[AverageJoeAudio]




 

 

*upper graph is from outdoor readings trying to eliminate any room characteristics, bottom graph is in room.

 

I've been been trying to run my little blog  http://averagejoeaudiophile.blogspot.com/ and get some reviews of as many budget/entry level/cheap speakers as I can reasonably get my hands on. 

 

As I've been playing with REW and learning a lot by actually seeing why speakers sound the way they do, and seeing my rooms inherent acoustics

 

My latest speaker I've been playing with is the Polk t15 that has recently been on sale at Best Buy. 

 

When I did my in room readings everything seemed to go as I've normally experienced and more or less expected from my listening of the speaker. A regular hump starting at 100 hertz and another starting at 1 kilohertz. Then a bunch of other fluctuations that I was figuring attributed to the a tunnel like quality to just about all male vocals. 

 

The real question was when i took them outside to do similar tests and was blown away by how flat the seemed to be aside from the big dip between 2.5 and 6 kilohertz 

 

[commsysman]

The difference between the graphs is a picture of the reflections in your room.


That is a pretty bad listening room.


The dip above 3 Khz should make the speaker sound pretty mellow, without affecting most music too much.


That is the extreme top end of a violin, for example. People don't realize how high 3 kHz is, and how little music there actually is above that.


I crack up when people go on and on about something being rolled off at 8 kHz or 12 Khz, and they know that is making a big difference. Bull.


You can roll off everything above 8 Khz, and almost no one can tell the difference, because the spectral content of 99% of recordings above 8 Khz is ZERO!


That in-room dip at 160 Hz will have a major effect on male voices. A soprano voice only goes up to around 1 Khz.


130 hz to 500 hz are the frequencies to look hard at for voices. Your in-room response is all over the place there.


Maybe you need to consider some heavy drapes to close when listening.


Do you have hard floors, or carpeting?

 

[AverageJoeAudio]


Thanks for the reply. 

 

This is actually used as a 2.1 set up in a bed room. So there is a bed, wood floors with an area rug. I didn't understand the dip @ 160 so much as a dip; but a peak between 100 and 160 as it has been common to varying degrees on 4 or 5 other sets of speakers. But maybe that's just tomato tomatoe

 

I'v made an EQ file with REW and gave that a quick test this morning, things seemed to sound "good". I'll retest with that file active to see if it actually made a difference. 

 

I'm not so confused with the in room results, but the out door testing results. To me, still being a big noob at this. Aside from the huge dip between 2.5k and 5k, which should be able to be EQ'd out to a good degree. This $50 pair of speakers seemed way to flat for what I expected at the price point and for what I heard in room. I didn't really like them in room at all.

 

Especially when comparing it to the few other step up speakers I've been playing with like the Def Tech SM350, Pinnacle DB 500 and Infinity Primus 153

 

[commsysman]

For an amazingly good set of cheap speakers, the Dayton B652 is hard to beat.


I had a set of Boston Acoustics speakers hooked to a Cambridge amplifier (and my TV and CD player) in the den, which were not all that great, and replaced them with the B652.


They sound pretty good. I paid $40 for the pair, which is way way less than the Boston speakers originally cost. Parts Express.

 

[LastButNotLeast]



Quote:
Originally Posted by AverageJoeAudio  /t/1524140/whats-going-on-with-my-r...15-seems-flatter-than-it-should#post_24527633

 

 Aside from the huge dip between 2.5k and 5k, which should be able to be EQ'd out to a good degree.

No. You can't EQ a dip to any degree, and that's a huge dip. You can/should only reduce peaks.

 

You may find this chart interesting:

http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm

 

[AverageJoeAudio]



Quote:
Originally Posted by commsysman  /t/1524140/whats-going-on-with-my-r...15-seems-flatter-than-it-should#post_24531542


For an amazingly good set of cheap speakers, the Dayton B652 is hard to beat.


I had a set of Boston Acoustics speakers hooked to a Cambridge amplifier (and my TV and CD player) in the den, which were not all that great, and replaced them with the B652.


They sound pretty good. I paid $40 for the pair, which is way way less than the Boston speakers originally cost. Parts Express.

 

 

I have the B652's and did a review on them. I like them too. They are my go to speakers when ABX testing other cheap speakers.

 

[AverageJoeAudio]



Quote:
Originally Posted by LastButNotLeast  /t/1524140/whats-going-on-with-my-r...15-seems-flatter-than-it-should#post_24531593

 

No. You can't EQ a dip to any degree, and that's a huge dip. You can/should only reduce peaks.

 

You may find this chart interesting:

http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display .

 

Thank you. I figured if I tried, I would have to find a happy medium between lowering the levels of everything else and kicking up the dip a tiny bit. I know its better to EQ down than try to EQ up from years of car audio.