I totally understand what you’re saying but I really doubt I’d be able to build a functional speaker; i cook well tho

Maybe if I could find someone in my area who could do it for me for a reasonable price but i doubt about that too.

So, back to start!

You can though, it's really not as hard as you think.
Though I'll be writing a full build plan that includes the DSP presets so you won't have to do measuring yourself and include a flat pack wood package with driver cutouts allready done etc.
But I'm slow in making this, probably will be another half year at this pace so don't wait for that

In your situation I'd probably go for a cheaper set of Dynaudio speakers or something like that. As I read you're in a small room currently, this won't give good soundquality with any speaker anyhow.

Weeeell, I believe it would look like this if I would do it

Interestingly, after I’ve read this complete thread, the Amphion gigantic thread and several other similar threads im not much wiser!

But I’ve learned this:

1. Amphion are the best speakers in the known universe!

2. Big Neumanns are flat like a pancake but ‘clinical’ sounding and unnatural. Kh120 are the same minus pancakes!

3. Small Geithains are bass-light, distort easily but are immersive with their 3d imaging. They sound exactly the same as 10k euros, high end Geithains, except they don’t in any possible way, nooo way!

4. If you’re planning to finish your song you need to spend at least 5k euros on monitors, unless we’re talking Amphions, of course.

5. PSIs have extraordinarily extraterrestrial sci-fi technology from future that’s unheard so far BUT you can’t mix on them bc none of other ‘normal’ speakers have such level of precision, actually, nowhere near of it, so it won’t translate well; they’ll either fool you or you’ll be overwhelmed by the amount of micro information they produce. Also, the 17s are just trying too hard!

6. Quested are big and warm sounding, warm like a mother’s kiss, but imaging is average at best with a poor highend precision. THD is astronomical too, like all brown noise!

7. Adam and Eve? They are just myths anyway! Forgetaboutit!

8. NS10 still matters! In 23rd century! (“...what no man has heard before!”)

9. Sonodyne? -Sono-what? U mean Bono?

10. Kii? -Welcome to Gearslutz! Finally!

11. Opals? -Omg! Not that guy again! I can still recall his voice! :/

12. On Gearslutz we know that his name is Robert Paulson and we are talking about the first rule ALL THE TIME and it’s: You need to fight with speakers in your own room! (Ok! Now i know it too!)

You avoid evoking Atc, strange?

However, the best nearfields speakers in the world and maybe on the moon, barefoot mm27. Near, mid or far they do all even the IPhone cake.

Omg! Sorry!

13. ATC! Actually, this is the only speaker that has the real midrange spectrum reproduction! All other speakers are basically so called convolution-based processing transducers (CBPT-4 in short); they reproduce the midrange by taking impulse response of ATC midrange driver and playing all the mid frequencies processed with the impulse response. So, basically only ATC mids are real sounding mids in the world, because, as we all know digital is NEVER, IN NOTHING better then analog!

14. Barefoots? Naah! Those are just completely fake! ...just another convolution plugin in a speaker form, but from top to bottom! You press one button and they play mp3s, you press another and they play current hits in hifi resolution. Joke! Avoid!

[QUOTE=Karloff70;14198478]I found the 906 to distort very early with bassy material actually. Great little speakers, but give them bass and they will distort or stay rather quiet. [quote]

The only time I have known the RL906 to fall over is with low pure bass notes around 50Hz (the bottom end of the specified frequency response).

It does not happen with more complex music, only on the very low pure bass notes.

Almost every bass reflex design can do this sort of thing when you push them to the limit - though they may do it in a different frequency and different way.

This has never happened to me in the 7 years I have had my RL906 - but I don't monitor pure low bass notes with them.


Agreed - always try first.

In the past I monitored on the K+H O110D (still have them), these are the forerunner to the Neumann KH120 and sound almost the same.

Then I upgraded to the ME-Geithain RL906 and later added the RL944K as my main monitors.

Now I have a pair of the new RL934K on order (due next month) as these are about the same size and price as the 944 but have a 10" woofer and go 5Hz lower - down to 30Hz (the big RL901K go down to 25Hz).

I'm really looking forward to getting them going.

(Oh - and the long delivery time is because I ordered them in a special veneer - BirdsEye Maple)

[QUOTE=John Willett;14214537][QUOTE=Karloff70;14198478]I found the 906 to distort very early with bassy material actually. Great little speakers, but give them bass and they will distort or stay rather quiet. What has never happened to you in 7 years happened to me every day of the two week test period I had them at mine for. I know what I make of that, anyone else can make of it what they like.

SonnyBonodyne?

[QUOTE=Karloff70;14215254][QUOTE=John Willett;14214537]Of course you are right. Though it is about what level you monitor at.
The RL906 has a mere 5" woofer. There's basic physics at play regarding how much SPL it can produce at what bass frequency with such a small cone. To produce bass at reasonable SPL the cone will need to move a LOT (excursion) in order to move enough air. This brings a lot of problems with it regarding suspension and voicecoil length etc. The best drivers can't do it and Geithain is no exception to it. (only now is there a 6.5" driver by Purifi Audio soon to be released that makes enough of a difference that one can build a good near full range 2-way with it, but there's nothing else and certainly not a 5" driver).
You can also look at the graph by Geithain themselves, they don't claim the RL906 has low distortion in the bass.

That is 1% for the third harmonic at 100Hz at only 83dB. That's not great at all and it's going to be much higher below 100Hz.
This is a monitor for real nearfield listening at fairly low SPL.
Again it's only a 5" woofer, no magic to be expected here.

[QUOTE=syncussion;14215309][QUOTE=Karloff70;14215254]Sure. But my one15's with their 5" woofers go quite a bit further until they crap out on bass, and when they do they tell me useful stuff in the process of crapping out, whereas the 906 didn't. It just said 'please stop!'. lol

Basically, the one15's only crap out early if your bottom end isn't tight. If it is they go quite loud cleanly, which is very useful for mixing, and unlike the 906, which just crapped out early, even with very well mixed records.

[QUOTE=Karloff70;14215338][QUOTE=syncussion;14215309]One15's bass drops off earlier, it's not nearly as flat as the RL906. Would be more fair to compare it with the RL906 with some EQ added to make the bass drop off similarly.
One15's have a fairly nice Seas woofer though, may perform a little better I don't know, but likely most of the difference is simply the lower relative level of the One15's bass.

[QUOTE=syncussion;14215375][QUOTE=Karloff70;14215338]Whatever you chalk it down to. They are much better at helping decisions in the bottom end. Even much lower down than they technically play back. The 906s were great for level, mids and top decisions but a blind nightmare for bass end for me.

[QUOTE=Karloff70;14216261][QUOTE=syncussion;14215375]Perhaps it was a placement thing in your specific case? For instance the ports on top need space. Or it was still simply due to level differences.

In any case, I think it's not right to talk about these 5" 2-way speakers as "high end nearfields" (thread title). They won't ever be in my opinion. On top of that I don't think the RL906 nor the One15's are the best a 5" 2-way can be both are very coloured (measurably so).

[QUOTE=syncussion;14215375][QUOTE=Karloff70;14215338]If Geithian made the decision to extend the low end further than what is natural for such a small driver, one has every right to question that ethic. Naturally the concequence is that the power handling drops noticeably, and then one has to conclude that the construction doesn't allow for loud playback. If that is a reasonable compromise is up to every user, but those are the facts. Some may prefer to have the extension at the expense of SPL, but it will not satisfy all.

Personally I like a speaker that is balanced in the sense that a single factor doesn't hughely limit its performance. To let the speakers physical properties govern it's presentation and for it not to try to be what it wasn't meant to be.

With that said I haven't heard the Geithains and therefore will put no opinion on it's sound specifically. I can however second what Karloff70 is saying with regards to One15; they can rock without the woofer crapping out prematurely, which I find nice. They don't extend very low - but what they do, they do good. Sometimes I've been listening to the One15 and thinking "Damn, the lows of the One18 are sweet!", only to realize i were on the small ones. You just don't get reminded of the lack of bass very often, since the bass is so tight and artifact free. Even with electronic music. Well, with trap music and loud sub synth fundamentals at 20-40 Hz you will definitely be reminded that it's a small speaker by the lack of weight in the bass, but not by the unwelcome showing of obnoxious chuffing and distortion.

[QUOTE=syncussion;14216326][QUOTE=Karloff70;14216261]It wasn't placement. The 906's simply didn't like bass at any physical level without crapping out. Personally, I couldn't care less about the nonsensical phrase 'hi end' in any context, including this one. I just like tools that work for me, whatever they cost.

[QUOTE=Oskari J.;14216942][QUOTE=syncussion;14215375]First of all, that's not how speakers work. Speakers almost always have correction EQ, especially for the bass. This is part of the crossover network in both passive (like ONE15's, not as good as active btw) and active (like RL906). The most often used EQ for the bass is called baffle step correction. It's nothing else than a 6dB boost to get the bass to be flat due to change in radiation from half space of the mid frequencies into free space of the bass frequencies. Only for in wall speakers this doesn't apply. And there's a lot of other correction EQ going on in speakers as well, both passive and active and for good effect and reason. (though sometimes the newer DSP speakers go overboard when they're correcting baffle edge diffraction, that's not a good thing to do, better make the edge very round, another bad thing in the design of both RL906 and ONE15's is their sharp edges btw)
Speakers that try to be as "natural" as possible are the worst, like single full range driver speakers or speakers with first order crossovers etc. Those don't sound natural at all.

As for ONE15's bass. They don't have deep bass, period.
If you play for instance a 20Hz sine you will scientifically proven be completely unable to hear it (at reasonable nearfield listening distance) as it can't nearly reach the threshhold SPL for this frequency to be audible under ideal circumstances Look up 'equal loudness curve'. And that is if it were in a closed box, with the passive radiator it's even much worse as now the driver behaves as if it doesn't have a box at all below the passive radiator tuning frequency (which means the passive radiator moves in sync at the bass notes and actually cancels out the bass coming from the speaker).
All you can hear in the sub frequencies with it is the harmonic distortion which will kind of let you interfere a low frequency sound, but the actual 20Hz sine itself is completely inaudible with such speakers.

To get "high-end" bass I think one needs at least 20Hz to be of audible SPL and with the harmonic distortion low enough so the harmonics are not perceived as louder than the fundamental (according to the equal loudness curve). I believe this is roughly about 8% or so for the second harmonic and 3% or so for the third harmonic. Hell and then preferably some dynamic range with those specs too.
Basically you need a very good dedicated 10" for real high-end bass in my opinion. Compare the Seas L26roy 10" with the Seas L15RLY/P 5" (that's the ONE15's driver) and you'll find that the 10" will give you about 22dB more bass potential (you'd need to put 12 or so of those 5" drivers next to eachother to reach that)
5" inch speakers don't rock in my opinion, they can only pretend.

I have to say it is quite refreshing to read posts about speakers written by people who know what they are talking about.

So yeah, no matter the brand or price, speaker obey to the laws of physics. Small drivers with limited excursion cannot produce a lot of bass as surely as 2+2=4. If bass light speakers suit the engineer's taste, that's fine (NS10, ATC SCM20 etc). But I always find it comical when said engineer (or seller of the product) asserts the aforementioned speaker has accurate bass down to 30 or even 20 Hz

If people were better informed about speakers' physic they would care more about accurate specifications and measurements and less about brands (especially brands who do not give measurements about their speakers). And of course they would care about their room's acoustic first No wonder we can read an opinion and its absolute contrary about the very same product on Gearslutz.

But I guess some people just prefer to indulge into magical thinking and commodity fetishism, like those who buy 10000$ speaker cables

Just a video for the laughs and then I'll stop with my off topic rant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr8O_jZhpl4&t=1s


EDIT

Just a quick remark regarding the hard edges comment in syncussion's post : the waveguide's increased directivity of the One 15 helps to mitigate edge diffraction. So the boxy shape is not a bad design choice in that case.

Lovely to see the outburst of rational thinking, mixed with a side order of condescension and ting.

I am quite aware of the physical limitations of a 5" speaker and its non ability to actually play back bass under about 50 or so, whatever box it's in. For whatever reason though in REALITY the one15's let me make decisions far lower, that I get informational feedback on, and that work out correct when playing back on systems that DO have the actual capacity to play back deep bass. So there.

I don't even care why exactly that is (my own attempt at an explanation is that it plays back the upper harmonics in a way that lets the brain guess correctly about what is down there, although it physically isn't playing the low stuff back) but it is a reality. It works. And in the end I couldn't care less why. I just love that it does.

Sorry for the irrational interrupt, back to the rational conversation with logic and science and cussing people for magical thinking to make yourself feel good. Carry on.

While partially true, the argument is also completely missing the listeners distance and amplitude in context. You can have headphones, produce accurate, faster and lower bass than most speakers given their exact same price range (typically any speaker when comparing within the same price range). That being said you lose some of the realism of having those low frequencies play at an amplitude where the effect is not just sonic, but also felt which is a small part of the magic of a high end speaker system. But anyways the point is the above concept of larger driver being the only path to better lows is actually wrong... The physics prove that its the easiest approach to get there, but still, not the only approach.

Like Karloff, for mixing Id take a system that has a pretty good range, and cleanly lets me hear all the stuff it is trying to let me hear over one that claims range and has technical problems... Having both is even better, but a whole other point

Agreed on all points
Including the waveguide and edge diffraction. I did a quick guess that it would still have almost full effect near the crossover but the waveguide looks deep enough for the tweeter and the baffle narrow enough for the mid driver diffraction to be pushed up, I'm guessing you're right! (Hard to know without measuring / modeling the waveguide but the notch at 17-18kHz is a sign of a deep waveguide I believe, though not an expert on this)
Poor guy in the video btw..

The good ol' "subjectivity vs objectivity" brawl...

Funnily, my post was not specifically adressed to you, there is far enough BS on all of Gearslutz concerning speakers in general. And I did say that I understood the enticement of some engineers with bass light speakers. I have no problem with that.

But your reaction is interesting in displaying the usual aggressivity and latent insecurity of people holding on to fragile subjective positions. The world of HiFi audiophools is filled with that cognitive dissonant mentality, combined with a hearty dose of group thinking : "Begone with your objectivity and rationalism ! I have invested too much money and vicariously gained too much self esteem through my speakers for you to tell me they are overpriced and mediocre ! And lots of people think just like me !"

For sure it is no big deal that charlatans thrive on the ignorance and foolishness of wealthy old men. It is already more questionable when broke and inexperienced musicians are mislead in their gear purchases. And of course I am not even going to explain how this "anti-rational" mindset becomes disastrous in fields like medicine or architecture...

Subjective opinions can be helpful, but are inherently limited in their ability to be shared by different persons. What works for you may not work for others. Solid, objective facts are true for everyone all the time.

Nyandres, I find your post a bit confusing but I will answer in order

1) Listener distance is a variable that exists for all speaker systems, sure. I am aware of that and rather than contradicting my view it reinforces it. The longer the distance, the more capable the speaker has to be.

2) Although headphones frequency response is often quite awful and, being fullrange tranducers, their IMD distorsion is high, I agree with your point : listening to headphones is not like listening to speakers due to a lot of factors. I personally dislike working with them, they are just a necessary tool.

3) You say you disagree with me but you actually follow my opinion : a speaker system with good dynamic and bass capabilities reinforces the realism of the reproduction

This part makes no sense with what you previously wrote.

First you say that a speaker system able to play bass with good amplitude is necessary for realism and that headphones are unsatisfactory, then you say that such a system is not necessary for good bass. You say the physics are true but not the only way ? What other approach is there ? All speakers basically work the same way. There is not magic. The magic is in people's head, the speaker doesn't care.

Some time ago I wrote a long and boring post on the Kii Three thread about the same subject because some copious BS was spread, and people who "dared" to mention some basic audio-engineering principles were insulted. I am going to rewrote a bit of what I said :

You have so many projections ready, I couldn't even make myself read it all.

Projections ?

Weren't you the one to feel threatened by my first post which was not addressed to you ? Then, weren't you the one damning those objectivists : "cussing people for magical thinking to make yourself feel good.".

It's as if I casually said "I can't stand bigotry", and you suddenly appear saying "What do you have against biggots, you inconsiderate twit ?!?" Oh well, as Winnie said "You have ennemies ? Good. That means you've stood for something, sometime in your life".

Now, maybe we should end that bickering. Signal to useless noise ratio becomes poor in this thread.

Who's bickering? I was done before you even addressed me. Maybe go find something else to type about.

The whole amplitude can be summed to the following... The realism im talking about is not merely about being able to hear (auditory) things in the same original amplitude of what is mimicked. It is about the non auditory attribute of being able to feel the vibrations. Taking it to the extreme which is of course senseless, means a gun shot should be deafening, and speakers can replicate that amplitude more realistically, because they are at a distance. In that sense surround sound speakers are even far more real, more closely mimicking the direction at which the sound is produced. Dont confuse auditory for tactile realism. If focusing only on the auditory and not the tactile response however, when you hear a drum in headphones, the sonic accuracy in terms of distortion (at the same PERCEIVED volume) will actually "sound" a lot cleaner and closer to the original "sound" because headphones in terms of sound can and pretty much always do perform a lot better given the same price... Comparing that headphone drivers distort more at the same DB output is a pointless comparison because thats not how they are used. The same DB would be deafening in a headphone

Example, a coin size pair of shure KSE1200 will far outperform the transients of any speaker I have heard at 5 times the price (Focal, ATC, Barefoot, while going deeper and cleaner). (Im sure you will come up with the blame the room excuse). Anyways, yes headphones they will distort if they out put the same db output, but the detail is in the fact that they DONT have to. If you tried to have the drivers output those levels while wearing em so close to your eardrums youd likely go deaf before you can judge the comparison, because they are soo much closer to your eardrum... Now lets say I compare the KSE1200 to a pari of full range mastering speakers of comparable "Sonic reproduction", you know... something probably worth about 10 times the price. Yes, now we are talking about a fantastic thing that its not just beautiful sound, but also the realism of amplitude in 3d space. Vibrations that will not just be audible but also felt.. So no I am not contradicting my point, because the bass in most speakers is terrible in quality, even though feeling that same low quality bass in a room can add a level of NON AUDITORY related realism. I know my speakers, and the speakers of most of the guys here would contradict my point, as they do reproduce decent bass, but thats merely because those are all speakers costing at least 10x what the shures (or other comparable headphones) cost. But that just proves my point.. Edit to add one more point... You are changing my words as you reply on each quote, since what you are saying im saying doesnt match the quotes you picked.

Is PSI a17m bass any better than of RL906 and One15?

Better for what?