Emotiva C2+ Center Channel Review

[ErinH]

I recently completed my review of Emotiva's big boy center channel. Writeup and data can be found on my site below or you can watch the video review instead. I tried to stress the issues that concern not just this center but other center channel speaker as well. If you guys don't mind, if you're interested in me reviewing the C1+, please leave a comment in the video saying as much and maybe I can see if Emotiva would be willing to loan me one of those for review as well.

Emotiva Airmotiv C2+ Center Channel Speaker Review

Emotiva Airmotiv C2+ Review

www.erinsaudiocorner.com

Thanks,
Erin

 

[ryanosaur]

Thank you, again, for a great presentation of the data, Erin.
Emo seems to have a wide range of performance... uh... characteristics across their speaker line.
Can't help but wonder what they might have been smoking thinking when they designed and built/tested this that allowed them to say, "Ship it!" Even if not pursuing a near-perfect linearity, having that issue at 1.5K where our hearing is arguably the most sensitive strikes me as a poor choice at best.

Beyond the expected off-axis performance, was that anomaly audible to you? (Forgive if covered in the vid... I won't get to watch that until later. )

Cheers!

 

[Verdinut]

IMO, that center speaker represents a very bad design with an impedance that digs below 2 ohms at around 150 Hz, with a phase angle curve near -60° at 92 Hz. I would just avoid it.

 

[shadyJ]

This one is interesting. I would have guessed it would have had better horizontal directivity control since it is a 3-way design. I guess the off-axis cancellation of the mids plus the extremely wide dispersion of the tweeter causes some craziness as you move off-axis. I suppose it goes to show that even three-way center designs aren't necessarily immune to the traditional problems of horizontal center speakers.

 

[ryanosaur]

This one is interesting. I would have guessed it would have had better horizontal directivity control since it is a 3-way design. I guess the off-axis cancellation of the mids plus the extremely wide dispersion of the tweeter causes some craziness as you move off-axis. I suppose it goes to show that even three-way center designs aren't necessarily immune to the traditional problems of horizontal center speakers.

I really can't help but think they did themselves a tremendous disservice with this design. I can't help but feel a single larger Midrange would be far better than the pair, almost to point where they designed this as a tribute to brute force fanboi-ism rather than anything more sensible.

I'm almost surprised that there aren't 4 supertweeters affixed to the top.

 

[Danzilla31]

I really can't help but think they did themselves a tremendous disservice with this design. I can't help but feel a single larger Midrange would be far better than the pair, almost to point where they designed this as a tribute to brute force fanboi-ism rather than anything more sensible.

I'm almost surprised that there aren't 4 supertweeters affixed to the top.

Just put 4 super ports on top and I'll buy it tommorow

 

[ryanosaur]

Just put 4 super ports on top and I'll buy it tommorow

Highs like Ssssssssss, b!tch! *rockhorns

 

[Beave]

IMO, that center speaker represents a very bad design with an impedance that digs below 2 ohms at around 150 Hz, with a phase angle curve near -60° at 92 Hz. I would just avoid it.

Don't you mean "just above 2 ohms at around 150 Hz?" I do agree with your general point that it's a tough impedance curve.

 

[Verdinut]

Don't you mean "just above 2 ohms at around 150 Hz?" I do agree with your general point that it's a tough impedance curve.

No. It's really below 2 ohms as it is closer to 0 than 4. When you use 2 drivers in parallel, the combined impedance is halved. The speaker builder has to use good judgment not to market speakers which are impossible to drive with most AV receivers. It's obvious in this case that the woofers used are badly designed drivers.

There are many other speakers using two woofers in parallel with combined impedances not digging as low as 3 ohms or less. A wise decision is to eliminate such product from a list of contenders.

 

[shadyJ]

No. It's really below 2 ohms as it is closer to 0 than 4. When you use 2 drivers in parallel, the combined impedance is halved. The speaker builder has to use good judgment not to market speakers which are impossible to drive with most AV receivers. It's obvious in this case that the woofers used are badly designed drivers.

There are many other speakers using two woofers in parallel with combined impedances not digging as low as 3 ohms or less. A wise decision is to eliminate such product from a list of contenders.

Emotiva has always sold loudspeakers spec'd at 4 ohms, even their low-cost speakers. I think that their rationale for that was to give consumers an incentive to buy their amplifiers which is their real bread'n'butter.

For this impedance curve, that dip is very low and the phase angle makes it that much worse. Luckily it only happens in a narrow band, however, it is still a heavily used band. I don't think it would be a problem in practice, but I wouldn't want to blast this speaker with a cheap AVR for a whole movie or album.

 

[Beave]

No. It's really below 2 ohms as it is closer to 0 than 4. When you use 2 drivers in parallel, the combined impedance is halved. The speaker builder has to use good judgment not to market speakers which are impossible to drive with most AV receivers. It's obvious in this case that the woofers used are badly designed drivers.

There are many other speakers using two woofers in parallel with combined impedances not digging as low as 3 ohms or less. A wise decision is to eliminate such product from a list of contenders.

You're assuming the bottom of the graph is zero. Based on the scaling on the left side, which appears to me to be linear, the bottom of the graph is not zero but is instead 2 ohms or just above two ohms. Each major division is 2 Ohms, and each minor mark is 0.5 Ohms. The range shown is from 2 Ohms (bottom) to 16 Ohms (top).

 

[Verdinut]

You're assuming the bottom of the graph is zero. Based on the scaling on the left side, which appears to me to be linear, the bottom of the graph is not zero but is instead 2 ohms or just above two ohms. Each major division is 2 Ohms, and each minor mark is 0.5 Ohms. The range shown is from 2 Ohms (bottom) to 16 Ohms (top).

You are right. It's surprising that some of the posters did not question or mention any doubt about my assumption. The impedance still digs to below 3 ohms at frequencies where a lot of power is used (any frequency below 400 Hz) and that is not a sign of a good design.

 

[Hetfield]

Now I wonder how the C1+ center channel sounds because that's a more traditional 3 way center channel? It's been "temporarily unavailable" for months now though. This C2+ is freakishly huge. I could not believe how big it looked Erin's video! I was actually thinking of buying this with I redid my home theater a few months ago too, it could fit it now not wouldn't want a center channel that big.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

[Mark E. Long]

Why wouldn’t they just go with a single bigger midrange in this design. I mean wouldn’t this stuff showed up in design simulation or something like that . It is a really big center looks 3 foot wide .