Friday, October 24, 2014

Teac LS-H265: The latest new hotness cheap speaker on the internet. First impressions and measurements

So I jumped on the internet bandwagon and picked up a pair of these Teac LS-H265B's for $90. I must have gotten in early because they are currently just above $160 on amazon.

I did some very preliminary listening and took some measurements of the speaker. Overall, it seems like a good buy at about $100. The close mic measurements and even the in room measurements are very good.

Album of speaker boxing, disassembly, driver and box details.
http://imgur.com/a/Og77h

Here are the quick measurements. These are right out of the box and look pretty good.


Looks like the port is tuned to 60hz and at the mid and tweeter are crossed over at 2.5khz. 


Overall really flat (+/- 3db) from 700hz to ~15k where there is a steep and sudden drop off. Everthing below that is probably due to some room issue. With my common hump ~150hz, but it is actually pretty marginal and only really there because of the slight dip from 200hz to 600hz. Those these are lacking in the bass department, with a fast drop off at 100 hz. These will need a sub or at least some rear wall. (UPDATE: In retrospect after seeing the outdoor measurements, I'm not sure that the TEAC's are as deficient in bass response as I initially though, I do think the driver has broken in a little with additional use, and the in room bump from 100-200hz may have made seem to produce less bass than they actually do. However I would still recommend a subwoofer to be used with this or have placement a bit closer to a rear wall than my testing location allows.)



Above are some comparisons between the indoor and outdoor responses. Very similar results above 800hz in both situations. Outdoors and away from reflection, these speakers measure pretty darn good. with a slight rise in output as you get above 4khz. Even indoors, it wouldn't be hard to EQ down my 100hz-200hz hump.

A 15 minutes listening session AB testing the Teac LS-H265 vs the Pioneer BS22, I found that the Pioneers sounded much warmer, and had a little bit better bass extension. I haven't yet done a detailed test of the Pioneers to get comparison graphs going on, but I would  guess that their tweeter is a little less bright also. (measurements have shown the grills are a huge killer on the Pioneers)

The Teac's to lack in the bass department and should be pair with a sub, particularity if they are not going to be near a back wall. The more I listen to the Teac's the more the bass has developed and I think for many people and types of music they will be just fine as far as bookshelf speakers go. But they are very clear and articulate speakers and I enjoy them very much. At $100 they are exactly what budget audiophile should be looking for. However with their recent popularity, prices have gone up into the $160 range. The biggest disappointment was their construction quality, for something with a retail price of $250 they are not built nearly as well as many of the other go to budget speaker out there.

TL;DR

If these are in your budget and you like the high gloss black finish, you can't go wrong with the Teac LS-H265.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure if I should get these or the Micca MB42X. Any insight?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I only have experience with the Micca MB42X-C, so I can't give a perfect comparison. However, if you are comfortable with the additional cost of the Teac's I would still pick them. They are both very good speakers though.

    ReplyDelete

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