Hi everyone,
I just bought an used Expert 120 to use in my bedroom set up.
I was also going to get a pair of used Audiovector Sr1 Avantgarde to match the 120.
However, I just found out that Sr1 Av. that I was going to buy was not SAM compatible.
I can get these speakers for almost 1/3 of its $5200 retail. And they are like new.
For the similar money, I could get a new pair of Audiovector’s entry Qr1, which is SAM compatible.
I am wondering if SAM profile would make so much difference to the Qr1 to sound any better than 3x expensive Sr1 Av. Any comments on this matter would be appreciated.
SAM makes a difference for the better but it won’t make a speaker sound like a three times as expensive one. I would go for the second hand ones. If you’re near Paris you might be able to get them SAMed anyway. Just email Devialet.
BTW, welcome to the forum and congrats on the 120. It’s a great buy.
That’s a tricky question, and without listening to both, it is hard to tell.
For sure, SAM, although SAM corrects the phase of the speakers, it affects the entire spectrum, but let’s be clear, this is not night and day for the frequencies above 150Hz.
Where SAM is really shining is in the bass compartment. In your example, the SR1 can go down to 40Hz.
The QR1 can only go down to 45Hz, but with SAM it can reach 26Hz, so better than the SR1.
So if the 3x price of the SR1 justification is the bass compartment, I would give a serious consideration to the QR1+SAM.
But if the justification of the difference resides in the medium and high ranges, then I would tend to think that SAM will not be able to compensate for the difference.
Once again, and like many times in audio, the only way to be certain is to try and listen by yourself.
Jean-Marie
The SR1 avantgarde arrete has a SAM profile. Maybe check with Audiovector if the SR1 you want to buy has the same cabinet/bass driver/alignment. If not I agree with @
Jean-Marie that the QR1 may be a good match. The QR1 is a more recent model and might be as good as the older SR1... maybe even better in some respects. The tweeter is a ribbon/air motion unit which often is better than a dome tweeter.
You don’t have to bring one speaker to Paris, you can also send it over to get it SAM’ed. Probably not cheap but considering the price of the speakers could still be an option
(18-Oct-2020, 08:34)Jean-Marie Wrote: [ -> ]The QR1 can only go down to 45Hz, but with SAM it can reach 26Hz, so better than the SR1.
So if the 3x price of the SR1 justification is the bass compartment, I would give a serious consideration to the QR1+SAM.
This is true only for limited SPL.
Gain which SAM adds is not for free. The cost for every additional 3 dB is doubling the power which is used - and the power on Devialet 120 is pretty limited.
(18-Oct-2020, 17:15)Delija Wrote: [ -> ] (18-Oct-2020, 08:34)Jean-Marie Wrote: [ -> ]The QR1 can only go down to 45Hz, but with SAM it can reach 26Hz, so better than the SR1.
So if the 3x price of the SR1 justification is the bass compartment, I would give a serious consideration to the QR1+SAM.
This is true only for limited SPL.
Gain which SAM adds is not for free. The cost for every additional 3 dB is doubling the power which is used - and the power on Devialet 120 is pretty limited.
That’s true, but the SR1 is not a 3 way floor stander while the QR1 is a bookshelf. Both are bookshelves with approximately the same volume and only 0.5 inches difference between the woofers.
This is typically a situation where SAM will make a difference even with a D120.
I used to run my speakers with a D120 before upgrading to the D220, and I was rarely operating beyond -6dB which was giving me that headroom for SAM.
Jean-Marie
EDIT: Ahh.. @
Jean-Marie beat me to it with actual experience!
Yes, with a sensitivity of 86 dB/W/m the QR1 is a little bit power hungry. I would not worry too much about this however, unless one wants to play very loud. The D120 delivers around 170W per channel into 4 Ohm
I'm going to take a slightly different approach to this question. The stated aim is to use the 120 and speakers in a bedroom.
Bedrooms tend to be fairly dead rooms with a fair bit of absorption due to beds (blankets, covers, foam mattresses or futons, pillows, curtains on windows, etc) so quite possibly a bit more upper bass absorption than in other rooms. Against that, you're usually listening while lying on the bed and that means your head is usually close to a wall so you're ears are in a high pressure zone which means you're already getting some "natural" bass boost from the room itself and added bass boost from SAM might prove to be a bit too much of a good thing.
Add to that the fact that one of the reasons for music in a bedroom is to help you go to sleep and pounding bass isn't what you want. I know that when I have music playing in my bedroom (not from a Devialet system), the music I listen to tends to be quieter and less "energetic" than the music I listen to on my main system and tends not to have as much bass as the music I listen to on my main system.
SAM only affects the bass frequencies below 150 Hz. Most of what makes one speaker better than another happens above 150 Hz so SAM will tend not to be a factor which can make one speaker better than another in most cases, and bedroom use is likely to be an area where what SAM does is less likely to be what you're chasing in order to get better sound.
Regardless of where you're going to place the system and what kind of music you listen to, my advice would always be to choose the speaker which works best when SAM isn't engaged. The better speaker without SAM is still likely to be the better speaker with SAM. SAM is nice, and it can be a great "extra" when there's a profile for the speaker but the speaker remains the main course, not SAM.
It's also worth reading Jim Austin's review of the 140 in Stereophile for his comments on SAM. He found that using SAM with too high a setting in his room exacerbated modal problems in the room and he had to turn the SAM setting down to avoid those problems. Just because SAM is capable of extending bass response for a given speaker from 45 Hz without SAM to 26 Hz with SAM does not mean that you will be able to get that extension to 26 Hz with that speaker in your room. If you run into modal problems and need to use a low SAM setting as Jim Austin did, you're not going to get the full amount of extension claimed by Devialet. Just how much extension SAM will bring to a speaker in your own setup is going to depend on your own setup and it might well turn out to be less than you expect.SAM does not come with a guaranteed response, just an indication of what may be achievable in the right room under the right conditions.