I could say more, but it's mostly old industry gossip...
 
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Larry B. Larabee

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I fail to see anything not close to sota in a 15+ yr old (edit:not 15 yr old) speaker. Going by the objective measurements what is there that would stop anyone from seriously considering this as a purchase even by today's standard.
Short of Amir's unscientific opinion of how it sounds with no attention to setup, with all subjective evaluations performed in a haphazard manner without listening within their intended use (stereo) and always comparing to a standard (revel) that he just happens to personally prefer the measurements alone seem to not be telling anyone a damn thing about which speaker is the more accurate reproducer, musically.
Maybe it would be a good idea to knock off the listening tests and let the tested performance speak for itself. Of course if you did that the viewers would be on their own in trying to interpret the measurements as accuracy and that certainly won't happen because at this higher level of performance available from very good speakers ( which is the only thing being considered by any of us) the slight difference in measurements is completely useless.
 
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Count Arthur

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Pioneer also made a couple of dual concentric active monitors with a cast aluminium enclosure, not unlike Genelec:


1644056462373.png


It seems they've discontinued it now, and replaced it with a more traditional 2 way design, but it looks like it's still available at some sellers.

I wonder how it compares to the Kef LS50 Wireless II, which are about twice the price.
 

thewas

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I'd say that's a pretty good performance for such an old design (from 2005?) Not sure KEF were in the same ball-park back then, with tizzy super tweeters tacked on and so on...
No, they were released at 2014/2015 when the Technics brand was revived, so after the LS50.


Here you can a see also a report of their engineering department with some LS50 and B&W which they used as a reference.



The SB-C700 made quite a buzz on its release circa 2005
@amirm , could you please correct that at your review?
 

oversky

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The enclosure is built quite solid and the pain job is first class. Not that it matters but I was surprised to see no marking on the back as to model and manufacturing location:

typo: pain job -> paint job.
 

Ilkless

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Only because he pulls out the revels and destroyed them in the review and said that's that.

Honestly these are interesting to some as a coaxial and they are pretty rare and have decent objective measurements (pending the preference rating :))

You also have smart speaker people here saying maybe better than LS50.

Just being cranky... Spot checked some last sale prices and they hold value, was thinking ok I can find them cheap. That's just how I roll.

On closeout here for $1,200:

 

Ilkless

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I think the problems can mainly be traced to the SB-C700's on-axis tuning, with its slightly elevated highs and slightbroad scoop. seems simply giving it a mild bump in the upper mids as amir did and/or shelving the highs by a db or two would largely do the trick.

Let's take a look at the normalized horizontal response (there isn't much on-axis diffraction with the LS50 meta and SB-C700, so it's a useful comparison). Technics SB-C700:
View attachment 184311

LS50 Meta:
View attachment 184312

The meta is definitely less scoop-y, but it really is a lot narrower. To an extent I'm almost completely sure would be noticeable in a typical room. In my experience, audible enough that soundstage preference could well win over tonality. (my typical guess for these types of differences would be that the LS50 meta would have a more accurate soundstage overall, but the Technics would be more expansive in a normal room.)

Overall horizontal reflections are ~4 dB louder on the technics in the critical soundstage region from 2-8khz. Specfically, here's a comparison of their listening window and sidewall reflections( avg of ± H40, 50, 60, 80).

View attachment 184315

So if you have a strong preference for wide directivity, my inclination would be to doubt the LS50 Meta's possible tonality improvements would overcome the C700's wider directivity. But that's just an educated guess. I've mentioned it a few times here, so I'm sorry for those who see me repeating myself... but though the downward sloping off-axis response of most waveguide-y speakers like the meta looks pretty, I'm not fully convinced it actually 'sounds more similar' to the direct sound than, say, what the SB-C700 and other wide-directivity speakers present.

From my recollection, the precedence effect and expansion of apparent source width takes into account both SPL and frequency response and all things considered I tend to think a wider but slightly less even speaker will often be similarly or more appealing than a narrower one with prettier off-axis behavior. I mean, even Revels don't have the best off-axis response. What they do have is wider directivity than most deep waveguided speakers. In general Revel does seem to be sacrifice some prettiness in order to maintain some width.

(Just to be clear, I really like the LS50 meta. There's just almost nothing that measures like this technics both horizontal and vertical so I am quite fascinated).

The Technics uses a 3/4" tweeter (hence the elevated HD on the low end). So that's the other part of the puzzle on top of the lack of waveguiding.
 

JJB70

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Excellent review! I have a pair of these and think they're sorely under rated and largely ignored. In the UK they never got over some negative reviews from the usual hi-fi magazines despite them being very nicely made and I think competently designed speakers. We got them at a terrific price along with a very nice Technics integrated music centre, a dealer had a system they'd probably been trying to offload for months (maybe years) and did a great deal for it. It was part of a bigger decision, at the time I was looking at options to replace my old Sony ES set-up, as an alternative we bought this Technics system as a 'working' stereo system (it was WAF....) and decided to give the Sony gear a full overhaul and keep it for another several decades. The Technics speakers have impressed me greatly and deserve much wider recognition. Unfortunately they're in storage at the moment (along with my Sony gear).
 
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