It felt inappropriate to post this in Amir’s “Should we (I) get into speaker testing & measurement” thread, so I started a new thread here.
One of the sites I follow regularly on the internet is Lowbeats, see:
https://www.lowbeats.de
This is a German HiFi-Online-Magazin, as they call themselves. The quality of the posts is imo certainly above average, and they MEASURE. Not that extensively, but still infinitely (anything ÷ 0 = ∞) more than the majority of all those other audio-related sites and of many audio-related journals out there.
For whatever reason, the company Dynaudio has stayed under my radar until the past one or two years. Despite the fact that I was familiar with the name Dynaudio, that this company exists for over 40 years (!), and that Dynaudio is one of the major loudspeaker companies of the world. As I’ve encountered in the mean time, they make some seriously good stuff. Besides the enclosures they also develop and produce all drivers in-house, and from the beginning they consistently use the same cone materials for their drivers, namely MSP (Magnesium Silicon Polypropylene, a composite) for their woofers and midtoners, and silk soft domes (doped with a special coating) for their tweeters.
This is a company that does some serious R&D. They opened a new research centre in 2017, containing a 13m x 13m x 13m large loudspeaker measurement room (as was already mentioned in Amir’s speakermeasurement yes/no thread), being the largest loudspeaker measurement room in Europe. One of the first speaker line-ups that profited from this new R&D centre is the new Dynaudio Evoke series. I happened to be at an audio show late 2018, and was very pleasantly surprised by the sound quality of the smallest speaker of this line-up, the Evoke 10 (I didn’t hear the rest of the Evoke family).
Now, on the 5th of May 2019 Lowbeats reviewed the Dynaudio Evoke 50, the largest floorstander of the Evoke family, see:
https://www.lowbeats.de/test-dynaudio-evoke-50-viel-bass-viel-spass/
What I found interesting were the IM measurements of this speaker. In the review they provide the IM-spectra of the speaker at 94dB spl and 103dB spl, both at one meter.
The IM-spectrum at 94dB spl is really impressive: allmost none (with the scale used):
As they conclude: “Kein Wunder, dass die noble Standbox so fein und klar klingt.” I thought exactly the same: no wonder I liked the Evoke 10 so much at the audio show. BTW, in most if not all of the Lowbeats speaker reviews these IM-spectra are provided.
A sound pressure level of 94dB is already beyond my normal listening levels (≤80dB spl), but even at an spl of 103dB the IM-spectrum looks pretty good:
Now here comes the surprise, at least for me it did. Last week there was a rave review on Lowbeats (Editor’s choice 2019; the year isn’t even over yet..) of the brand new TAD Evolution One TX, price per pair 25.000 Euro (ahum), see:
https://www.lowbeats.de/test-standlautsprecher-tad-evolution-one-tx-editors-choice-2019/
Andrew Jones left the company, but TAD of course is still able to produce a top loudspeaker, with very good directivity and well behaved impedance and phase curves (not shown here).
But have a look at the IM-spectra of the TAD at 94dB and 103dB spl:
The TAD spectra don’t come close to the spectra of the Dynaudio Evoke 50, and the TAD’s are almost 6 times the price of the Dynaudios.
What to think of these differences?
One of the sites I follow regularly on the internet is Lowbeats, see:
https://www.lowbeats.de
This is a German HiFi-Online-Magazin, as they call themselves. The quality of the posts is imo certainly above average, and they MEASURE. Not that extensively, but still infinitely (anything ÷ 0 = ∞) more than the majority of all those other audio-related sites and of many audio-related journals out there.
For whatever reason, the company Dynaudio has stayed under my radar until the past one or two years. Despite the fact that I was familiar with the name Dynaudio, that this company exists for over 40 years (!), and that Dynaudio is one of the major loudspeaker companies of the world. As I’ve encountered in the mean time, they make some seriously good stuff. Besides the enclosures they also develop and produce all drivers in-house, and from the beginning they consistently use the same cone materials for their drivers, namely MSP (Magnesium Silicon Polypropylene, a composite) for their woofers and midtoners, and silk soft domes (doped with a special coating) for their tweeters.
This is a company that does some serious R&D. They opened a new research centre in 2017, containing a 13m x 13m x 13m large loudspeaker measurement room (as was already mentioned in Amir’s speakermeasurement yes/no thread), being the largest loudspeaker measurement room in Europe. One of the first speaker line-ups that profited from this new R&D centre is the new Dynaudio Evoke series. I happened to be at an audio show late 2018, and was very pleasantly surprised by the sound quality of the smallest speaker of this line-up, the Evoke 10 (I didn’t hear the rest of the Evoke family).
Now, on the 5th of May 2019 Lowbeats reviewed the Dynaudio Evoke 50, the largest floorstander of the Evoke family, see:
https://www.lowbeats.de/test-dynaudio-evoke-50-viel-bass-viel-spass/
What I found interesting were the IM measurements of this speaker. In the review they provide the IM-spectra of the speaker at 94dB spl and 103dB spl, both at one meter.
The IM-spectrum at 94dB spl is really impressive: allmost none (with the scale used):
As they conclude: “Kein Wunder, dass die noble Standbox so fein und klar klingt.” I thought exactly the same: no wonder I liked the Evoke 10 so much at the audio show. BTW, in most if not all of the Lowbeats speaker reviews these IM-spectra are provided.
A sound pressure level of 94dB is already beyond my normal listening levels (≤80dB spl), but even at an spl of 103dB the IM-spectrum looks pretty good:
Now here comes the surprise, at least for me it did. Last week there was a rave review on Lowbeats (Editor’s choice 2019; the year isn’t even over yet..) of the brand new TAD Evolution One TX, price per pair 25.000 Euro (ahum), see:
https://www.lowbeats.de/test-standlautsprecher-tad-evolution-one-tx-editors-choice-2019/
Andrew Jones left the company, but TAD of course is still able to produce a top loudspeaker, with very good directivity and well behaved impedance and phase curves (not shown here).
But have a look at the IM-spectra of the TAD at 94dB and 103dB spl:
The TAD spectra don’t come close to the spectra of the Dynaudio Evoke 50, and the TAD’s are almost 6 times the price of the Dynaudios.
What to think of these differences?
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