I don’t understand why you are hating on these so much. They are great speakers with perfect measurements and would work extremely well for a certain application. It seems like you’re saying that music should only be enjoyed a certain way and that when you’re at home you have to crank it up and get up an dance to the music. That’s fun and all, but people don’t always listen to music like that and not all music should even be listened like that. Certain genres maybe.
When it comes to enjoying classical music, for example, the best way to do that is by sitting down and listening to the music. It is an even more enjoyable experience when you have great speakers that give you a holographic soundstage and make you believe that you are there in the concert hall. Jazz as well. I want to feel like I am at a good jazz club or coffee shop while I write or do work on the computer.
It’s also not true that a speaker does one or the other. I want to spend my money on something that does everything well. I want it to get louder than I could possibly want without straining and I want it to have perfect measurements and sound great in my room and give me goosebumps and perfect imaging and a deep soundstage and all of that. There are speakers like that, and those are the speakers that I want. Give me JBL M2’s or something from Revel or Genelec that can get loud and I am a happy man.
These speakers fit the bill for nearfield listening and I would consider them for that use. And that is a legitimate way to listen to music.
The director’s other movie Heriditary is better. At least the first half is really scary and well written. The second half is silly and the movie turns into Jewish garbage at the end like Midsommar.
It’s hilarious how poorly these Jews understand anything metaphysical or spiritual like ghosts or the afterlife. When a Jewish atheist makes a movie about these things it’s bound to be retarded. I guess that’s what happens when you reject the most important religious leader in history and turn your religion into debate club about following stupid rules.
why do you think i hate them ? i have even recommended them myself. well, not exactly - somebody on ( i think it was DIY Audio ) was asking for ideas with 3D printed speakers but was concerned with time to print and cost of the filament ( raw material for 3D printing ) and wanted to keep the speaker small for that reason - i told them to 3D print the front baffle of this Neumann and build the rear chamber out of MDF this way the 3D printed part wouldn’t use too much print time and material ( it would be mostly one round hole ) and you would still have a speaker that can’t easily be made without 3D printing due to the 3D waveguide …
no that’s not what i’m saying. there are many ways to enjoy music but rather i’m saying that they aren’t all equal. in the end the goal of listening to music is to experience emotion. whether the music makes you cry or gives you goosebumps or simply euphoria while dancing. if you have experienced SOMETHING then it was worth paying for.
and the amount you spend should be proportional to the experience you get NOT to how good the measurements look.
measurements do play a role in the overall experience, of course.
well i am on record saying that classical is over-rated. doesn’t mean that it’s not a valid type of music or that it can’t induce powerful emotion but rather that it tends to be the SAFE CHOICE for people who haven’t bothered to develop authentic taste but want to be recognized as having taste anyway so they default to classical music or Jazz or other more established types of music where they know nobody will say " haha you listen to that garbage ! "
it’s really same as with measurements - if you don’t trust your own judgement of what makes a speaker good you can always lean on measurements to “prove” that the speaker is good.
but if you do trust your own taste then the measurements don’t matter and you don’t need to listen to Jazz or Classical to prove that you have taste anymore. you can listen to anything you want on a speaker that measures, well, not as bad as Danley but certainly nowhere near the Neumann
in other words if you have confidence in your taste then " i like it " is all that matters whether it comes to music or speakers.
but admittedly taste must be developed, whether it comes to actual food, or music or speakers.
i did spend many years listening on studio monitors and i don’t regret it - it was necessary for me to understand what “accurate” sounds like, so that i can forget about it and never care about it again
for the amount of money these Neumanns run you might as well just go to the actual concert hall.
i mainly listen to electronic music - it ONLY exists played back through speakers so i don’t have such luxury.
and in fact modern music isn’t electronic - it is computer music. original electronic music was analog, while modern music is digital. and we are are about to transition to music generated by AI. so we are about to enter third generation of music that never existed as sound until it was played back through speakers.
if you are OK with dropping $3,500 to create ambience then more power to you.
the other day Andrew Tate tweeted that he “spent $135,000 on clothes today” … and this is a guy who wears nothing but swimsuit trunks while doing his podcasts or driving his cars … but apparently for him spending $135,000 on a pair of speedos is not a big deal so more power to him.
but if somebody asked me if they should spend $135,000 on a pair of underwear i would advise them against it … but if they had the money and really wanted that underwear and it was the best underwear ever in the end i would have to concede that there is nothing really wrong with that. just because i wouldn’t do it myself doesn’t mean they shouldn’t or that their choice isn’t valid.
it is possible to create one speaker that does everything. i was even contemplating building it, but was ultimately faced with the reality that i don’t even use the speakers i do have so going bankrupt to create something i would never use maybe not the brightest idea.
the challenge isn’t to create a perfect speaker - but to sell it.
the technology is there. combination of Array, Waveguide, DSP and cardioid allows us to, if desired, do pretty much anything we want to sound.
the speakers that actually exist though exist not because they are possible, but because there is a market for them.
and vice versa the speaker i described / designed ( and not going to build ) doesn’t exist because there is no market for it …
as i explained previously there isn’t even a single 2-way Circum-Aural headphone on the market even though it would be easy to make one that would surpass ALL headphones ever made - but there is no market. nobody wants good headphones. people just want expensive ones. to make something expensive you add some wood, marble etc.
well the measurements do look good.
one thing i forgot to mention is that 100db during rock concerts is time-averaged and a-weighted. which means that bass peaks can be far above 100db as a-weighting doesn’t count bass as much and peaks can obviously surpass average levels … furthermore music approximates pink noise which is bass-heavy plus there is additional house / harman curve applied to boost bass even further.
in other words even when sitting 1 meter away from these speakers and with 100hz crossover to subwoofer they would still strain to reach rock concert levels.
but you also wouldn’t want rock concert levels while writing or doing work and you said you are approximating a jazz club or a cafe and not a rock concert. so for that application there shouldn’t be any issue.
if you are sure this is what you want you would then just have to compare these speakers to offerings from Genelec and / or other Neumanns.
i think Genelec is slightly above Neumann due to their custom coaxial designs while Neumanns are slightly more generic. their flagship KH420
is almost a clone of a speaker i built in high school more than 20 years ago, which was also a 3-way with a fabric dome midrange and a 10" focal woofer ( admittedly mine didn’t have a waveguide or DSP ). it’s in the basement as well.
this is to say Neumann is good but not super ground breaking. Genelec was always more interesting, whether that makes it better or not i don’t know but they are certainly more popular.
it seems Neumann is leaning more on DSP while Genelec is leaning more on acoustical design. which is more important ? no idea.
if you could somehow compare them in real life that would be cool.
I think Genelec is probably better. This Neumann uses drivers that are a bit better than the ones Genelec uses, but I doubt it makes a huge difference. Genelec is better in terms of cabinet design. The aluminum zero-diffraction cabinets they use are badass. Genelec also has GLM, which is some of the best automated room correction software out there.
i doubt the diffraction between Genelec and Neumann is very different, i mean overall cabinet shape is fairly similar.
i was wondering what all that SAM ( Smart Active Monitor ) was about.
To be able to measure the actual speaker in the actual environment and then download the calibration to the speaker’s internal DSP is a big deal IMO.
not only is every room different but every driver and speaker is also different due to manufacturing tolerances. i don’t know if Neumann calibrates every speaker’s DSP individually or not but without such calibration every speaker would measure differently.
and what do you care if some other unit measured flat in some other room ? you want YOUR unit to measure flat in YOUR room.
A DSP that isn’t user tunable really doesn’t offer much advantage over a good analog crossover on the other hand. I don’t know what that Neumann offers but if it’s just the basic tone controls like +/- 3db boost or cut here and there then it’s the same thing that analog monitors like my Mackies always offered.
In fact my pops had passive speakers back in Kiev that had those adjustments, so this is legacy stuff.
using DSP as simply a more expensive substitute for analog circuits is not that smart. yes i understand FIR can do stuff analog can’t but i’m not sure if it is audible. on other hand room EQ is definitely going to be audible.
but again, as i said, if you want to be able to EQ a null at around 100 hz or so you will need a powerful speaker. these tiny speakers are already working hard even before any bass boost. and if you later move to another room that has a deeper null you can’t digitally increase the size and power of a speaker. on other hand if you get something like VTX F35 you have the power and you can always re-tune the DSP later … of course that’s another extreme. it would have been nice to have something in-between as an option.
the other advantage of Genelecs is the coaxial design, which means your FR is more consistent vertically …
the typical crossover at about 2 khz is right in the middle of everything - it is a very important frequency range. i suppose DSP filters can have very steep slopes and minimize the damage there, but coaxial could all but eliminate it.
in fact with a coaxial DSP design you can even overlap the response of the tweeter and midrange in order to shape the off-axis response ! in other words if the directivity doesn’t exactly match you could hand over gradually from one to the other and eliminate a sharp step in off-axis response. not sure it would be useful in practice but the combination of coaxial and DSP does offer possibities.
here is David Gunness of Fulcrum Acoustic talking about “temporal equalization” which is really his brand name for using FIR DSP in conjunction with Coaxial Drivers:
there are also parts 2 and 3 of this video series you can find on the same YouTube page.
coaxial drivers may not have on-axis response that is as smooth but that can be EQd whereas spatial response can’t be.
there have to be places you can check these Genelecs out.
B&H has Genelecs “on display” in store, but even though i been there many times i never tried to listen to speakers there, so i don’t know how it works - you can call them and ask.
both have slot loaded woofers above and below a tightly integrated mid-tweeter module.
and both are designed to work with subs.
because great minds think alike !
it’s just that one speaker is more optimized towards accuracy and another towards SPL. but both represent excellent engineering IMO.
the JBL M2 on other hand is sort of confused about what it’s purpose in life is … is it a PA speaker ? is it a studio monitor ? is it a home high-end speaker ? maybe to somebody that’s exactly what they need … but the M2 seems more like a candidate for cloning than an actual speaker anyone should consider buying. the fact that it doesn’t fit any market means it’s a low volume speaker and as such the price can’t ever be good.
of course neither Genelec SAM nor JBL VTX are cheap but at least they represent the pinnacle of engineering whereas the M2 is more like a trickle down version of something like VTX in my opinion, even if it is better suited for home use maybe …
it’s easier to sell something that has a reputation for excellence, than something which may be excellent but nobody knows about it.
i once got a deal where Beats headphones were included as a free bonus with something else. i sold them immediately without opening and got good money for them. they were obviously trash but they were easy to sell because everybody knew what they were.
between Neumann, Genelec and VTX i think i would rather be trying to sell the Genelec as everybody knows what it is and it is a self contained system.
everybody knows what JBL is but VTX F35 is not a self-contained system. it can’t be easily integrated into just any random setup. even if i sold it with matching Crown I-Tech amps only folks with other VTX gear would really be willing to pay a good price to complete their setup with matching speakers. and those types of customers might not even be looking at used market. shipping could get expensive too.
not sure how many people have even heard of Neumann, and even those that did would probably be willing to accept some substitute from another brand if it was cheaper.
whereas with Genelec it’s a name people recognize as a leader you can set it up in any room regardless of what other equipment you use, so that should make selling easier. probably you could have somebody pick them up locally.
remember everybody signing up to gym on January 1st thinks they will keep training consistently but 90% of them never come back even after buying a 3-year commitment plan.
I think the M2 was designed to be a mid field monitor for studios, but it became popular in home audio as well. It’s just a very well engineered full-range floor standing speaker. It was also a project for JBL to work on horn geometry and transducer design and have something to show for it. It’s too different of a product than the VTX to compare.
JBL has a passive speaker that’s roughly equivalent called the 4367. It is tuned higher and would cross over better with a sub. It also uses better drivers.
It also costs $8000 a speaker. Another good candidate for cloning.
I don’t see why you don’t just build a perfect speaker if you think you know how. It sounds like a fun project.
This Neumann would also be easy to clone. Just use one of those Purifi midwoofers and a good tweeter and 3D print a baffle with a waveguide and you are good to go. You can just use a MiniDSP as the crossver.
to some extent money is a problem … but it’s not the biggest problem.
a bigger problem is that i don’t actually need speakers - fine with headphones - but that is also not the biggest problem.
the biggest problem of all is simply lack of motivation to do anything at all.
you have to understand i haven’t worked or shaved in about 15 years.
the reasons are too complicated but ultimately it’s lack of motivation …
i might be bipolar … sometimes i have flashes of motivation … for example a few days ago groypers on Twitter were talking about some OnlyFans model and while they were bitching about how wrong OnlyFans is i just picked her up from Twitter and got her to agree to meet me in real life and she was excited about it … mere hours later i slid back into depression and remembered that i quit dating over a decade ago and vowed never to do it again.
not the first time it happened either. sometimes when i recognize instagram models in the real world i start to hit on them and they pretty much always get wet, then right after that i’m like what am i doing - stop it ! you were having a manic episode ! my mission isn’t to date models - it is to hate myself, hate my life and wait for death !
the thing with women is if you believe you’re good enough they will go with it, and when i am having my manic episodes i believe in that moment that i really am good enough for a model with hundreds of thousands of followers so i just approach her and everything goes great - but later when my mania wears off i’m like WTF was that ? what was i doing ? LOL
designing speakers is a bit like this as well. when i am manic i will design a system that exceeds anything ever designed by an order of magnitude in every possible way ( i design cars too ) then when the mania wears off i’m like - you don’t even use the speakers you have idiot ! why would you need one that 50 times more advanced ?
i think what is happening is my brain knows that the reality of life is horror and death and that’s where i am 90% of the time but sometimes when i am either daydreaming about speakers or cars or when i see a famous instagram model in real life ( usually this happens in gyms, but also happened in a pool once where i just so happened to be the best swimmer ) suddenly my brain seems to go this isn’t real world - it’s a fantasy - just like when you’re daydreaming about speakers - in this fantasy you are god, and i just project this god image and these hoes fall for it instantly.
then an hour later i’m like but i’m not a god, i’m a cockroach and deserve nothing.
i mean it’s it’s literally the same with speakers. LOL.
i honestly believe that when i am depressed i am sane, and when i am manic i am not sane.
in other words i believe that i am sane when i do absolutely nothing and wait for death and i’m insane when i accomplish without any effort things others can only dream of.
look at Sam Bankman Friend - was he sane when he became the richest 20-something in the world ? no he wasn’t because now he will go to prison for it.
same here - if i were to actually take those models out at some point i would have to face the fact that i am not God and i was merely feeling that way at the moment because i was the most impressive person in that building at that time even though in the grand scheme of things i am not even that good.
so to me sanity is when i remember how futile everything is and am depressed. and insanity is when i am excited focusing on the greatness that is possible.
tell me the dimensions of your room, your budget, what type of material you will be playing on your system and how loud / bass heavy you like it and i will tell you what you can DIY towards that end …
that way you will be living my insanity while i don’t have to hate myself for losing my grip on reality again …
Robert Greene in his books calls this “losing a sense of proportion” which is how great people meet their downfall …
if i actually built my designs or took those models out that’s what i would be doing … losing a sense of proportion and meeting my downfall.
however luckily you refuse to listen to my words of wisdom anyway so you wouldn’t really be losing anything by building my designs because if you don’t you will just build something else that is worse
it’s like i have done steroids before but i wouldn’t do them again … but i would gladly put some kid on them to see how big i can get him
i understand my definition of good speaker as one that makes female vocals sexy is probably not scientific enough for you so how about this:
1 - loud
2 - even louder at 40 hz
3 - not too much distortion
4 - frequency response not too ragged, especially from about 500 hz to 5 khz
5 - reasonable off-axis response and power response
6 - not gonna lie don’t care about imaging at all
in the end we all care about the same things but our priorities are not in the same order
you aren’t applying enough correction for the fact that audiophiles are lying sacks of shit who only say things to appear to have golden ears but don’t even know any music worth listening to …
for example, audiophiles will:
1 - talk smack about bass, as if bass is a bad thing, simply because everybody enjoys bass therefore to show that you’re better than everybody you must badmouth bass
2 - downplay the importance of loudness. it’s almost exactly the same as with bass but with a twist - by using the word “dynamics” instead of loudness audiophiles can now get a pass to talk about it in a positive way.
3 - imaging. since literally nobody cares about imaging again if you want to show you’re better than everybody else you must constantly talk about imaging. not saying it doesn’t exist - it just doesn’t matter.
anyway you are probably seeing the trend here. audiophiles by their very nature must make everything ass backwards. the more important something is to music enjoyment the more they bad-mouth it. and the less important something is the more they try to make it into holy grail.
my approach is unique because i combine sound engineering principles with common sense observations of what REAL people prefer, not fake ass audiophiles pretend to prefer.
and that simply means loud with lots of bass plus clean vocals. clean vocals means relatively even frequency response and relatively low distortion in the vocal range. any decent 3-way will generally do this.
thus all you really need is a decent prosound 3-way and some big subwoofers. and you’re done.
now of course my designs were infinitely more complex because they were motivated by the desire to out-invent and out-engineer everybody on earth, and the reason i am not going to build them is because i’m not insane and i know it is not necessary.
