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Hello,I have been following the endless thread on Madisound Board and on AA regarding the controvertial response plots of VMPS RM1 neo speakers. This was carried out by Dennis Murphy and I was present during measuments.
The spks were in their original condition and tuned to the best I could. The tuning was done as explained on VMPS website.
Well it might not be the perfect system setup but it was very close to ideal. The other spks like Tannoy, JMLab mezzo and numerous monitor spks were measure with great accuracy and the plots of Mezzo were very similar to what Stereophile had measure for JMLab review. Hence based on that I believe the measument process was accurate.
It is very interesting to read Mr Brian Chenny being on the defensive and blaming the measument process and inaccuracy of the mic and system. If he is so confidant that the spks measure very good, then I would request him to please post the measurment( FR, impedance and offaxis response) of RM1, RM2 and RM40 on his website and put this controversy to rest.
Also on the Harmonic Discord forum, members have requested him to post the measurment of VMPS spks but it has never happened.
Follow Ups:
If you're having bass problems why not swap for a pair of 626R's? I'll be happy to install the premium parts you like no extra charge. Why suffer? I'll also trim them to exact value on our equipment, which in my experience gives the best results. Peter Moncrieff has the same cap meter I do and our measurements disagree by 3% consistently.
LCR meter calibrated.
If I was in a similar position, I'd take it! This is a great example of a manufacturer standing by his products! How many speaker companies would make this offer? Not many IME.
Question: If you use the same cap meter as another fellow measuring the same caps but vary by 3%, how can you achieve a tolerance of 0.0005% from the actual value?
I should have continued the post one more sentence, repeating info from an earlier post:I sent Peter caps trimmed to exact value on my meter, he matches the samples on his equipment when making up the new values.
Hi Brian,
Sorry to be so thick, but the 3% variance between meters -- is that systematic, or random error? Just curious.thanks,
Call the B&K Precision people and find out. Beats the hell out of me.
I've never heard any vmps product, nor have I read the thread at madisound regarding Murphy's measurements, but this individual posting here and elsewhere along the same lines does not seem remotely credible to me. His comments are internally contradictory on their face.These are his quotes from harmonicdiscord. If I made a cut and paste error with text or dates, just let me know. Posters' can edit at harmonicdiscord, but I'm not sure if there are time limits...if not, then he could theoretically go back and change things.
mar 1, 2002
"My initial immpression was WOW!!, very good detail, good extention and powerful bass. No PR tuning had been done, I will wait for at least 1 week of breakin before doing the tuning."jun 4, 2002
"I have had the RM1s (with Soundcoat) for 3 months and have extensively preformed various mods on it to bring it to a new level of transperency, dynamics and musicality...." [snip, description of his mods, incl. swapping in new woofers] "I did not like sound of the new [carbon fiber] woofers. I had them burned in for 30 hr using a function generated at low freq. There is substantial less output and the impact was missing. I felt that something was missing at the lowend. I heard different types of music for 3-4 days but was not very impressed. I changed over to the original woofers and remove the coil, retuned the PR and voila!!!! everything was back to normal and enjoying the chest hitting low end. This is just my observation.http://www.harmonicdiscord.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5798&start=0
jun 13, 2002
"I would like to add my observation to this discussion since I am also passively biamping my RM1 for the past 3 months. I initially had the new Plinius 8200 mkII integrated amp which is rated at 175W/ch and listened to the Rm1s for about 1 month or so. The sound was very good with good dynamics and extension at both the ends. Somehow the sound was on the dryer side and would not draw me into the music. I decided to give biamping a try with Plinius on the bass and tube amp on the mid/highs. I built my own tube amp (DIY kit Consonance ELLA) which is 40W tube amp PP configuration. It also has gain controls and very high sensitivity."After numerous days of tweaking, PR tuning and adjusting the gain I have my system sounding to my satisfaction. Perfect blend between the bass and mid/highs. Going from only the Plinius to the biamp combo made a huge difference on the overall presentation of the sound. Better dynamics, smooth rich seductive midrange and delicate highs. I am very impressed and by careful selection of components and fine tuning you can get spectacular results. Hence passive biamping does have advantages, provided it is done correctly."
jul 19, 2002
"I am getting fustrated tuning the PR on my RM1s. I have had the Rm1 for the past 4 months and have never been able to tune them properly. There are too many variables and getting the optimum setting is difficult. I have followed the directions exactly as Mr Brian has suggested. My room is 22 x 14 x 8 and even after tuning them I find the bass too overpoweringv and boomy. I have tuned the PR several times, adjusted the midrange control, repositioned the spks, put spikes under them, raised them 2" using solid maple board but no luck. I am running out of options how to tame the boominess and get good tunefull bass response. Every time I end up removing a pea size of putty but it is not right."http://www.harmonicdiscord.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6879&start=0
And it goes on and on. If it's a troll, it's a really sophisticated one, but I think there's probably a human factor involved here. (Even if the speakers all stink or his pair is damaged, they should presumably stink consistently.) I also wonder how many of nakolawala's posts and mods Dennis Murphy is aware of.
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I have not listen to many speakers in the past and after reading a lot of post on AA I purchased the VMPS. Initially I thought they were very fine and since they were not broken in I gave it time to settle in. Also I always thought the PR is not tuned properly hence they sound boomy and there is potential for a great spks.
But after months of owning them I am still not able to tune them properly. No matter what I do the spks still sound bass heavy. My comments are not directed toward anybody and these are only my impressions.
Over the past month or so , I got a chance to listen to a couple of spks both floorstanding and monitor spks and I was amazed how good they sounded compared to the RM1s in bass definition and overall sound. This led me to measure the spks and find out if they really had any problems with the design. The other spks measured good and it is reflective of what you hear in real life.
If the measurment dont mean any thing in spk design then why would spks manufactures spend thousand of $$$$ on investing such gear.
nak,i've been following your trials & tribulations; i even had a coupla sugestions on the hd forum (as did lotsa other folks). imo, ya still haven't addressed the issue of your rm1's poor performance, & that's your *room*. *any* single-box loudspeaker capable of real bass response, such as that of the rm1's, will have problems in your room. if other speakers are working beter in your room - great, but they don't go as low.
as far as measurements go, while measurements may be nice, *no* measurements are better than bad measurements, imo, & measuring these speakers at 1-1.5m is worse than no measurements. i certainly wouldn't pay anyone for those measurements.
tho i've made it clear on hd that the rm1's wouldn't be my 1st choice at that price-point, cuz i'd wanna have the midrange & treble units higher off the ground, i don't believe that's what's at issue here. if ya want real bass, fix yer room. if ya don't wanna fix yer room, take brian up on his offer to swap yer bastardized rm1's for a pair of 626r's.
"Also I always thought the PR is not tuned properly hence they sound boomy and there is potential for a great spks."You did not always think the PR was poorly tuned and that they sounded boomy, based on your own words. Period. I don't see how any possible break-in issues apply here - you loved 'em for months. Everyone can check your posts.
So just sell the vmps and get something you like. They should have a fairly good resale value since I've never seen a used vmps on audiogon.
Except you MODDED them extensively and apparently you don't know what you're doing, let alone saying, so I assume anyone who knows of your posts would be reluctant to buy them....
I mean, what are you doing performing extensive mods on speakers when, again, according to your own posts, you did not understand the basics of bi-amping or you had not listened to many speakers?
I conclude you are confused and/or disingenuous to a quite strange degree, or that you are the most brilliant pro-vmps shill in audio history.
"No judgement may be considered final until its reversibility has been taken into account."
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I'm sure Brian would be very helpful with resolving any issues with them.
measured bass response in particular is very room-dependent. You may have serious standing wave problems in your room, which would not be excited by smaller speakers with less bass response. Measurements of other speakers taken in other rooms are not comparable. These might be the wrong speakers for your room. I like using stand mounted speakers like the 626R, and use my subwoofer to dial in the bass that works in my room. Try raising the speakers 10 or 12 inches. This may change your floor reflections enough to alleviate the problem.
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One thing to try is using a parametric EQ on the bass woofer only. Since you are already bi-amping, this should be very easy to do (and cheap - a Behringer Feedback Destroyer goes for about $135, and does an excellent job with taming bass humps).In my room (which is a difficult room, to be sure), I have had to play around a lot with position and PR tuning, but I still have room modes that no ammount of positioning or tuning will eliminate. Simply the nature of bass production in enclosed areas. If you really want to deal with room modes, you either have to invest in room treatment/bass traps, or get the BFD. There is no other option.
In my room, I get a fairly flat bass response down to about 25 hz, then a dip to about 22 hz, then a pretty steep roll off below that. That is measured w/test tones spaced 5hz apart, using a RS SPL meter at my listening position, and using correction values for the known RS SPL roll off at the frequency extremes.But, there are some spikes and nulls that are there, certainly, and those are known room modes. I'm a little lucky that these response anomolies are very narrow band, so they tend not to affect a large range of bass material.
Perhaps the measurements would look better if they were taken quasi-anechoically - or ground-planed. Just take the speaker/amp/tone generater/mic outside, 60 feet from any reflective surface, and set up the measurements. For bass the measurement should be at 2 meters to take in to account the boundary re-inforcement from the ground. That way you don't have to worry about the room influencing the measurements. Of course, if you have access to an anaechoic chamber, use that instead :-)
I am surprised about the recent outcry about VMPS speaker measurements (or lack thereof). Mr. Cheney has stated, if not on this board, than at least on HD, that 1 - he doesn't believe speaker measurements tell enough of the story of how a speaker actually sounds to be very useful, and 2 - that people who design purely for measurements often end up producing a worse sounding speaker than if they weren't so tied to the graphs and plots.That's his philosophy. If you don't agree, don't buy his speakers. But you might actually listen for yourself, before making a hasty decision.
Mr. Cheney, please correct me if am wrong with any of the above statements.
Also, if a person has a problem with some VMPS speakers he bought, shouldn't that be resolved through e-mails or phone calls, not on a forum such as this?
and my 3 meter measurements, averaged over a 36 inch listening window, looked pretty similar in shape and magnitude to the on-axis response in these measurements from aout 300 hz. and up (except for the dip at 12K-I found no sign of that). These were third-octave, taken by RS meter, and corrected. I find these measurements to be quite adequately accurate. My Revel M20s are produced with a +-0.75 db tolerance, and while they might be "smoother", the VMPS are clearly more detailed and accurate. I don't know how the "in room" response curves taken by Dennis Murphy were done, but neither those curves nor the owner's description of the sound on the site bear any resemblance to how mine measure or sound. I suspect bass mistuning is an issue here, or possibly out of spec units.
The 626R is a completely different design and should not be compared with RM1. We are talking about a floorstander v/s minimonitor totally different design but using the same drivers.
It could be mistuned but at any setting the response was similar.
What is the point of owning a spks if it cannot be tuned OR can never achieve optimum setting in his/her room.
and they have expressed that there is great similarity of sound. Since VMPS has a 30 day return policy, why did you keep them if they are so bad?
I assume you have tried different room placements. Have you tried lifting them off the ground 10 or 12 inches?
Hi,
personally, I would be more interested in your opinion as to how they sounded.
nakolawala, could you please explain the modifications you made to these speakers prior to the measurements? As I recall from a Harmonic Discord thread, at one point you replaced some, if not all of the caps. I think there may have been other mods as well. If this is true, isn't it POSSIBLE that when they were returned to their original condition, that it wasn't done properly?Let's try to be fair and let everyone know what variables are involved with the pair of speakers tested.
DFaulds,
It looks like we have someone trying to take meaningful measurements, with a speaker that in the testers own words he extensively modded. Come on, give me a break. I have read reports of perfectly flat measuring speakers sounding awful. Personally I dont really care very much at all how a particular speaker measures. Hook it to some good front end equipment, sit down and listen. To me, ears make a better ruler......
Only the midrange and tweeter cap was replaced and before measurement I replaced it with the original ones. I have built speakers/amps/preamps in the past and to the best of my knowledge it was back to original. I checked it to make sure everything was back to original.
Also I bypassed the toggle switch with jumpers . This should not make any difference. Besides that everything was stock and speakers sounded fine before and after the mods.
If this is of concern , then let VMPS post the plots of an RM1 from factory (tuned by Mr Brian himself) and compare it with my measurments.
Below are a couple measurements by Dennis Murphy, for what they are worth, and there was a discussion recently at Madisound.com speaker forum. Hit the "measurements" link at the top of the page.Hard to draw many conclusions but thought you might find it worth a look..
I've wanted to see measurements as well. It's what has stopped me from seriously considering the brand. I know measurements are not everything but still I'd like to see them.
the most important thing is hearing something. if i can't hear something, but still wanna buy, measurements may be important, but opinions of others is *more* important, imo... and, most folk find the vmps speakers a freaking bargain, and excellent sonically, even w/o consideration of price.
People tend to want to jump on the bandwagon. Sometimes that product is as reported sometimes not. I want to see measurements regardless.
hi karl,jump on the bandwagon? it's funny - brian cheney has been busy doin' his thing for about a quarter-century; now everyon'e yumpin' on the bandwagon! i was interested in his rm40's way before the 2002 ces show - i guess it's cuz owning his subs for ~7 years, i've known what he's up to... if it weren't for the hit i took in the stock market, i prolly wooda gotten a pair prior to the ces show... now, who knows what/when? mebbe a pair of the 626r's...
anyway, vmps has subwoofer info, including specs, here:
http://vmpsaudio.com/sub1.htm
regards,
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