ASoN Meeting
– June 2
Small Speaker
Shootout
Proving
that size doesn’t matter?
Introduction:
At the June meeting
we decided to put some small speakers to the test. Nothing over 5” woofer, and
all under $1,000.
Equipment:
Source was a CAL
California Audio Labs CD player – one of a few to still use a parallel DAC
(Philips chip) rather than the more common delta-sigma DAC’s prevalent today.
Rather than use the
internal volume controls, a Lightspeed attenuator (passive pre-amp – I hate
that term) was used.
Amplification was
courtesy of an Elson Silva designed and built Cymer tube amplifier, putting out
about 90Watts per channel.
Listening:
The speakers were
listened to in 2 rounds, of 3 tracks each; in the second round, we reversed the
order, to try and rule out the effect of sequence, and to help comparative
scoring.
Speakers tested:
Round 1: MartinLogan Motion 4, JBL
Studio 530, Xavian Bonbonus, Silverline Minuet, Grover Notting CR-11
Round 2: the reverse order
Tracks included:
Dave’s Story – “Like
a Rock”
Damian Rice –
featring acoustic guitar, violin, female voice
Tommy Emmanual –
“Amanda’s Room” – electric guitar, sax
Hilary Halin –
classical violin
My overall impressions ( sitting front centre, and noting that
with small speakers they may have struggled a bit depending where you were
sitting – although in this respect they were often surprisingly good).
Martin Logans – consistently good – nice clean treble, surprising amount
of clean fast bass
JBL’s – sounded boxy, and smewhat disjointed, as if the horn top
was not well integrated with the woofer (via the crossover)
Xavian – somewhat restrained treble – even somewhat veiled
Silverline – sounded like a much bigger speaker, surprising bass,
treble perhaps a bit hard and sibilant, but a lot of speaker for the size and
money
Grover Notting – lacked body, almost as if there was a “hole” in the
mid-range – however, these are not designed to be used on stands, but on the
bridge of a mixing console in a studio. As the “Cross Reference” name implies,
it is intended to allow mixing engineers to get an idea of how it sounds on
“typical” home equipment.
Having said all that,
expecting such small speakers to work at all satisfactorily in such a large
room, which requires about ten times the power we would use at home, is a tough
ask – to that end, none could be said to have failed.
Conclusion:
And the winner is (the envelope, please)….
Results – total score:
Round 1: ML 284, JBL 249, Xavian 234,
Silverline 287, GN 239
Round 2: ML 262, JBL 242, Xavian 239,
Silverline 272, GN 208
Totals---: ML 546, JBL 491, Xavian 473,
Silverline 559, GN 447
Rankings:
1. Silverline
2. MartinLogan
3. JBL
4. Xavian
5. Grover Notting
A big Thank You to
Richard Wong, George Stanscheff, Edgar Kramer, Elson Silva and all who helped
organise this meeting.
Morris Swift
