Here you go…
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Thanks, but I should have specified that I’d like to see a bare bones high end model without the built-in DAC and not a starter unit, such as the Sprout.
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Are you aware that you can get many different frequency sweeps with the same speakers in the same room (depending on exact speaker and listening positions), which even for large speakers can vary from hardly playing 40Hz loud enough to playing 20Hz too loud? And the best positioning for imaging will most probably not be the best for tonality and the other way around. That’s also why most any speaker needs separate subs, as one will mostly prefer (for soundstaging reasons) to position it further away from the front wall, than it would meet its initial, compromised voicing choice for tonality reasons to play as much full range as possible.
IMO the most interesting measurement would be the one in one‘s own room with one’s feasible positioning. This could mean that in one’s own situation a stand mount could provide perfectly deep bass and a bigger speaker way too much in the lower region, or the bigger might be mandatory. That’s why the only important aspect is the trial period imo.
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Agreed.
Yes, although it is sobering to see the results.
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I’m aware, but I would think PS Audio frequency claims can be met in PS Audio dedicated and well designed/treated listening room. If the manufacturer cannot meet their own specs in their own listening room, why should anyone consider that speakers?
I’d say, no measurement where a non standardized (at least in some way) room is involved, is meaningful.
Meaningful measurements in my understanding must be done in a way that’s putting the room as much as possible out of the equation. Just like measuring a speaker with 3 feet distance in a desert.
Aside of that, 10 speakers measuring the same in frequency extension, have 11 different sound characteristics in specific rooms anyway, which is why judging a speaker by frequency extension measurements makes no sense imo. Most other measurements as well as driver dispersion differences and placements and concept etc. would probably make more sense for judging. A ton of speaker of various sizes go down to 30Hz…and they will all sound different in a certain room and positioning.
Although hardly any room is too small for bigger speakers, my guess is, that finally more have problems at home with too bass potent speakers than the opposite. The bigger the speaker (from a certain size on), the better the room situation should be.
The only measurement that’s not meaningful is no measurement. I respectfully argue that all measurements are meaningful to some level. If PS Audio publish their in room measurements, and I also measure the same speakers in my room, the differences will give me insightful input into their room, which I can extrapolate and apply to other speakers measurements that is in PS Audio room. I don’t get this default response every time measurement is discuss that immediately downplay it… yes we know… listening is king, your ears your room, you can say that all day long and discussion will go nowhere, measurements allow us to infer our own specific taste to another speakers/room (once a certain anchor is accomplished) without having to listen to everything, which no one can do.
I didn’t want to argue against measurements generally, I just say there are too many non transferable influences in case of in room speaker measurements. And not sure you’ll ever see other speakers’ measurements in PSA rooms published. If they’d measure a bunch of third party speakers the same way as their own, I agree with you, that would give meaningful results for you.
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I’m current looking at icepower for the subwoofers. While I’m huge fan of Bruno’s amplifier (and driver) work, the flat distortion vs. frequency and very low HF intermod distortion of the purifi aren’t wanted/needed in a subwoofer and current hypex/purifi untis (except for the one or two big hypex untis) are mostly targeting other applications.
In the case of icepower, they also make them very physically modular where we can use a 1x1200, 2x1200, 1x2000 and 2x2000 watt modules that all have the identical mounting holes and physical size. The 1x700 and 2X700 watt modules are a different size but it makes designing a line of subs pretty easy in that they can share the same plate and input/DSP board and we can just scale power for the application.
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The FR30 has a measured response of 24 Hz at -6 dB (anechoic), as verified by Hifinews and others. We have had a few challenges in getting things right on the website (FR20 is correct). I’m having our web team correct it on the website.
If you browse through speaker reviews on a site like HifiNews, measured in the same way we have among the lowest distortion and extension for a passive speaker, slightly lower than a KEF Blade Meta, Wilson Alexx V, B&W 801 D4 Signature, and many others.
Extension is only one part of being “full range” as output and power and displacement limits of the speakers is a huge part too. Because our ears aren’t very sensitive at low frequency, you have to have low distortion good amount of dynamic output down low to make use of good deep bass extension. Otherwise, the harmonics are perceptually louder than the fundamental bass frequencies.
A pair of FR30 is capable of around 120 dB at 1 meter from the woofer section from 25 Hz and up at the xmax of the woofers (20mm peak to peak). This is at 600 watt input and is also a good deal more than the mid and tweeter but, if you want to boost the bass with EQ for whatever, reason, there is dynamic headroom to do so.
I have a pair of FR20 I’m brining home soon and will do a video and forum post about anechoic measurements vs in-room and will publish graphs. Rooms differ a lot at low frequency and so we rate the speaker primarily with the anechoic spec. Room gain is somewhere around 10+ dB at 20 Hz in most rooms (though you get substantial peaks and dips that can be in the range of 15-20 dB, depending on the room and location) and so you need to understand what you’re looking at with in-room measurements. This is why to take companies’ in-room measurements with a grain of salt, as YMMV because of modal behavior in the room.
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Truer words were never spoken, Chris. Below about 150Hz, without DSP most rooms look like a mountain range. Even with traps many typically sized rooms are still pretty messy down there.
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Nine days ago I stated I would like to see a dual chassis preamp. I would like to add to that. Yesterday I replaced a pair of Amperex 7316 tubes in my BHK preamp with a pair of NOS Telefunken which got me to thinking . It would be great if you could have two pair of tubes in a preamp with the ability to simply switch back and forth between the two.
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