Auratone 5C good Speakers for Pianoteq?

Yeah 80Hz cutoff is likely to sound too midsy and small.

They're great speakers!, but for studio monitoring (reference) - maybe not convincingly reproducing a big piano sound. But you may be happy with them - they're likely to be long lived.

But - until you hear them, you won't know for sure if you will be happy with them, and you might be - but 80Hz might be a compromise too much for me.

@aWc - you seemed very happy with those 5inch ones you mentioned elsewhere - Art RM5 - gotta say, I'm pretty impressed with 45Hz to 22kHz at that size - I forgot that.. not that I need any right now but, if I was looking for a small speaker, your advice in the past makes good sense. I could almost sense you wanted to post the link - I think it's more suited to 'piano in the room' than the Auratones.

I'll always enjoy my Yamaha HS8 near-field monitors - they satisfy piano playing and monitoring/mixing for me. If looking for speakers which are used in studios, these are very common - there are others but they suit me (flat response - which may not matter in general for playing piano).

Best thing is trying some out where/when you can and take some time. Try getting a sense of what they each bring to a reference song (take a piece of music to play on them). Some speakers like studio monitors might sound weirdly dry - when others may sound luscious.

Add a subwoofer... though 80 Hz is still a bit high, even for a small sub like an 8", as they tend to get a bit muddy above 50 Hz.

Thank you all for your quick replies!

As I was wandering what spectrum a piano actually produces, I decided to make my own measurement.
I created a midi file containing all 88 notes played at identical velocity of 80.
I loaded it into pianotec and exported as a wav file at 41kHz/16Bit.
The resulting wav was loaded into Audacity and a 4k FFT was performed. You can see the result in the attached snapshot.
As you can see, there is a notable decrease of 20db/Octave below 80 Hz, so the speakers would probably not do much harm.

I then did another measurement:
I created a midi file containing A0 played a few times at 128 velocity.
Again this was exported as wav by Pianoteq and a 4K FFT produced. The result attached as well.
In this case, decrease starts only at 50Hz, so I would lose some bass. Don't know if this will actually hurt me..

Next, I will play both tests over my existing Bose Soundlink Mini, record the output and do the same analysis. Problem is, that the frequency response of these speakers will probably depend heavily on the volume level, especially in the bass region. We will see..

All notes test: https://www.rebehn.net/Pianoteq/test.jpg

A0 test: https://www.rebehn.net/Pianoteq/A0.jpg

-Heinrich

I think you might find some elements of these pages interesting:

http://rtaylor.sites.tru.ca/2017/01/10/...put-level/

http://rtaylor.sites.tru.ca/2017/01/05/...-response/

http://rtaylor.sites.tru.ca/2017/09/18/...erference/

Of course the desire to reproduce full dynamics of a full size concert piano reasonably accurately at full realistic levels is quite something else to what most of us require from any piano VST, or could even accommodate. Mostly we want a convincing simulcrum at comfortable domestic levels from a sound that doesn't overwhelm our (typically more modest) domestic living spaces.

Most interesting reading, surely produced with a lot of effort and knowledge!
I must confess that I don't quite have the expertise to fully understand your article.
Yet I would conclude that I would not lose much of the piano sound using speakers starting at 80 Hz.

-Heinrich

This is really bad news. Actually, more detailed information about the roll off would have been my next question, so thank you very much for the link to the audiofanzine article.

Seems that the auratones are not quite what I need.

Pros:

- small. Would neatly fit on my VPC-1
- passive: can freely select amp, no hassle with noisy built-in amps
- cute, as opposed to JBL Control 1, for example
- probably good, detailed sound

Cons:

- Weak bass, might need to add subwoofer
- Too expensive for something that does not exactly fit my needs

Maybe I will stick with my Boses and repair the faulty one.

Or are there any other suggestions which would meet my Pros-List?

-Heinrich

I admit, they are not on par with my 901/IV but I wonder if you have ever heard the Soundlink Mini. I recorded the 88 notes sequence already shown in post #7, upper picture with the Boses and got this picture:

https://www.rebehn.net/Pianoteq/test-soundlink.jpg

At 80 Hz, this does look better than the picture shown in the audiofanzine post.
Would the auratones really "wipe the floor" compared to the Boses?

OTOH one must keep in mind that the Soundlinks probably are heavily dsp'ed, so at higher volume levels, the picture could look completely different. The auratones would surely produce a more honest picture, independent of volume.

While we're at it, I have a question about the frequency response shown in the picture above. I have close to zero knowledge about signal processing and FFTs. I simply loaded the wav file into Audacity and selected "Analyse->Plot Spectrum". Why does the frequency response begin to rise below 50 Hz? If I do longer FFTs, I can even see 5Hz at -39dB. Of course this is an artefact. Do I have a DC offset? Or is it a windowing effect?

As for the Genelec speakers: I'm afraid I don't like their look

Why is this?

Many thanks for your help!

-Heinrich

Hi all,

To put an end to this, I tossed a coin yesterday and ordered the Auratone 5C. They will hopefully arrive this week. I will report about my listening experience.

The Bose speakers will be connected to my cheap TV set, where they will certainly do a nice job replacing the inferior built in speakers.

Again, thanks for all the info!

-Heinrich

Hi All,

I promised to share my listening experience with the Auratone speakers.
Well, it is a bit embarrassing, but the truth is: I sent them back the next day.

I was expecting the need to readjust my hearing habits, but actually it was a shock. The bass fundament was missing completely. This could have been remedied by fiddling with the equaliser, but also there was some strong, unpleasant colouring especially in the range C2 - C3, which I was unwilling to tolerate.

So I will stick with my Bose speakers, which I have enjoyed listening to since I started learning piano 1.5 years ago. Only problem was that one of the speakers failed at very high volumes and also, the range C4 - G5 sounds a bit limp. I approached this by selecting appropriate instrument settings like "Grotrian Player Wide", "Steinway D 3 Mics" or "ANT. Petrof Prelude". I thought I could improve this situation with new speakers.

The Bose speakers may not be honest, or even lie to me, yet I enjoy listening to them, and that's the only thing that counts. Also, they look good. I don't want huge, ugly monitors on stands in front of me.

Anyway, thanks to all who shared there knowledge and advice with me.

-Heinrich

Do you have a microphone with flat low-bass response, and a room that doesn't have any resonances in that region ?

Those measurements are not easy.

.   Charles