The FR10 has the 8" PLANAR RIBBON MIDRANGE. The FR5 does not. What is the trade off on sound produced? I remember Paul talking about how mid range is where it’s at. I am curious to know how the models compare. The marketing says FR5 sounds as great as the bigger models. With the stands the FR5 model takes up the same amount of space. I have a small room but like the idea of the 8" PLANAR RIBBON MIDRANGE.
Well, they share a lot of components and construction. The FR10 plays about 6 dB louder and requires less power to get to the same output (almost 3 dB more sensitive) has a separate planar midrange. However, there is more of a “point source” imaging from the FR5.
You might call up our audio consultants and discuss this more.
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From your response it looks like FR5 has better imaging. But I think OP wanted to know what trade off are we looking at here with the FR5 not having the Planar Midrange? Especially considering that Paul on multiple occasions sings the praises of planar Midrange being where the magic is at. I am curious to know this as well.
Well, the planar midranges have lower distortion than the vast majority of cone drivers, minimal stored energy and relaxed clarity that’s pretty unique.
The difference in imaging more relate to 2 way versus three way speakers and is kind of a matter of personal preference.
I personally prefer our larger speakers by a wide margin because I like live sounding large scale dynamics (things even the best bookshelves can’t do). Still, I’m really happy with where we ended up with the fr5 model.
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Thanks much Chris.
Are there situations where the FR10 is too much speaker for a space and the FR5 is the better fit?
In the past Paul has made the sensible argument that comparably sized floor standers take up no more space than book shelves on stands. My take on this is the choice of book shelves becomes a matter of preference, cost, or aesthetics.
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So if i understand your question, this is an easy answer. Have you ever heard a Bookshelf out do a similar floor stander? The answer is no.
From Utopia to Wilson tater tots to Dynaudio and im sure the FR5, they all sound great. Good detail, fills a small room (office?) Etc.
But like Chris states, your never gonna get the same punch and dynamics. A to B the 5 and the 10 in your home youll chose the 10 all day.
If you can afford the 10, I would go that route. Especially if these speakers are your mains.
Thanks for the insight Chris. What do you think of FR5 with a pair of REL subs (or PSA subs when they are available) compared to FR10 or FR20 without subs? My experience with adding subs was that they open up the sound stage, besides filling in the bottom end as well, very much like the difference you’re referring to in your description of the differences here.
My thoughts here is FR10s with subs would be the goldilocks zone :), to get that Planar Midrange magic.
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Well, good subs can improve any speaker, even if it is full range, as having multiple low frequency sources is the best approach to getting even bass response in-room, especially over multiple seats and listening areas.
However, the FR5, even with a sub is a lot more limited in total output than the FR10 or FR20 and those speakers (especially have much lower distortion in the midrange and bass). If you high-passed the FR5 and added a sub, it would allow it to play louder, though you’d need to sue a DSP or home theater receiver to do that and I don’t think most of our customers are doing that.
The planar midranges definitely sound less like a “box speaker” and have a certain kind of ethereal quality about them and very wide directivity so they have their own thing.
That being said, in the recent tours of our facility in Boulder, customers seem to be most impressed with the FR5 versus any of our other speakers. Maybe it’s just the big sound from the smaller size and more approachable pricing but I expect these to be the best seller for us.
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I am deciding on FR5 vs FR10. Why does the FR10 taper to a stem between the bottom speaker and the legs ? Is it to help isolate floor vibration from the speakers ?
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Well, it’s partly a cosmetic feature to give a unique “floating” look to the speaker but it’s also a very rigid and massive solid aluminum (line grained and anodized) base which is a very solid.
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Thanks Chris. What shows will PS Audio be in this year ? You will be in Axpona next week.
Will you be in Arizona and/or Southern California ?
Does PA Audio design & manufacture their own speakers ?
They will be at Axpona, and they custom design their speakers, and have them custom manufactured. They sound fantastic.
Chris, have you considered selling FR5 configured for sub, basically have a high pass crossover built-in. Or better yet, have the crossover be exchange able or configurable.
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I have a friend who had a pair of bookshelf speakers that had two sets of inputs. The second input was for when he wanted to use the built in high pass. I thought it was a nice way to offer that option.
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Unfortunately, doing this passively is quite expensive and non-optimal, for a few reasons, so this is best done with a 2 pole passive line level filter going into your amplifier or an active filter (either analog or DSP).
Here is an impedance curve for the FR5 speaker. You can see there there are two impedance peaks in the bass because of it’s PR/reflex tuning.
With a single 200 uF capacitor as a highpass (1st order butterworth about 125 Hz), you get the resulting response. You can see that this doesn’t track this response at all and there is very little attenuation where the impedance peaks up.
To get this to work correctly, you need large conjugate notch filters to flatten the impedance and to do this below 100 Hz requires huge parts (large iron core inductors and electrolytic caps) which have very significant consequences on the sound of the speaker depending on parts quality. It would be a couple of inductors in the 15 mH range and a couple of caps in the 400-600 uF range and I’d hate putting a huge electrolytic in front of the midwoofer as it will affect the midrange response.
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