I got my B652's today. The Fed Ex dude had a smile on his face, so I knew these puppies didn't weigh as much as my Philharmonics. So far I've been able to listen to them, measure the system response, and examine the innards. How do they sound? On simple material that doesn't have a lot of strong output in the 4 kHz region, quite good. There obviously is no baffle step compensation, so the midrange is too forward, but it doesn't have a nasal or awwwwk coloration, which is what I was fearing. When the going gets tougher--more complex material with triangles, flutes, violins--it gets really painful. There is an obvious lower treble resonance that has all the hallmarks of woofer breakup. The highs are there, sort of--there's output at the top, but not a lot of impact lower down. I can see why some people would think they deliver the goods for $40/pr, but they certainly aren't serious reproducers of anything bordering on demanding. The bass isn't boomy--there just isn't very much of it. I measured both samples on-axis, off-axis horizontally and vertically, and with and without the grills. It really didn't make much difference. The response up to 4 kHz is quite smooth, although with a rising profile due to the lack of baffle step compensation. But then there is a sharp resonant peak due to woofer breakup, and a severe dip due either to destructive interference between the woofer and tweeter, or just a gap in their response. I pretty much knew what I would find when I took the woofer out. There is no low pass filter on the woofer, so it just runs free, and is free to break up. There is a single NPE cap on the tweeter--about the smallest and cheapest I've ever seen. It was so small I couldn't read the value. You were expecting a real crossover for $40 list, $30 on sale? Not likely. The cabinet is neatly finished, but very light duty and with no bracing (duh). I've attached a representative on-axis plot. It has the same profile as the Stereophile plot, but the dip between the woofer and tweeter is much deeper, and the tweeter ouput is lower. Both of my samples measured identically, and although it's always possible that my mic is off my one dB up or down, I'm confident that my measurement is basically what you get. I can't explain why Stereophile John got a smoother response. (If my mic were off far enough to explain that, you all would have cast me off to a desert island long ago. Along with all the other people whose measurements calibrate with mine.) Tomorrow I'll measure the individual drivers and see whether an inexpensive crossover improvement can turn these into an acceptably accurate budge
t speaker.
