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Verdant Audio Bambusa MG 1 Speaker Review

dtaylo1066

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These are high-quality SEAS drivers that have been used in many high-quality designs by DIYers and OEMs. A rising treble response should not be the case in a 4K speaker, and to me suggests a better crossover needs to be in place.
 

Alice of Old Vincennes

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These are high-quality SEAS drivers that have been used in many high-quality designs by DIYers and OEMs. A rising treble response should not be the case in a 4K speaker, and to me suggests a better crossover needs to be in place.
Yeah right. Crossovers are so expensive and esoteric.
 

Alice of Old Vincennes

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I received quotes form the "Big Boxes" for kitchen cabinets. Found the Amish with difficulty. Trust me they do not advertise. We're directed to rural eastern Daviess County to look for the Grabers. Lots of Grabers in Amish country. Got lost, but trust me, you will not find the nicest people. Even though we are the "English" foreigners, most non-judgmental people I have ever encountered They have an auction every Friday. Buggies lined up and smell of horse excrement. Live chickens and pigs for sale. Going back in time. Also., kids well behaved.
 

Koeitje

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Quite pricey for what is essentially a Seas Trym...

View attachment 57088
Less the cabinet, this is about $1200 of parts for the dIY pair and even it seems pricey to me...

Does seem to get much better upper frequency response than the Verdant's too. See: https://solen.ca/wp-content/uploads/trymkit.pdf
My DIY speaker cost about 650 per speaker for just the parts (without a cabinet finish even I think...), but if you buy it prebuild from the shop it come in at 1200 per speaker. So for 1200 base per speaker I would guess 2000 per speaker built is it pretty fair.
 
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Dennis Murphy

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Maybe I missed it, but what size woofer is being used--the 5,5" W15 series or the 6.5" W18? Just to keep the price in perspective, the venerable Joseph Audio Pulsar monitor uses the same tweeter and perhaps the same woofer (theirs is the Excel W15), and it goes for over $7,000/pr, albeit with a more elaborate cabinet. NRC measurements for the Pulsar are here: https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/i...&catid=77:loudspeaker-measurements&Itemid=153 I've built a number of speakers based on the Excel drivers, and it's pretty easy to obtain a flat response if that's what you're after.
 

milosz

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Nice tweeter, the decay is pristine and the dispersion very even.

Looks to be a SEAS T25CF002 Millennium tweeter. The woofer looks to be SEAS W15CY001 magnesium-cone unit.

These are excellent drivers and can be used to make a good speaker; one needs the proper crossover however.... which these speakers don't seem to have.

FYI the Seas Trym design uses a larger woofer.
 
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tuga

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The first thing I noticed was the seemingly large CTC spacing. The CTC spacing between the two drive units looks to be in the neighborhood of 6 inches. That's equal to about 2250hz. Half-wave then is 1125hz. Seems to me that's a problem that's showing up in the data; I'm guessing they're crossing somewhere in the 2khz region. From the picture, it looks like they could have closed that gap to about 5 inches and push the CTC half-wave up a bit if they had mounted them flange-to-flange. Not that it would have helped much.

Okay, let's say they voiced the speakers specifically to have that curve. Fine. If that's what you want. But the other stuff on the site is a huge turnoff and it would only add more reason for me to not want to buy anything of theirs.

Anyway, the marketing bits:

"Detail", "non-fatiguing". Two words when strung together make an audiophile's ears perk up. But, really, when is detail not critical? This isn't a set of speakers that can detect when you're playing 'detailed' music and enable the ability to reproduce it, while also having the ability to turn it off when it detects you're listening to a 400hz test tone. It's a binary set of speakers; they either play what you tell it to play or they don't. That's it. And when does someone ever want fatigue with detail? I get it; your boosted top end provides a sense of detail while not being peaky at any one or two octaves. Say that. But the wordplay here to make it sound like a reference system should somehow adapt in real time to what it is playing is silly. A reference system should do one thing: reproduce what you tell it to.

There is a recess in the presence region which is associated with listener fatigue.
It also produces a perceived effect of more distant or "laid-back" sound.

http://alexiy.nl/eq/
https://www.teachmeaudio.com/mixing/techniques/audio-spectrum/
 

tuga

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Excellent directivity characteristics translate into neutral and similar frequency responses in the direct and reverberent field of the room, which is the hard thing to get right in a speaker design and the most important thing once sufficient output is possible.

Frequency reponse equates to tonal balance but there's more to the sound of a speaker than just that.
 

edechamps

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Can the program calculate a best axis for each speaker, and conclude a best score for them? The score right now doesn't do them justice I think.

That's something I plan to add at some point, but that's way down the line as I still need to add score calculation first. I'll get there eventually.

The other problem is that, with the data @amirm currently provides, it's not possible to correctly compute a score for an offset angle. The best one can do is to use a different angle when calculating NBD_ON, but that's not really the same thing and it's not a technically correct use of the Olive formula.
 

Rick Sykora

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Maybe I missed it, but what size woofer is being used--the 5,5" W15 series or the 6.5" W18? Just to keep the price in perspective, the venerable Joseph Audio Pulsar monitor uses the same tweeter and perhaps the same woofer (theirs is the Excel W15), and it goes for over $7,000/pr, albeit with a more elaborate cabinet. NRC measurements for the Pulsar are here: https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/i...&catid=77:loudspeaker-measurements&Itemid=153 I've built a number of speakers based on the Excel drivers, and it's pretty easy to obtain a flat response if that's what you're after.

You did not miss, the woofer size is just one of many missing specifications for the Verdant...

The website has a lot of flowery language but lacks basic information. Even if they were as good as the Pulsar, the MG1 price would be hard to rationalize as the relative value seems poor IMO. As it appears the Trym has a somewhat bigger woofer, it still manages to integrate better with the same tweeter as the MG1.

Not sure if you had a hand in them, but for around the same $5000 for MG1s, would go buy Salk Veracity HT2-TLs and double up on Seas woofers, get RAAL ribbons (and an established, reputable company) to boot!:)
 
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verdantaudio

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The company says "Speakers will be sent to Excelsior Audio for independent 3rd Party measurement.", but I would assume that's no longer necessary.

Sensitivity: 82.4dB (300Hz-3000Hz) @ 2.83V @ 1m
Frequency Response: -6dB @ 38Hz
Impedance: 8 Ohm
Distortion: <0.5% THD @ 93dB from 500Hz-10kHz

That was the point of submitting here. This saves me a couple thousand $$$ and text on the site will be altered.
 

verdantaudio

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I think we have seen better performance for much lesser price. And just using excellent drivers is not sufficient.

agreed. Will post below but this has been our most challenging speaker. Combination of crossover complexity and the fact the cabinet should probably be bigger has made this my least favorite of our products. Ironically my wife’s favorite.
 

Tks

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Damn, look at the THD... Nice, aside from that weird 400Hz ordeal.

Since I'm a speaker noob, does anyone have a clue if enclosure thickness/weight/stability/internal space has a roll in THD that's eventually measured? Also, is it most favorable to have a speaker enclosure with the least amount of internal empty space? Has 3D printing been a thing in enclosure designs yet?
 

DSJR

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Good bass-mid driver? That bloody thing takes off at 8khz (I had to check as I didn't know the exact model number) -

http://www.seas.no/index.php?option...id=351:e0015-08s-w15cy001&catid=49&Itemid=359

Now, I appreciate the driver isn't being *driven* at 8khz, but I gather from a well respected UK speaker designer with some pedigree, that this resonance can seemingly be acoustically excited at this frequency even though it's not being 'driven.' Maybe this design isn't, but as soon as I see metal cones these days I run a mile! Far smoother but more boring looking drivers out there I reckon.
 
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andreasmaaan

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Since I'm a speaker noob, does anyone have a clue if enclosure thickness/weight/stability/internal space has a roll in THD that's eventually measured?

These factors are not direct contributors to THD, which is a function of the mechanical behaviour of the driver.

Having said that, at lower frequencies the enclosure can certainly indirectly affect nonlinear distortion, but that's mostly to do with its effect on voice coil excursion. For example, all else equal, a ported enclosure will produce the same SPL at low frequencies (from the tuning frequency up) as a sealed cabinet, but with less voice coil excursion. This will allow the driver to behave more linearly at a given SPL, and therefore produce less distortion.

But I don't think this was exactly what you had in mind with your question, right?

Also, is it most favorable to have a speaker enclosure with the least amount of internal empty space?

The short answer is no.. The longer answer is that different woofers require different cabinet types/volumes. Some woofers are designed to perform very well in relatively small sealed enclosures, for example, while others are designed to perform best in large ported enclosures - and everything in between.

But there's no general "most favourable" - each choice is highly driver dependent, and involves different tradeoffs and considerations.

Has 3D printing been a thing in enclosure designs yet?

It's definitely used in parts that go into loudspeaker enclosures (waveguides, ports, etc.), and I strongly suspect it happens in the portable/bluetooth speaker world, although I couldn't point to any specific examples.
 
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verdantaudio

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Few notes:

1 - the specs will be completed now that measurements are in assuming I don’t scrap the product, at least temporarily
2 - this uses a 6.5” woofer which proved to be a poor choice as that driver really needs a larger cabinet to get the most out of it.
3 - the emphasized upper frequencies are strictly a result of my taste and tweaks I made to the crossover. There is a single resistor in the crossover that I can adjust to soften that.
4. These have been designed and tested using a 24” stand.

The bulk of my efforts (and money) went into R&D on our higher end product which were never intended to carry the brutal price tag they have. This, and the Bambusa AL product were an attempt to introduce more cost effective products.

The “laminated bamboo” is slats of bamboo turned on their side and glued together and then machined. This is not a veneer, but the equivalent of solid bamboo if bamboo grew in a way you could make a solid plank out of it.

Regarding pricing and marketing language, our original attempt was to be internet direct company with appearances just in shows. Language is intended to bring to life what the speaker sounds like to generate trial. That proved not to work and we have moved to a hybrid retail model. Two retailers have signed on to list my products coming out of Covid 19 and I have 3 or 4 others interested. I can sell these direct for a lot less but with retail margins involved, pricing gets brutal. in fairness, the primary interest has been in our higher end products with the composite cabinets. full specs and measurements from Excelsior are in the photos of those products.

Kimber Kable is used because it adds ~$6/pair in cost to the speakers, they provide me pre-cut lengths of wire which is a perk, and I can use their name. I also get my binding posts form them as they are WBTs importer.

This has in fact been the most challenging product I have worked on. I don’t have the same kind of relationship with SEAS that I do with Eton. The folks at Eton we’re amazingly helpful and ultimately, their driver work really well with simple (2nd order) designs.

I have explored the SEAS Excel Graphene drivers and I scrapped it because the larger (6.5”) driver needs a larger cabinet. This probably needs to be in a larger cabinet.

After seeing these results, will probably temporarily scrap this product and go back to my crossover designer (I contract that out) to see if we can get a flatter response.

At CAF, people were polite and some did in fact like this speaker quite a bit. In fairness, this did not receive the critical or consumer response that our composite products did.

We shall see if the AL 1 measure better.
 
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