PSB Audio Imagine T65 Tower Doesn’t Break the Bank.
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- Written review/data can be found here:
www.erinsaudiocorner.com/loud...
Link to AES Paper about the "Allison Effect":
www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?...
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Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
0:51 - Subjective Opinion
5:04 - Why the Woofer Separation?
11:35 - Measurements
16:49 - Summary
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All of my tests are conducted using KLIPPEL Hardware and Software. KLIPPEL is an innovative leader in providing unique test equipment for electro-acoustical transducers and audio systems. Founded in 1997 by Dr. Wolfgang Klippel, the novel techniques developed for control and measurement systems of loudspeakers and other transducers are the result of over 30 years of fundamental research. This provides more accurate physical models of loudspeakers, micro-speakers and headphones valid for both small and large amplitudes. The focus is on revealing the root causes of signal distortion and defects and giving practical indications for improvements in design and manufacturing of audio products. For information on KLIPPEL products, please visit their site below:
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Nice to see this old Canadian maker still pumping out speakers. I still sport my old PSB Century series and love them. Would love to see more from them.
I think for years PSB has been one of the few companies really putting multiple woofers to work (even ports I've seen) at different heights to offset the Allison effect. This is definitely a major consideration for me in a future tower speaker purchase.
Great work as always, Erin!
I enjoy my TOTL Psb t8 platinum (came out around 2003) !! The only time Paul Barton designed a tower with the TMT arrangement and with THREE 8 inch woofers. I love them
I really like that you explain the graphs etc in detail and tell us how the results affect what we hear. I’ve honestly learned a lot from watching your reviews, more than any other reviewer. Thanks and keep up the great work
Awesome, thank you!
I used to have the T6 towers.... they were excellent
Another clear review balanced between testing info and your own listening experience! Your suggestions on speaker placement are also helpful. Thanks for another great review!
Glad you enjoyed it!
你是最認真，最負責，最快速更新的音響解說員！❤
PSB while never perfect measurements are always designed in a purposeful way which I can appreciate.
That beard has some amazing horizontal and vertical dispersion.
Apparently it mitigates diffraction effects.
Very positive review! Way to go PSB 🇨🇦👍🏻
I really like this design.
Seems like a good speaker when some eq is applied.
A bit surprised however that they didnt manage the dispersion better.
Hi Erin,
and thank you so much all your awesome reviews! I really enjoy your content. Keep up your really good work! 😊
Regarding PSB speakers. Are you planning on, or would it be possible to do a review on the PSB X2T and the PSB T800 as well - and maybe do a comparison between all three?
Hope to hear from you.
Kind regards,
Kai, Norway
Thanks Erin...
I no longer have to care anymore about how many Erin ears off the floor ☝️ my drivers fall at..
😂😂👍
My older DEFtech BP10s have their tweeters at nipple height when I'm seated with woofer at ear height. So this info now gives me relief from worry about the general principle about tweeter height. 🎉
They do require a bit of midEQ tweeking like your PSBs seem to require. Bass us always abundant too. Full range 20Hz to 20KHz towers.
Thanks again my good fellow. 😎👍
Great review 🎉
Hey, thanks!
@@ErinsAudioCorner Thanks for helping me too with my tune. You let me know the tweeters were too hot 🥵. Much appreciated!!!!
System Audio did something like the floor-bounce woofer back in the 90's, going so far as to call it a subwoofer, in their System Audio 950. Pretty decent speaker for the time, but they were using it more for bass-reinforcement than floor-bounce reduction.
I met the President of PSB and the owner of Head-Fi at AXPONA last year ^ ^
PSB is a underrated brand but poor mktg holds it behind. Even their sealed subs sound very good. I liked their 12inch sub better than svs sb2000
I hope in the future you are able to review and share your thoughts about the Polk R700. It’s a fantastic speaker at $1k price point.
I'm surprised with the all the testing that PSB does that this speaker had such a noticeable issue. For the asking price PSB has created a very compelling speaker.
Wonderful review man, you basically answered every question I had about these speakers. I have been considering getting the psb alpha s10 subwoofer to add some bass to our livingroom system (bw dm 601s3+nad c368), but after listening to all your rants about subs and spl I kinda put the idea to rest. The speedwoofers are too big for the living room (not that the wife would have accepted them anyway, not even the small one) so I started looking at towers instead, and here we are. So my question is, would the nad c368 be enough to drive these properly? If the 3050 at 100w is more than enough, it stands to reason that the c368 at 80w is just about enough, or no? I'm intrigued by your description of the kick drums, I find that kind of attack a lot more interesting than deep spl and rumble for this particular system.
And thanks for all the effort man, your measurements and considerations are always appreciated.
With that mid range dip running from about 430hz to 2khz, it seems likely the mid-driver is not keeping up. That could be a crossover issue or an inefficient driver.
Just looking at the size of the mid range driver and the space between it and the tweeter already is problematic. Considering the size of the bass drivers I believe that they could have gotten better results with a 4 inch midrange and moved the tweeter much closer on centers . Finding a 4 inch driver with the proper sensitivity should not be a problem. I think the cross over could have been simplified somewhat and higher quality parts employed. Possibly even using a different upper midbass and employing a 3 & 1/2 design with a true woofer at the bottom. Looking at the data I would go back and rethink the whole thing.
@@stevengagnon4777
Agreed. It would also be interesting to see if the mid and tweet are in an isolated chamber to prevent cancellation effects with the woofers.
It's pretty basic, anytime you have two speakers in the same enclosure, doing different things, they will interfere with each other.
Definitely I would go and find better performing mid driver, with better directivity and touch higher sensitivity. Midrange distortions could also be improved. But then again, the price most will be higher.
@@pliedtka for three to five hundred more for the pair would not move them out of range considering the potential improvements in this case. I hadn't considered a small separate enclosure for the tweeter and midrange, but the adjustment in phase alignment could be a real improvement. I have had very good results doing that. As long as the drivers don't have any resonance and phase shift issues at little higher frequency, even a first order cross over will work well and protect the higher frequency driver enough. It does help to use fairly robust drivers and a tweeter with a fairly low Fs so you are down at least 10 decibels ( ove course more is better especially for high spls) at the Fs.
Looks like a damn good speaker for the price ... honestly wasn't expecting the freq response to be as flat as it was. Would be perfect for HT with eq.
I dont know anyone in the industry that spends more time doing R&D than Paul Barton. The Stratus Gold and Imagine T3 remain two of my favorite speakers of all time. In the 80s Paul designed speakers to have character. Everyone started jumping on the measurement bandwagon. As a result his speakers became more flat. And they did not sound as good. I have personally asked Paul to bring back the character of his speakers from the 80s and 90s measurements be damned. It looks like he may have done this. A speaker can measure laser flat but that does not guarantee it will sound good. Such speakers may please youtube reviewers, but they are rarely worth buying and keeping.
Can Klippel simulate the floor effect with regards to vertical beaming? In my understanding, if you put this kind of speaker on the floor, then effectively you have 4 midbass driver array that starts to beam at least octave lower than when measured anechoic (since as anechoic the array length is driver to driver but on floor the length is 2 x top driver to the floor). This kind of data could help approximating floor-to-ceiling standing wave effects on bass frequencies.
I love PSB. I just got the Alpha 5s on sale for $299, and they are fantastic for the price and even at full price of $399.
Hey Erin, first off congrats as always you put videos out so fast now its amazing !
Will you check the new Emotiva lineup ? The XT3 seem able to be a full range speaker for me would love to see how they measure (also best woul be all the towers line up with pros and cons between all of them).
XT3 may seem a bit overkill but I will go in a house with a big main room soon.
The new-ish Martin Logan Motion towers also have woofers mounted low and close to the floor.
Very interesting approach to floor bounce. Is there any advantage to solving the problem with this method, rather than through DSP/crossover-based correction? Awesome breakdown Erin. As always, thank you for the food for thought.
It can't really be solved via DSP (EQ, that is); the only way to correct for it would be physical placement or the crossover. Or the listener sits on the floor. :D :D
Erin, I hope you get to review the Q-Acoustics 3050 floorstander. The're a 2015 model that won awards in the UK & are still available from Q-Acoustics USA for $399/pair, an incredible bargain. Enjoy!
He already measured the Q-Acoustics 5020 and 5040 and they were both terrible. No sense reviewing a lower level model...
@@tylerrynberg Sometimes lower end models measure better. For example Focal and Monitor Audio.
More recent designs, I assume not by the original Q-Acoustics designer Karl Heinz Fink, have measured terrible in the bass & are NOT bargains. The 3050 won awards in the UK & measured well by Martin Colloms (a long time & highly respected reviewer) at EnjoyTheMusic online, look his review up! I like bargains!!
Has anyone heard the T54s that can provide any thoughts on the sound? Thank you.
I hope someone sends you a B&W 606 S3…
i thought that when you measure, you are supposed to figure out where the reference axis is.
then you would also know if distance affects the summing of the crossover. if a speakers can work in nearfield or far field.
In most cases, it’s pretty easy to figure out. You just look at the measurements and determine where the smoothest response is in the crossover region. But it almost all cases you start at the tweeter and then work your way above and below. In this case, I had a heads up that the reference axis was above the tweeter And the measurements showed that to be true.
@@ErinsAudioCorner
i had a thought about the reference axis: if it is not between the tweeter and the midrange then it is pointed at an angle up or down. think that is correct?
@@sudd3660that can sometimes be the case as well. The March Audio Sointuva AWG I recently reviewed reference axis is 7 degrees above the tweeter.
Would adding a midrange centric ceterchannel fix this
Do I spy a Kentucky shirt? If it is, go cats! Love your content. Can’t wait for you to review the new Emotiva speakers.
I noticed the shirt as well - because I got the exact same shirt for Christmas!
Yep! I was born in Owensboro. Go big blue!
@@ErinsAudioCorner Awesome. I'm a life long member of the BBN and still live in far eastern Kentucky. Love all UK sports, but i'm a football fan first and have had season tickets for years. Big game tomorrow - man I hate that orange!
@@jmichaelpruittyeah, the UT game is scary. If UK struggles with offense early like they did with Vandy then they’ll get blown out. They have no real defense to speak of.
@@ErinsAudioCorner Yup, IMO we start every game down by 10 because we have the wrong players in the starting line up. Hard to come back against good teams. Tennessee is VERY physical, something we haven't handled well this season. I firmly believe we can win, just don't know if will play well enough to win. This team is so fun to watch and has so much potential - makes it very frustrating when they underperform.
I have the psbXt1 tower speakers. They originally were 900.00 pair 10 years ago. They never really got a lot of press because they were smaller and the bigger psbXt2 got rave reviews from audiophiles. Anybody have these speakers and what are your thoughts about them?
Thisis the perfect speaker to not eq. Leave the personality of the speaker.
Very nice to get PSB on the channel. They aren't spoken of often enough imo ..
I would how you'd like the Synchrony T600 towers. Those are a much larger version of those Imagine series.
Always a pleasure getting your detailed review!
is it a 3.5 way? or 3way.. if 3way it would be better to have both sub at the bottom.. the distance between the woofers could create that dispersion problem at 1000hz
The woofers only play up to 500 or 600hz.
Erin, that bass bump may sound 'good' on rock music but will sound overly chesty (& annoying) on male radio annoucers (FM, internet). It's an old trick usually employed in minimonitors like the LS3/5A etc not floorstanders. The bump & midrange dip will need EQ but what to do in an all analog system? I would not buy this speaker, even with its fabulous dynamic range. I bet these problems (mistakes?) are fixed in the next version (mkII), that appears to be the way of modern speaker design. Cheers!
But you could get a pair of 12 or 15 inch PA speakers and they will have even better midbass punch and be smaller, cheaper, and get louder
Yes, but likely at the expense of LF extension.
@@FOH3663 Yeah but that's what a sub is for. Pretty much all those hifi towers have mediocre LF extension
Have feeling that mid-frequency "scoop" is deliberate by design and may appeal to majority of listeners. Though perhaps not to audiophiles or reviewers with measuring equipment. Especially since its still within a tight +/- 3db range.
Possibly. Some of it certainly has a do with the vertical dispersion, but I think the midbass bump accentuates it a bit more.
From PSB, yes! The deviations would be deliberate 'voicing', as it's called by some designers. PSB could, with the famous NRC facilities, quite easily make it more perceptibly "flat" if they wished to. Nearly all manufacturers will use 'voicing' to tailor its character. The designers are human and have listening biases, too. (And yes, do make flawed judgments, too.) And yeah, vertical dispersion comes into play there, too. 🤔😉👍🍺
Toole's blind testing tells us general listeners like even frequency response with no peaks or dips, there isn't anything special or not special about the general population
@@episodesglow True, agree mostly. It is interesting to note, though, that a LOT of folks like a slight deviant bump up in response around 100 Hz. Also, some folks do like a response that is somewhat v-shaped. I don't, but I do plead guilty to liking a slight bump at about 100 Hz. I have read, do very much appreciate, and still very much like Dr. F. Toole's very extensive work, and refer to it frequently, but it is common to still see preferences that DO still exist from absolute flat response, even by slight measure, by many listeners.
@@episodesglow that's a bit of an oversimplification...inexperienced listeners did in fact prefer higher levels of bass than experienced listeners. A lot of speakers are designed with that v-curve, which provides a bit of a "loudness" effect at low volume listening.
Would love to se a review of the Synchrony B600 bookshelf. Its apparently Bartons full fledged attempt at "high end" but science and measurement based as is everything he does. Audioholics did a pretty comprehensive review but those guys are very much value oriented and less so about truly great sound.
I think Glenn would beg to differ on that last point, and I would utterly disagree that value is mutually exclusive to truly great sound. If you like getting ripped off for aesthetics and brand exclusivity be my guest 😅 If you like value AND great sound, DIY is where it's at if you do it right (and need bass extension and SPL... If you don't need that there's plenty of off the shelf options, but that's boring). Design anything around a 15" pro driver (and you can get absolutely top notch ones from around 350 and up) crossed acceptably low enough, and you get 4x the bass of an 8" woofer, or more, and easily make yourself some truly full range no sub needed speakers. Make it a 3 way or select the right compression driver or coax and horn for a 2 way, and you've got giant killers with more headroom for 2k on the lower end or 4k balls to the wall, and they'll smoke any commerical speakers double their price. Unless you have a big preference for extra wide radiation like Erin or thin baffle speakers that supposedly "disappear" better, then I grant you that's a design choice. Of course, you could mount your 15 on the side and cross it at 150-200hz and still get a thin baffle that way.
Basically I don't know why anyone spends a lot of money on yet another speaker with 6.5" woofers. They're all the same and anemic. 15s and high sensitivity please. DSP EQ ftw.
@@Artcore103 hiw do you set an 80hz crossover in an AVR from Costco? That's what I want to know. All else is snake oil.
@@user-xs1xw3nx2d lol I wouldn't go that far. But for the cost of a low/mid range AVR u can find/build end game amplifiers. Surround sound is a different beast than 2ch, you do need some sort of processor to decode the sound from your blu Ray or whatever. Even the miniDSP flex, while it can do it theoretically with some workarounds, afaik can't just take the raw signal from a blue ray player or e-arc, at least I read something about that but I haven't played with it myself yet. A hi-fi surround sound system costs a lot more, but is a waste for music; 2ch is cheap.
@@Artcore103 sure but I need another video on how to setup an avr to crossover at 80hz. It's very complex. It deserves a few videos per year. Everything else is pure snake oil.
@@Artcore103
Agree; diy ftw.
However, a $350 pro 15" driver, loaded in a design with adequate bandwidth to not need a sub, ... not easy.
Dizzle😊
👍
Erin, lets connect. I am in Madison, AL
am I blind or you didnt include impedance measurement? :D
Yes.
But it is on my site. Just an oversight on my part.
Paul and sue. b.
Sue, not Sandra. LOL
Erin, forgive me, but here's a bit of constructive criticism- In your latest videos you talk far too long before you start showing us the data and measurements. I always have to fast forward to get to the meat and potatoes. What sets you apart from other reviewers is the data you show us. Talking ad infinitum about you impression of the sound of a speaker makes you just like all the other subjective reviewers that just tell us what they think, with no data, and no audio samples for us to hear. That's my personal, opinion, and other viewers may not agree with me.
Can’t win.
Then continue to do what you already do, just skip past it. The subjective response is very useful when tied to quality data.
@@ErinsAudioCorner I disagree with what he says. You offer a review with context. The context enhances the quality of the subjective opinion and the helps us understand your overall experience of listening to the equipment and what you think about it (and the why and the how of it).
If you pare it down what's left is diminished.
Just having section breaks that are labeled - as you do - resolves his preference.
I'm thankful he eliminated the intro. I just skip right to the measurements and if I'm intrigued I go back and watch the review a couple of times.