Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

In the time domain, the Beethoven's step response (fig.9) is not coherent. The tweeter and midrange units appear to be connected with inverted acoustic polarity, the woofer with positive polarity. Fig.10 shows the cumulative spectral decay plot calculated from the Beethoven's impulse response. It is superbly clean throughout the treble, but there is some hash present in the low treble, which I suspect is due to early reflections from the speaker's structure. However, as SD had nothing but praise for the Beethoven's sound, I assume this is benign.

Fig.9 Audio Artistry Beethoven, step response on tweeter axis at 50" (5ms time window, 30kHz bandwidth).

Fig.10 Audio Artistry Beethoven, cumulative spectral-decay plot at 50" (0.15ms risetime).

Measuring large dipole speakers is always problematic, because the underlying assumptions about the measurement techniques and their relationship with the device under test are no longer completely valid. Given that caveat, the Beethoven's measured performance is excellent.—John Atkinson