Measuring Some Vintage Speakers

[Brab]

Or, in some locales, perhaps a Chesterfield, davenport, or divan.

Settee here.

 

[bconline]

Settee here.

You don't really have to have anything to sit on. Just some good gear.

 

[CleanSound]

I suppose this is indicative, but we know it's not accurate because it's no anechoic.

And since we don't know how inaccurate it is; sometimes having bad data to base decisions on is worse than having no data in my opinion.

Why no do outdoor quasi measurements instead? I see very little value in this.

 

[dagfinn]

Yuck! My measurement is pretty ugly compared to the NRC plot. Seems that I have a lot of room for improvement. I could try:

• Measure at higher SPL
• Measure outdoors
• Instead of the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro, I could use a Topping DX3 Pro+ that I normally use in the Living Room system.
• Check the amplifier - Seems like I may have a boost from 4Khz - 15Khz
• Better microphone mount? I'm not sure what I should do differently.
• View attachment 360775

Measuring in a room is difficult, so your measurements shows a lot of room modes and reflections. I'm no expert, so can't advice much, but eliminating the room by going outside is a good method, if you can. In general, consistency in levels, angles and distances is important. Moving the mic a few centimeters matters. Looking at your room, there's huge amount of reflective surfaces which could be lessened. Curtains, carpets, cushions, mattresses, blankets... . The bench you put the speaker on is probably singing along, a stand or less resonant support would probably be better. Great job anyway, very educational!

 

[Thomas_A]

Yuck! My measurement is pretty ugly compared to the NRC plot. Seems that I have a lot of room for improvement. I could try:

• Measure at higher SPL
• Measure outdoors
• Instead of the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro, I could use a Topping DX3 Pro+ that I normally use in the Living Room system.
• Check the amplifier - Seems like I may have a boost from 4Khz - 15Khz
• Better microphone mount? I'm not sure what I should do differently.
• View attachment 360775

With respect to microphone, you could just wrap some soft stuff around the mic holder. Not sure about your rise in the highs, but doing in-room is always compromise. One could show a merged diagram with two different gatings; below my speaker in-room with 5 and 20 ms window. This is also closer distance mic-speaker, around 60 cm but the woofer is just 5.5 inch/14 cm.

 

[dbaudio]

WOW! Thanks for writing this! Will be reviewing and re-reviewing this for days if not weeks. Great work, bravo!

 

[bugal]

Yamaha NS-1000M - clear winner here

 

[mhardy6647]

Yamaha NS-1000M - clear winner here
View attachment 361285

Hmm. Looks like the Dynaudio won -- based on the photographic evidence. If kitty wanted the Yamaha, methinks they would've pushed the little loudspeaker off the edge -- as cats do.

PS Gorgeous puss.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Hmm. Looks like the Dynaudio won -- based on the photographic evidence. If kitty wanted the Yamaha, methinks they would've pushed the little loudspeaker off the edge -- as cats do.

PS Gorgeous puss.

Have to agree but the Yamaha looks so much more comfortable!

 

[bugal]

It would be a real challenge to put Yahama on top of Dynaudio, so the arrangement is just to comfort the cat.

 

[Ralf Stocker]

Size matters. JBL L100T is the best boom box. -64dB@20Hz

JBL L 100 T | Hifi-Wiki

www.hifi-wiki.de

 

[TheBatsEar]

You don't really have to have anything to sit on. Just some good gear.

View attachment 360964

It should be mentioned that Steve Jobs, as he got older, bought a sofa.

 

[bconline]

In such configurations we measure just below the lower surround of the woofer and above the mid-tweeter if I remember well.
But that may vary too by centimeters,one has to test.

I had some time this afternoon to run a few measurements of the 4311, on axis different parts of the speaker. Here's a comparison chart, showing just from 1K up. Quite a lot of variance for moving just a few inches. I haven't ugraded my measurement techniques yet. This was just level matched to the prior measurements and checked for consistency.

 

[bconline]

Another Vintage JBL to add to the list - L36 Decade. Off the chart (literally) spikes in the treble, coming from both the midrange and the tweeter.

Here it is compared to the 4311:

 

[laserluxxer]

Hello,
I've also meassured several interesting vintage speakers. Is it ok for me to post them here to make some sort of collective thread for vintage speaker meassueremenents?
Best Regards Markus

 

[bconline]

Hello,
I've also meassured several interesting vintage speakers. Is it ok for me to post them here to make some sort of collective thread for vintage speaker meassueremenents?
Best Regards Markus

Sure! I'd love to see measurements of other vintage speakers.

 

[Tassin]

Hello,
I've also meassured several interesting vintage speakers. Is it ok for me to post them here to make some sort of collective thread for vintage speaker meassueremenents?
Best Regards Markus

Sure! I'd love to see measurements of other vintage speakers.

I have some measurements of my vintage speaker coming up. I thought of creating a separate thread with a similar title, e.g. "Measuring a vintage speaker: xxxx yyy zz" (where xyz refers to the brand name and model). We could then link to the thread in here. Your call, @bconline. It's your thread and I didn't want to hijack it.

 

[DanielT]

I had some time this afternoon to run a few measurements of the 4311, on axis different parts of the speaker. Here's a comparison chart, showing just from 1K up. Quite a lot of variance for moving just a few inches. I haven't ugraded my measurement techniques yet. This was just level matched to the prior measurements and checked for consistency.

View attachment 361996

How was it now? For the midrange driver, there is no crossover, not even a coil, that cuts off the higher frequencies?

I don't know if you feel like doing it, but if you add a coil on the midrange driver and then measure. Then it should (theoretically) be better, measure better. If you're lucky, that is.

Even better, a new midrange driver and new good crossover. An active crossover, or digital crossover both with fourth order slope. But okay then you start to slip into the territory of DIY a new speaker. Then you might as well start from the beginning and fix a completely new speaker, which has nothing to do with, or is similar to the JBL 4311.

Active crossover, I used this one. Smooth and easy to try your hand at setting different crossover points. Plus gain settings are convenient to have if you use power amps that don't have it. It is probably best to fix everything in the digital world, but otherwise I can recommend:

https://www.musik-produktiv.com/dk/ld-systems-x223-10051969.html

 

[thewas]

How was it now? For the midrange driver, there is no crossover, not even a coil, that cuts off the higher frequencies?

From what I know the original 4311 crossover has one attenuator and one capacitor for the midrange driver and also another such pair for the tweeter.

 

[bconline]

I have some measurements of my vintage speaker coming up. I thought of creating a separate thread with a similar title, e.g. "Measuring a vintage speaker: xxxx yyy zz" (where xyz refers to the brand name and model). We could then link to the thread in here. Your call, @bconline. It's your thread and I didn't want to hijack it.

I'm happy to have you post on this thread! That may be easier for common discussions.