wwenze
Great Supremacy Member
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Rushing this out before 9.9 for the people who are deciding. Thus the review will be coming in parts.
The manufacturer provided their measurement on the box. Variation of 5dB is pretty decent, although the shape is not so decent, particularly the 10kHz peak. This kind of shape is easy to remove with EQ tho, and depending on how the off-axis looks like, we may not even need to remove it.
Let's see how close we get to this. Note that my own measurements are unlikely to be comparable to a professional's, so any difference needs to be taken with salt. Best case is we get close enough.
My room is too live to do gated measurements, so I will use "Table edge" because that is what I found to be the closest during prior experiments. I can still do gated above 1kHz but the non-gated is close enough for the treble frequencies. Bass reflection is simply impossible to avoid so anything below 500Hz please use your own heuristics to remove the peaks and dips.
1/6 octave smoothing seems close enough to the above graph. Can really see my room murdering the FR.
The treble peaks I get are actually not as bad as the manufacturer data. Going 1/24 smoothing does not make the 10kHz peak any much worse.
Bass is also largely matching. Subjectively you get usable bass down to ~42Hz and then it fades into the darkness. Note that positioning can change the result by a few Hz.
0 degrees (on-axis) vs 45 degrees
Handles off-axis surprisingly well. Actually the off-axis might be even better.
Off-axis
Going off-axis you lose volume in the HF, but that's the same with most speakers anyway. In fact S350DB handles being off-axis very well. Relative speaking vs the on-axis. That treble rolloff in either case tho...
Close mic of tweeter woofer port. Note that close mic can cause woofer bass to appear more than it really is.
Pretty high crossover frequency. Treble variation is indeed within 5dB.
The woofer starts to roll off at around 200Hz. But we have a port to do magic. The final result with sub is actually pretty flat.
That zig-zag at 1.2kHz is the cause of the treble peak, which got hidden by smoothing.
Distortion
Doesn't look like any major driver or crossover issue. Note that I test at much lower SPL than most people.
Max vs normal vs min tone adjustments
Unfortunately, there is no subwoofer volume adjustment. The bass knob is a tone adjustment. There is no way to shift just the subwoofer volume up or down.
The treble control can be useful to tame the treble peak if you're on axis. If you're off-axis the off-axis-ness already takes care of it, but you can add it back with the treble control.
Bass seems unbalanced? The middle setting seems to be above the middle point of the adjustable range. Looks okay at the satellites frequencies tho. Maybe the woofer has compression? Seems to happen awfully early for an 8-inch sub tho.
In fact the 40Hz rated bass is awfully high for an 8-inch sub. Subjectively my bass-boosted Usher S-520 is slightly better than this, and z623 is slightly better than the S-520, so... erm... However I also run the z623 bass at near full if not full setting, versus S350DB which already sounds balanced at middle or slightly lower setting, so the S350DB has way more headroom that you can use to squeeze out another 10Hz via EQ if you want.
Front of subwoofer, mic on floor (to avoid floor bounce)
The manufacturer provided their measurement on the box. Variation of 5dB is pretty decent, although the shape is not so decent, particularly the 10kHz peak. This kind of shape is easy to remove with EQ tho, and depending on how the off-axis looks like, we may not even need to remove it.
Let's see how close we get to this. Note that my own measurements are unlikely to be comparable to a professional's, so any difference needs to be taken with salt. Best case is we get close enough.
My room is too live to do gated measurements, so I will use "Table edge" because that is what I found to be the closest during prior experiments. I can still do gated above 1kHz but the non-gated is close enough for the treble frequencies. Bass reflection is simply impossible to avoid so anything below 500Hz please use your own heuristics to remove the peaks and dips.
1/6 octave smoothing seems close enough to the above graph. Can really see my room murdering the FR.
The treble peaks I get are actually not as bad as the manufacturer data. Going 1/24 smoothing does not make the 10kHz peak any much worse.
Bass is also largely matching. Subjectively you get usable bass down to ~42Hz and then it fades into the darkness. Note that positioning can change the result by a few Hz.
0 degrees (on-axis) vs 45 degrees
Handles off-axis surprisingly well. Actually the off-axis might be even better.
Off-axis
Close mic of tweeter woofer port. Note that close mic can cause woofer bass to appear more than it really is.
Pretty high crossover frequency. Treble variation is indeed within 5dB.
The woofer starts to roll off at around 200Hz. But we have a port to do magic. The final result with sub is actually pretty flat.
That zig-zag at 1.2kHz is the cause of the treble peak, which got hidden by smoothing.
Distortion
Max vs normal vs min tone adjustments
Unfortunately, there is no subwoofer volume adjustment. The bass knob is a tone adjustment. There is no way to shift just the subwoofer volume up or down.
The treble control can be useful to tame the treble peak if you're on axis. If you're off-axis the off-axis-ness already takes care of it, but you can add it back with the treble control.
Bass seems unbalanced? The middle setting seems to be above the middle point of the adjustable range. Looks okay at the satellites frequencies tho. Maybe the woofer has compression? Seems to happen awfully early for an 8-inch sub tho.
In fact the 40Hz rated bass is awfully high for an 8-inch sub. Subjectively my bass-boosted Usher S-520 is slightly better than this, and z623 is slightly better than the S-520, so... erm... However I also run the z623 bass at near full if not full setting, versus S350DB which already sounds balanced at middle or slightly lower setting, so the S350DB has way more headroom that you can use to squeeze out another 10Hz via EQ if you want.
Front of subwoofer, mic on floor (to avoid floor bounce)
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