Interesting. I have Martin Logan 35XT’s in my den near-field system and love them, I wonder how these will compare?..
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Well, I’m glad to hear that you love them.
Here are some measurements of that model in NRC anechoic chamber in Canada.
https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1350:nrc-measurements-martinlogan-motion-35xt-loudspeakers&catid=77:loudspeaker-measurements&Itemid=153
Based on these measurements, the FR5s are a bit different in that they have about an octave lower bass extension than the martin logan (the martin logans are tuned at 60-65 Hz). However, since they are similar sizes, we are about 3 dB lower sensitivity.
The FR5’s are about 10 pounds heavier each (more cabinet bracing and CLD material and beefier woofer)
Our tweeter is able to cross over substantially lower (1750 Hz on the FR5) versus around 3 kHz on the ML, so we can better suppress cone breakup and distortion.
Overall distortion appears to much lower on the FR5, especially in the woofer section in the midrange.
Of course, the FR5 are much more expensive even with a trade-in, you’re looking at 2X+ the price.
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I love my ML 35XT’s a lot, but I am assuming the FR-5’s will be better in most areas, I assume the FR-5’s will also use a ribbon tweeter, as opposed to the (VERY nice) AMT tweet on the ML. I’m sure they are both very nice products.
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The FR5 look good and 30 Hz is great achievement in the bass section. My Buchardt Audio S400 SE have a rear firing passive radiator as well, they also reach down to 30 Hz. I first had reservations about the passive radiator, but right from the get go I was very pleased with their overall performance. At no time I feel the bass is out of sync or that it would moody the music. On the contrary, a much better cohesion in music and performance than the bass ported floor standers I had before. Voices are so real. Perfect Match with the Eigentakt class D amplifier. It are keepers, because the 30 Hz makes foor good bass even for movies. No subwoofer needed, for which my wife is ever so grateful.
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What amp manufacturer? I have an Apollon on order.
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While I think the Buchardt speaker are good and I appreciate the transparency they have as a company, we tried to make the FR5’s better in a few areas.
The S400 is a noticeably smaller cabinet than the FR5 but it appears that there is no internal bracing at all and rather thin materials, as you can see in the attached video.
On the FR5, we have significant internal bracing which also uses a viscoelastic constrained layer damping between where the braces touch the cabinet and woofer magnet structure. We also have large shoulder screws that grab the from baffle of the speaker (from the back of the cabinet) and hold things in compression.
Here is a look at part of the internals:
We developed our own woofer and passive that have nearly double the excursion of the woofer and passive in bukhardt and we are tuned about 5 Hz lower (they ae at 40 Hz and we are at 35), with the goal of lower distortion and higher output in the bass. Neither speaker has what I would call high output, but the goal is to have enough to listen at a comfortable level and sound dynamic when called for.
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NAD M33 integrated.
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Hi Chris, really good points. And thank you for the details.
My intention was to give positive feedback on the use of passive drivers.
There is always something to improve on any speaker and your transparent explanation of the advantages of the FR5 indeed awakes my interest.
I am looking for speakers to be placed on a sideboard, are the FR5 well performing as such or do you recommend to place them on a stand?
Hi Chris,
What is the nearfield capabilities of this speaker system like? I was considering using them on a desktop? What’s the minimum distance required away from the front wall for desk use?
Cheers
Yes, I think the passives on the Bukhardt work well. They are using SB Acoustics drivers from Indonesia, which work quite well and are among the best driver manufacturers on the market.
I bought a couple of the passives they were using to see if we should use them but we decided to build our own with a softer suspension and more excursion capability.
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Well, in theory it should work quite well. It may be slightly rich sounding in the bass by a dB or so.
I just lent one of the pair of our sample units to my coworker Chris Harden that was actually a Grammy nominated recording engineer in his former career. We were going to compare them this week in a nearfield setup to his ATC monitors and a couple of other speakers.
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For developing the Aspen FR5 speaker, did you use a measurement tool like the Klippel NFS system and if so would you be able to share the data with end user? It might be helpful to understand the speakers limitations, how to get the most out of the speaker regarding placement, and give a better idea of whether it would work well in our room prior to ordering for in room demonstration.
Well, we did our own polar measurements on a polar measurements rig we made. I do gated measurements and get around a 10 ms windows so I get about 100 Hz resolution and then splice in ground plane measurements below a few hundred hertz.
It’s good enough for our crossover development work but not necessarily something I would publish (because the way we have to mount the speaker sideways to get the vertical polars causes some reflections).
I did send one of our FR10 models to Erin’s Audio Corner for review and he will publish some klippel data for those interested. You will see some vertical dips in the response from the woofer spacing on this but that actually eliminates floor bounce in-room (the klippel is showing a freefield measurements, not including the influence of a floor, so people have to know how to interpret this.
Overall, the FR5 performs quite well (as the midwoofer and tweeter are rather close together and the crossover point to the tweeter is fairly low at 1750 hz, which minimizes the flare in directivity at the bottom of the tweeter’s range.
There is a small on-axis dip around 3 kHz from the baffle interaction that fills in off-axis (the listening window is flat). Per usual, we recommend not toeing the speakers completely (maybe 15 degrees of axis as the listening axis), as recommended in our manuals for the most neutral balance.
We will have magazine reviews that also show a fair amount of measurements, for the measurement minded folks too.
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We did use a klippel distortion analyser and posted these klippel measurements of the midwoofer, showing very high Xmax and low distortion (symmetical and centered curves and broad/flat BL curve).
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What’s the minimum distance from a backwall that you would recommend for the FR5? Unlike a port that can be plugged, I assume the radiators can’t be turned off.
Well, it’s no the radiators that are the issue it’s the speaker boundary interaction in the lower midrange and below that’s being affected. Generally, we recommend that the speakers be about 18-24" from the back of the speaker to the wall, because this puts the early reflections from the wall outside of a critical timing range we use for localization and imaging.
If you have to place them nearer to the wall, place them very near (only a couple of inches away).
Genelec publishes some guides on this about their active monitors as well.
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Kim is a much bigger speaker at just short of three feet tall. Larger even than Harbeth 40.3 which sells for $21,000.
I’m a bit confused, in one of his videos Paul showed a prototype of a Sprout bookshelf speaker that would cost about $1000 for a pair. Here we’re talking about the FR5 speakers and Chris gave an indication of $3600. These clearly are two different speakers. I’m now wondering how the Sprout speaker would compare to the FR5…
Welcome, Wimek! Perhaps @Chris_Brunhaver could clear things up for us.