Dynaudio LYD 5 Studio Monitor Review

[amirm]

is it just me or everyone is still waiting for a more comprehensive testing among the affordable studio monitors compared to this Dynaudio like Focal shape, Adam Ts and the Genelec 8030?

I have an Adam T series here for testing and another one may come from a member.

 

[temps]

It's at's a singular opinion, I haven't heard of anybody (including me) having such problem with these.

Neumann numbers show the KH80 with almost 10% distortion in the bass at 90dB output. The KH120 somehow is only slightly better through the same frequency range but it'll hit >50% THD in the low bass before it finally rolls off. The 80, 120 and 8030 are all primarily 3rd harmonic distortion throughout their low end... the 8030 has large amounts of the 5th as well. The LYD is mostly 2nd, the 3rd is much better controlled and the 5th practically absent. It has more in common with the 8341 in the low bass than the 80/120/8030.

I'm fairly certain the 80/120/8030 all are even more distorted on program material. It was clearly audible to me, but I'm familiar with the effect because it feels like 50% of a mixer's job these days is to add harmonics to everything to make it sound better on small speakers. Clearly it would be very difficult to dial in these tools correctly on monitors with so much distortion already "baked in" to their sound. It's not necessarily a dealbreaker for consumers but it does make them worse as studio tools.

I can't help but feel Neumann and Genelec made bad judgments when they allowed the 80/120/8030 to play as low as they do. As you mentioned the Genelec has the switch to roll off the range the speaker can't handle but the 120 doesn't and the 80 requires an iPad, which is just silly. I suppose they wanted to look better on the spec sheet but they should have included ways to alter the low end extension as Dynaudio did.

Yes and no. The fact that the LYD-5 has basically an equal amount of harmonic distorsion at 86 dB that the Genelec has at 96 dB while having this low cut filter says it all; 10 dB headroom difference with the same woofer size, mate, that's just not in the same class. The Genelec also has a bass roll-off dip switch that brings it to 59 Hz F6, so you don't even need to bring out the software filters to get a more comparable LF extension.
But it'd be interesting to see the result of the multitone measurement with and without the filter (basically emulate a subwoofer presence).

>150hz I don't think distortion would be detectable by anyone on either monitor.

 

[StefaanE]

And oh, there is tweeter hiss that is a bit lower than JBL LSR305. Like that, I could not hear it from my seating location and certainly during music playback. Once sensitized though and in a more quiet space, you may hear and be bothered by it.

Do all active speakers have tweeter hiss? Does that mean that the amplifiers used have a very low S/N ratio, or is it simply caused by near-field listening?

 

[q3cpma]

Neumann numbers show the KH80 with almost 10% distortion in the bass at 90dB output. The KH120 somehow is only slightly better through the same frequency range but it'll hit >50% THD in the low bass before it finally rolls off. The 80, 120 and 8030 are all primarily 3rd harmonic distortion throughout their low end... the 8030 has large amounts of the 5th as well. The LYD is mostly 2nd, the 3rd is much better controlled and the 5th practically absent. It has more in common with the 8341 in the low bass than the 80/120/8030.

I'm fairly certain the 80/120/8030 all are even more distorted on program material. It was clearly audible to me, but I'm familiar with the effect because it feels like 50% of a mixer's job these days is to add harmonics to everything to make it sound better on small speakers. Clearly it would be very difficult to dial in these tools correctly on monitors with so much distortion already "baked in" to their sound. It's not necessarily a dealbreaker for consumers but it does make them worse as studio tools.

I can't help but feel Neumann and Genelec made bad judgments when they allowed the 80/120/8030 to play as low as they do. As you mentioned the Genelec has the switch to roll off the range the speaker can't handle but the 120 doesn't and the 80 requires an iPad, which is just silly. I suppose they wanted to look better on the spec sheet but they should have included ways to alter the low end extension as Dynaudio did.

Basically, better no bass than distorted bass? I kind of understand, but the thing is that this distorsion mess only comes at ridiculous levels. 86 dB at 1 m is already plenty, and in this case, you can eat the cake while keeping it; at least for the 8030C. Honestly, it would have been interesting to see the results with the -10 Hz switch, as it's how most people should run it standalone.
Still, I should mention that the Science (tm) is quite skeptical when it comes to audibility of distorsion at low frequencies. Though, bonker H5 at 50 Hz means that the mayhem reaches 250 Hz, where it's certainly another story.

>150hz I don't think distortion would be detectable by anyone on either monitor.

Well, I do agree that the LYD's distorsion being mainly H2, is begnin, but the difference between 86 dB and 96 dB still shows that the speaker is reaching its limits more easily.

To be honest, it's still a good speaker, but you just end up wondering how better it would have been if Dynaudio didn't stick to their no-waveguide marketing position.

 

[AnalogSteph]

Do all active speakers have tweeter hiss? Does that mean that the amplifiers used have a very low S/N ratio, or is it simply caused by near-field listening?

A bit of that and then some. See this thread, where this has been discussed at length. Not sure why it's over in Room Acoustics, actually, I never really noticed.

And no, not all active speakers have objectionable levels of hiss. In my K+H O110s, it is hardly perceptible even at 0.4 m, at least since I got the acoustic panels. JBL 104s in the (untreated) office are more noisy but still tolerable.

 

[KaiserSoze]

It's not uninteresting, but the Focals are a very unremarkable example to see that (https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/focal-shape-65-studiomonitore-im-test/) as linear distorsion is way too great for that price.
But the nearfield passive radiator response shows a very smooth decay, that only very well made ports can attain: browsing SAR's monitor reviews like the JBL 705p, Mackie XR824, Genelec 8350A and S360 shows that only the S360 is as clean/cleaner; the 8350A isn't, but the 400 Hz port artifact is low enough in amplitude to not be too grave (it actually fills a dip in the woofer response).

That's a singular opinion, I haven't heard of anybody (including me) having such problem with these.

Yes and no. The fact that the LYD-5 has basically an equal amount of harmonic distorsion at 86 dB that the Genelec has at 96 dB while having this low cut filter says it all; 10 dB headroom difference with the same woofer size, mate, that's just not in the same class. The Genelec also has a bass roll-off dip switch that brings it to 59 Hz F6, so you don't even need to bring out the software filters to get a more comparable LF extension.
But it'd be interesting to see the result of the multitone measurement with and without the filter (basically emulate a subwoofer presence).

Certainly the Genelec at 86 dB looks cleaner than the LYD5 at 86dB. But comparing the LYD5 at 86 dB to the Genelec at 96 dB is stretching things a bit. At 96 dB the Genelec's distortion skyrockets at about 110 Hz. (This would be the frequency where driver excursion at 96 dB is great enough for the trailing end of the coil to start to leave the gap.) At 86 dB the LYD5 has a distortion peak at 75 Hz, which settles down at lower frequency. (This suggests that the driver excursion is greater at 75 Hz than at 60 Hz, which suggests a response dip at 60 Hz.) But if you compare the frequency where the skyrocketing distortion occurs at 96 dB, it occurs at about the same frequency for both speakers. The major difference is the unusual distortion in the LYD5 from about 125 Hz to 1 kHz, ranging from about 1.5% to 2%. This is unusual, and is a valid criticism of this speaker, but this doesn't mean the LYD5 at 86 dB is as distorted as the Genelec at 96 dB. As for that unusual distortion in the LYD5 at 96 dB, it is so unusual that I'm inclined to speculate that it might be attributable to the amplifier rather than the driver per se. But it doesn't much matter whether it is the dedicated amplifier or the driver, because whichever it is, it isn't something that any consumer is going to correct.

 

[StefaanE]

A bit of that and then some. See this thread, where this has been discussed at length. Not sure why it's over in Room Acoustics, actually, I never really noticed.

Thank you, that was an informative thread.

 

[DualTriode]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Dynaudio LYD 5 powered studio/professional monitor (speaker). It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $499 each.

There is not much bothersome or unique about the look of the LYD 5:

View attachment 82710

The backside is perhaps more unique with slot port:

View attachment 82711

As you see, there are a few settings. I used the following for testing and listening:

View attachment 82712

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

I used over 800 measurement point which was enough to compute the sound field of the speaker within 1% error.

Temperature was 77 degrees. Measurement location is at sea level so you compute the pressure.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per research that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

For reference point, I used the tweeter axis. The manual is confusing as it says the acoustic center is between the rim of the tweeter and woofer but the picture doesn't match the actual speaker with the overlapped drivers. Nevertheless, I also computed the response at 1.25 inches below tweeter reference to get to the rim of the woofer near it. Alas, it made essentially no difference so I went with the tweeter axis below.

Spinorama Audio Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

View attachment 82714

For a studio monitor, we want essentially flat on-axis response. Here, we kind of have it but with some deviations. The biggest one is the peaking in upper bass, then a dip around 1.64 kHz, and somewhat elevated treble energy. Listening axis solves the latter (dashed green) so perhaps you want to ignore the manual and point the speaker a few degrees above/below or left or right of your ears.

This speaker has an unusually high crossover frequency of 5.2 kHz although my measurements show that to be somewhat lower. That aside, the woofer beams a bit as indicated by the increase in directivity index (red solid line).

To see the cause of the dip around 1.6 kHz, let's measure the drivers and port very close to their center:

View attachment 82716

The dip seems to be a property of the woofer. So perhaps having had a crossover at the usual 1 to 2 kHz would have remedied that. While the response of the tweeter is cut off that low it appears to trend correctly. Maybe the higher crossover point was picked so that the monitor could play louder?

Anyway, back to our spinorama, early window reflections nicely sum to a smooth response showing pretty clever design:

View attachment 82717

So be careful in absorbing some and not the others as that can mess with this balance.

Using a hypothetical average room in far-field listening we get this response:

View attachment 82718

Seems fairly accurate with the exception of problems noted earlier in bass.

Before I show you the directivity plots, let me post a new measurement I have not shown before which indicates at what distance the speaker acts as if it is in far field:

View attachment 82719

This says that above 400 Hz, that distance is 1.5 meters (where the circles is on blue line) Lower frequencies take forever to get this way so I have excluded them. Let me know if you like to see this display for future near-field monitors.

For the following, I picked 1 meter distance as that is how far away the speakers are on my workstation:

View attachment 82720

So unlike the Genelec or Neumann speakers, we have a directivity that keeps getting narrower.

View attachment 82721

View attachment 82722

Relative distortion shows what we usually see: the woofer getting unhappy as levels go up:

View attachment 82723

But, there is some interesting design here that keeps the bass frequency distortion very much under control, perhaps with both filtering and compression:

View attachment 82725

On some budget speaker the distortion actually shoots above the fundamental itself (over 100% THD+N). Not so here thankfully. On not so good news front, distortion in bass exceeds my threshold of 50 dB up to 1 kHz so best to play the LYD 5 at lower levels than 96 dBSPL @ 1 meter.

Finally the waterfall:

View attachment 82726

Monitor Listening Tests
I placed the LYD 5 to the left of my monitor at around 1 meter to my ear and pointed at them. Comparing them to JBL LSR305 MK II, there was just no deep bass. And what was there was a bit tubby. As a result, the sound was rather flat in a rather unattractive way. The tubbiness is mild mind you, but when it is there, combined with lack of deeper bass it stands out.

I swapped out the JBL for Neumann KH80 DSP and the differential remained. Despite its small woofer, the KH80 maned to produce clean and natural bass.

On the positive front, the LYD 5 took my "speaker killer" tracks and spit them out! No amount of deep, deep bass would upset it and as a result, it could play very loud without getting distorted or fall apart.

Please note that I am being very picky here as the application for a studio monitor is in a picky environment. On a more relaxed basis, the sound was good.

And oh, there is tweeter hiss that is a bit lower than JBL LSR305. Like that, I could not hear it from my seating location and certainly during music playback. Once sensitized though and in a more quiet space, you may hear and be bothered by it.

Conclusions
Objectively, the Dynaudio LYD 5 does well with near flat frequency response, good directivity and great control of low frequency distortion. Where it misses is in lower bass energy which it attempts to make up for by boosting the upper bass. This is a fine trick in low end budget speakers but for a monitor, I don't think it is a good trade off. I would be interested to test its larger brothers to see how well they do with their increased bass response.

Overall, the LYD 5 is a good attempt. It just doesn't fit what I am looking for however and my preference for a studio monitor would be that of JBL LSR305P MKII or Neumann KH80 DSP.

------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Before I started ASR, I thought it would be a great get rich quick scheme. I make up a bunch of fancy graphs, add some technical buzzwords and you all would throw thousands of dollars at me per day. Well, it has not worked out this way. My hopes and dreams of private jets and islands have gone out the window. Still, I hope you support me by donating what you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Hello,

It seem like the amplifiers in powered monitors get a pass.

The typical amplifier tested here at ASR gets a real world test and review; Phase, THD, IMD, FR and all the rest of the poking and prodding. The powered monitor amplifiers are likely chip amps that on their own would not test as 0.99999 fine.

Seems like the driver distortion would mask amplifier distortion in all but the worst case. This particular review does mention hiss. Hiss is an amplifier problem that will show up in an amplifier SINAD test.

Thanks DT

 

[watchnerd]

Hello,
The powered monitor amplifiers are likely chip amps that on their own would not test as 0.99999 fine.

One of the big differences with the up line (and much more expensive) Core series is better amplification.

The Core series uses Pascal amps. Class D, but with the Core you get heatsinks to match the higher output:

Also has digital input.

 

[TheMarshal]

Does anyone know if there are any measurements of the BM5 MK3? I couldn't find anything about it. It's a solid deal here in Europe at 800E for a pair. However, there is not much data nor discussion about it on the internet.

I already own it, however, I do like to see data and compare it with the LYDs.

 

[watchnerd]

Does anyone know if there are any measurements of the BM5 MK3? I couldn't find anything about it. It's a solid deal here in Europe at 800E for a pair. However, there is not much data nor discussion about it on the internet.

I already own it, however, I do like to see data and compare it with the LYDs.

The analogous "Compact" with the 5" woofer or the bigger 165 mm woofer 'regular' BM5?

Here is the Compact:

https://en.audiofanzine.com/active-...act-mkiii/editorial/reviews/danish-sound.html

 

[Wolven]

If you want "cheap" bass, you're going to need a big woofer and a big amplifier (unlike the LSR308's). Behringer's B2031A is a classic, there's Mackie's HR824 and Kali's IN-8. Though I'd spend 2~3 times as much, as this is what's needed to really get to the next technological level.

You are probably right, what I want is starting to look like another price bracket. From the speakers you mentioned only Mackie's HR824 mk2 looks interesting to me. People have split opinion on those. I will have to listen to them.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Hello,

It seem like the amplifiers in powered monitors get a pass.

The typical amplifier tested here at ASR gets a real world test and review; Phase, THD, IMD, FR and all the rest of the poking and prodding. The powered monitor amplifiers are likely chip amps that on their own would not test as 0.99999 fine.

Seems like the driver distortion would mask amplifier distortion in all but the worst case. This particular review does mention hiss. Hiss is an amplifier problem that will show up in an amplifier SINAD test.

Thanks DT

There isn't much reason for testing the amplifiers separately, because of the near-zero likelihood that anyone would ever replace the drivers using the same amp or replace the amp using the same drivers. There is an interesting aspect of the pairing. A Class D amp that would present problems when used as a standalone amp if it has high output impedance (due to the low-pass filtering applied at the output) is perfectly acceptable when paired in a dedicated fashion to a particular driver because the rise in response at the driver's resonance can be corrected using active EQ prior to the amplification. So even if the amp were tested separately and attention were drawn to its high output impedance, it wouldn't matter in the dedicated application.

 

[KaiserSoze]

Core 59, Where Are You?

https://www.dynaudio.com/professional-audio/core/core-59

 

[jerryfreak]

seems like the updated version of the common BM5A which can be had for $500/pair all day long

great desktop speakers but a bit shy on bass. i have BM5A at my workstation and BM15A in the listening room

 

[YSC]

I have an Adam T series here for testing and another one may come from a member.

interesting for what the "another one" is, and for the Adam T series is attractive to me personally is that they are costing half of what the big guys are asking for! if the result is similarly neutral as what the Genelecs, Dynaudio are doing that's going to appear in my desk soon

 

[amirm]

I think the one I have is T8V and the promised one is T5V.

 

[YSC]

I think the one I have is T8V and the promised one is T5V.

Right, can I ask for a favor to measure the T8V soon Kind of curious to see if the drop in low freq as in the S2V measured before, and if the result is similar to what Adam present themselves then the T5V looks good enough as what makes me pull the trigger

 

[kezman]

Bass extension -10Hz: 50Hz - 21kHz measurements?

 

[FeddyLost]

how better it would have been if Dynaudio didn't stick to their no-waveguide marketing position.

It would be LYD 48.
Also, problem is in small woofer and its huge excursion, not in the lack of WG. Dynaudio tweeters usually have a lot of headroom in small speakers.
Looks like directivity control never was an big issue in NFM - anyway, it's nearfield, so all reflections must be supressed.