NEUMI BS5 Passive Bookshelf Speakers, 5-Inch Woofer, 1-Inch Tweeter, Dark Wood, 1 Pair

Product Information

The area between 300Hz to 700Hz (just before the 800Hz dip) is elevated slightly. This area also lines up with the increased THD levels I discussed earlier. This could be coincidence. But I believe they are related. Maybe the port is having more of an effect in this region than it needs to? The BS5 are designed to be listened to pointed straight forwards. If you like to have a slightly brighter response, you can point the speakers more towards the center position. Below is the on-axis response comparison of the BS5P and the previous passive BS5 I tested in June 2020. You can see the updated BS5P has a definite “V-curve” response to it, putting more emphasis on the midbass and high frequencies. Let’s look again at the measured in-room response I provided above. Notice how well it matches the predicted in-room response.

Below is a breakout of the typical room’s Early Reflections contributors (floor bounce, ceiling, rear wall, front wall and side wall reflections). From this you can determine how much absorption you need and where to place it to help remedy strong dips from the reflection(s). Notice the strong dips again at 800Hz and 1600Hz. Listening Window is an average of the 0° to ±30° horizontal and 0° to ±10° vertical response curves and is used to understand what listeners typically hear in a home at the sweet spot, or Main Listening Position (MLP). The reason for this extended window of sound is simply because your room makeup might differ from another’s. This curve is an attempt to quantify a speaker’s performance over a smaller window that is often the norm for listening angle differences in various homes. It is important for this curve to very closely mimic the on-axis response. Deviations of the Listening Window curve relative to the on-axis response curve indicates a compromise in the speaker; often caused by directivity changes (as a speaker transitions from one drive-unit to another a la midwoofer to tweeter, or as a tweeter’s response becomes highly directional).Inch Silk Dome Tweeter with Waveguide: The outcome of countless hours of design refinement, the BS5’s tweeter produces a smooth, extended, and predictable treble response with the help of its integrated waveguide. The result is music full of accurate detail and precise imaging.

Note: Neumi sent me this speaker to test. I was not paid for this review nor has Neumi seen this review before publication. And below is the Predicted In-Room response compared to a general Target curve equaling -1dB/octave.Max SPL for 20Hz to 20kHz is approximately 82dB @ 1 meter. The compression threshold was exceeded above this SPL. However, based on a poll I conducted, most people’s in-room listening distance is between 3 to 4 meters from their speakers at a volume of about 85dB to 90dB. Few people realize just how loud 90dB is. I’ve often found people tend to overestimate their listening levels by a fair bit. But, for the sake of determining how these speakers perform at the higher end of music listening, let’s assume the following: 1) you are in your room and about 4 meters (~ 13 feet) from the speakers and 2) you listen to these speakers at about 90dB at the listening position. The pair of speakers causes a 3dB increase, the room typically adds 6dB, but the change in distance from 1 meter to 4 meters results in a 12dB drop. This equals a total of +3dB from single speaker anechoic 1 meter response to in-room speaker pair at 4 meters. Therefore, in this scenario, you will need to look at the 93dB (7.62vRMS) measurements for THD and Compression.

I made a few notes about resonance in lower vocals and questioned if I could “hear cabinet ringing”. I noticed this primarily in “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and “Tell Yer Mama”. Also, per Neumi’s direction, the grille was off for these measurements. I do have comparison data of the grille on vs off in my Miscellaneous section below. Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to determine how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This so called spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws: You are paying so little for a speaker that attempts to follow the path of much more expensive monitors with proper waveguide and balanced inputs. It takes over them with inclusion of volume control, RCA inputs, etc. Bass response is flat and impressive for such a small/light speaker. I wish it did not have the dip in lower treble though. Not sure why that is there if they did measure the speaker.

$159.99

I have updated my review with this new set of data but have also retroactively updated the text around #1 above. Here is a direct copy/paste of those two data sets. I am impressed by the amount of bass this little speaker is producing. It is flat down to 70 Hz! The broad deviations are very audible but rather easy to correct with EQ as you see later. What you see below is first the Total Harmonic Distortion at varying output levels. At 2.83vRMS the mean SPL is about 84dB at 1 meter (over 300-3kHz). Distortion at this output is under mostly under 1% which isn’t good for such a relatively low volume level. As you’d expect, the distortion increases as volume increases.