$115 Bookshelf Speaker Measurements

This company’s horn tweeter should be used in the orientation as it was designed, but if you were keen on using their speakers, how would you avoid the wave interference that the horizontally aligned MTM center channel had? One solution is to completely avoid their center channel and use a bookshelf speaker, hopefully one that’s identical to your left and right speakers. With this configuration, you get a properly oriented horn as well as a much smoother frequency response across the room. The price is $230 for a pair, so depending on if you can find any use for the other bookshelf or not, you just saved yourself from $20 to $135 and got better sound to boot. Cheaper and better? Win, win, and win.

Below is the chart showing the frequency response deviation from on-axis to 40 degrees off-axis. The chart shows the same off-axis roughness of the tweeter, but there may be other reasons why you would otherwise like the speaker’s sound. Importantly to this endeavor, the midrange doesn’t show any significant change in frequency response at different angles.

The 1/6 octave chart below shows that the bookshelf speaker performs very well off-axis by only having one midrange driver. For comparison’s sake, we will focus on the same frequency range of the midrange and score the variation. The average standard deviation of the frequency with respect to angle for the bookshelf is 1.01.

So what have we figured out thus far? First, that the horizontally oriented MTM center channel has significant variation in frequency response at different angles. Second, that by vertically orienting the MTM speaker we were able to significantly reduce the variation, but this company’s horn performance suffers and otherwise compromises this plan. And third, the smoothest response and less expensive bookshelf performs better, while possibly matching your left and right channels with complete perfection.

If we compare their standard deviations at different angles, we can get an idea of the variation or roughness in the 1/6 octave frequency response. In the chart below, the three configurations are graphed with their standard deviations. Lower scores are better. Clearly, if one were shopping for a surround sound system from this company, the better performing, better value choice would be to use three identical bookshelf speakers across the front soundstage.