The "other" German Speaker Manufacturers (Canton, Magnat, Heco, Quadral, ...) - Where do they stand?

[Crosstalk]

After 9 years spent with FS 247 I find them one of the most precise, neutral and distortion free speakers I have heard. They were an excellent match with Exposure 2010S integral amp and I regret selling both to get Quadral Chromium Style 8 and Hegel H160 instead (a very bad match).

flat - agreed!
Distortion free ? Not as per this graph.

 

[thewas]

What is the the transition frequency ?

It is the region of transition between purely modal behaviour of the room (for usual living room sizes till around 250 Hz) to purely statistic behaviour (usually above 500 Hz), see also

Room acoustics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(written as third zone there)

The Schroeder / Transition Frequency Explained

Brent Butterworth, a writer over at Sound & Vision, has written a very easy to understand explanation of what the 'Schroeder' frequency is. The Schroeder or 'transition' frequency is a critical concept to understand because it explains a lot about how sound behaves in rooms, how we measure /...

www.acousticfrontiers.com

(often also called as Schroeder frequency)

 

[Crosstalk]

Above transition frequency we mainly perceive the direct sound, which is the reason why most "room corrections" don't work well in that region, see the first link in my signature. If you have a loudspeaker with flat direct sound and smooth directivity you don't really need EQ there, also if you see the Genelec GLM mainly puts just some shelving but not peak filters in that region to just adjust the tonal balance in relation to the ground tones and to compensate for the individual rooms and tastes.

Interesting. Can you point some studies to this? I was having an assumption that if we have windows in a room the reflections can make a speaker bright due to the added reflections.

“To midrange and treble frequencies, your listening room is like a billiards table. Like billiard balls, mid- and high-frequency sounds tend to bounce all around your room, until they run out of energy. Because of this frenetic reflection, midrange and treble frequencies spread pretty evenly — or diffuse — throughout a room.”

This is what I read from the article you pointed. So that means still reflections of mid and high freq happens which can boost or dip the resultant amplitude at your listening spot.

A flat speaker radiating flat freq then won’t reach flat at the listening spot even in highs and Mids.

 

[thewas]

Interesting. Can you point some studies to this? I was having an assumption that if we have windows in a room the reflections can make a speaker bright due to the added reflections.

Modifying the direct sound to reduce the imbalance of the reflected one can be done but its always a compromise and will never sound as balanced as having a balanced reflected sound spectrum. Best literature overview recommendation is Toole's book, also these topics are rather discussed in this forum section:

Room Acoustics and General Speaker Discussions

Science and engineering of room acoustics and loudspeakers.

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[Crosstalk]

Modifying the direct sound to reduce the imbalance of the reflected one can be done but its always a compromise and will never sound as balanced as having a balanced reflected sound spectrum. Best literature overview recommendation is Toole's book, also these topics are rather discussed in this forum section:

Room Acoustics and General Speaker Discussions

Science and engineering of room acoustics and loudspeakers.

www.audiosciencereview.com

That means that we cannot fix mid and upper freq coloration without compromises? So, there is no way to listen to a flat speaker flat unless it’s an anechoic chamber ?

 

[TheBatsEar]

Operating primarily in Europe, you naturally read/hear less about the "other" German speaker manufacturers in the US-based HiFi scene. Brands like Canton, Magnat, Heco, Quadral and so on can be found in Big Box stores all throughout Europe, and on the Second Hand market with heavy discounts.

All they have to do is engineer a good speaker and send it to INDEPENDENT reviewers, voila, they are now visible to the objective crowd.

 

[thewas]

That means that we cannot fix mid and upper freq coloration without compromises? So, there is no way to listen to a flat speaker flat unless it’s an anechoic chamber ?

What is flat, the reference of a recording is how it is listened at the studio during mixing and mastering and there it is played under non-anechoic conditions and ideally with loudspeakers with linear direct sound and smooth directivity which at the listeners position create usually a falling to the high frequencies response, but the direct sound is still flat and that is the reference.

 

[Crosstalk]

What is flat, the reference of a recording is how it is listened at the studio during mixing and mastering and there it is played under non-anechoic conditions and ideally with loudspeakers with linear direct sound and smooth directivity which at the listeners position create usually a falling to the high frequencies response, but the direct sound is still flat and that is the reference.

In Studios you have acoustic panels to avoid reflections ( not just for low frequencies ) so that you hear the direct sound mostly and less reflections.

Taking that speaker to your living room , you have reflections in mid and high freq as there aren’t anything to control the reflections and it creates peaks and valleys in resp as it reaches your listening spot.

Speaker is flat just infront of it, speaker is not flat at your listening spot unless you correct it somehow with acoustic panels or DSP.

Reference 1 from kef will not sound same in a studio and a living room in mids and highs

 

[thewas]

In Studios you have acoustic panels to avoid reflections ( not just for low frequencies ) so that you hear the direct sound mostly and less reflections.

Taking that speaker to your living room , you have reflections in mid and high freq as there aren’t anything to control the reflections and it creates peaks and valleys in resp as it reaches your listening spot.

Speaker is flat just infront of it, speaker is not flat at your listening spot unless you correct it somehow with acoustic panels or DSP.

Reference 1 from kef will not sound same in a studio and a living room in mids and highs

Good modern studios, especially for the final mastering are more reflective to be closer to the living room situation and because high absorption was used in the past because most monitors had poor directivity. Also as said in except the bass region we mainly perceive the direct sound tonality which doesn't change from different room absorption.

 

[Crosstalk]

Good modern studios, especially for the final mastering are more reflective to be closer to the living room situation and because high absorption was used in the past because most monitors had poor directivity. Also as said in except the bass region we mainly perceive the direct sound tonality which doesn't change from different room absorption.

so if we have one side wall made of glass and one side has furniture which has lot of foam, both speakers are going to sound the same in terms of vocals and treble ?

 

[thewas]

so if we have one side wall made of glass and one side has furniture which has lot of foam, both speakers are going to sound the same in terms of vocals and treble ?

I wrote repeatedly "mainly perceive the direct sound" and that equalising direct sound to make reflected sound more linear is not optimal. We mainly perceive direct sound though and adopt quickly through room acoustics, meaning we still hear human A and loudspeaker X as human A and loudspeaker Y independently of the room they are in.

 

[Crosstalk]

I wrote repeatedly "mainly perceive the direct sound" and that equalising direct sound to make reflected sound more linear is not optimal. We mainly perceive direct sound though and adopt quickly through room acoustics, meaning we still hear human A and loudspeaker X as human A and loudspeaker Y independently of the room they are in.

Can you point the part of Toole book where this is mentioned? I skimmed through it and couldn’t find anything mentioning this.

 

[thewas]

In the first link in my signature he writes

"The small dip should not be equalized because it alters the perceptually dominant direct sound."

Same in AES paper 17839 he writes

"In normal rooms the on-axis frequency response is not the dominant physical factor. However, the direct sound has a high priority in perception, establishing a reference to which later arrivals are compared in determining such important perceptions as precedence effect (localization), spatial effects, and timbre. In this example, the poor off-axis performance dominated the in-room measurements and in listening tests caused audible timbral degradation. Equalization of the room curve will destroy the only good performance in the loudspeaker—the on-axis/direct sound response. Equalization cannot change loudspeaker directivity; the remedy is a better loudspeaker. Adequate anechoic data on the loudspeaker would have revealed the problem in advance of measurements or listening."

and in its conclusion

"We are left with a combination of questions and answers, but at this time there is enough information to think about some universal guidelines for sound reproduction—anywhere it occurs. The starting point would be the delivery of an accurate, neutral, direct sound. The fact that there is a rise in bass sound level in the short ( < 150 ms) interval following the direct sound is a variable for which there is no practical control—it is room and source-directivity dependent. Humans may well regard this phenomenon as a normal component of room sound, in which case it is not an “error” in need of fixing but merely information about the listening environment. It means that a steady-state room curve should rise by some amount at low frequencies."

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

More measurements from
Hifi-Voice, again reveal the poorly performance from Canton

This is the Canton ref 8k, apparently the entire line have problems.

Distortion of 2nd (yellow) and 3rd (orange) harmonics

It can be seen from this exploded graph that the increased distortion is caused by the 3rd harmonic, as if the midrange here were no longer operating within its optimal range.


Total harmonic distortion (green line)

Overall, the distortion is at normal, seamlessly low values - but in the range between 2 and 4 kHz you can see a "mound", where the value of distortion attacks 1.5%.

Even the big Reference 3K have this problem at only 90dB

Total harmonic distortion (green line)

The overall distortion remains within normal limits, however, between 700 and 3,000 Hz it oscillates above 1%, which is quite strange.

Canton Reference 3 K

V roce 1974 se dali dohromady čtyři nadšenci do dobrého zvuku a jak už to tak bývá, vznikla značka – tentokrát konkrétně německý Canton, který si vytyčil za cíl to samé, co prakticky jakákoliv jiná firma. Tedy vyrobit to nejlepší, co současnost umožňuje, Canton si jako svůj obor zvolil...

www.hifi-voice.com

 

[Crosstalk]

More measurements from
Hifi-Voice, again reveal the poorly performance from Canton

This is the Canton ref 8k, apparently the entire line have problems.

Distortion of 2nd (yellow) and 3rd (orange) harmonics

It can be seen from this exploded graph that the increased distortion is caused by the 3rd harmonic, as if the midrange here were no longer operating within its optimal range.


Total harmonic distortion (green line)

Overall, the distortion is at normal, seamlessly low values - but in the range between 2 and 4 kHz you can see a "mound", where the value of distortion attacks 1.5%.

Even the big Reference 3K have this problem at only 90dB

Total harmonic distortion (green line)

The overall distortion remains within normal limits, however, between 700 and 3,000 Hz it oscillates above 1%, which is quite strange.

Canton Reference 3 K

V roce 1974 se dali dohromady čtyři nadšenci do dobrého zvuku a jak už to tak bývá, vznikla značka – tentokrát konkrétně německý Canton, který si vytyčil za cíl to samé, co prakticky jakákoliv jiná firma. Tedy vyrobit to nejlepší, co současnost umožňuje, Canton si jako svůj obor zvolil...

www.hifi-voice.com

This is ridiculous and unacceptable at their price!

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

What about the big tower from Elac?
The Elac fs407 is a good tower for being that slim, and the big tower has with a '' mid range '' ?

I didn't found much measurements for FS409

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

I have the measurements for FS408, seems to have a very deep bass with low distortion, a nice speaker!

 

[thewas]

I have the measurements for FS408, seems to have a very deep bass with low distortion, a nice speaker!

Mind you those Czech magazine measurements are in performed at normal listening rooms (unfortunately even different rooms) without windowing and so no usable anechoic FR and directivity measurements and also the bass depth depends a lot on the room and placement. In other words not really usable except for showing very gross tendencies and flaws.

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Mind you those Czech magazine measurements are in performed at normal listening rooms (unfortunately even different rooms) without windowing and so no usable anechoic FR and directivity measurements and also the bass depth depends a lot on the room and placement. In other words not really usable except for showing very gross tendencies and flaws.

I agree, but they are useful for find flaws

 

[BrokenEnglishGuy]

Audio physic avanti 35 looks good too (why glass ?)