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Topic: Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners? (Read 7496 times) previous topic - next topic
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Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners?

I'm interested in hearing if anybody owns a pair of Infinity Primus towers. They look sharp and seem to be reasonably priced for a puny, post-doc budget such as mine ($400/pair). They also appear to have decent sized drivers and go down to 38Hz.

If these aren't so great, does anybody have a recommendation for something better in this price range? I currently own a pair of crummy Yamaha towers that look very nice in my setup, but sound thin and are impossible to adequately drive at low volumes.

EDIT: To be more clear, I've been looking at the P362 series.

Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Cygnus X1 on
I'm interested in hearing if anybody owns a pair of Infinity Primus towers. They look sharp and seem to be reasonably priced for a puny, post-doc budget such as mine ($400/pair). They also appear to have decent sized drivers and go down to 38Hz.

If these aren't so great, does anybody have a recommendation for something better in this price range? I currently own a pair of crummy Yamaha towers that look very nice in my setup, but sound thin and are impossible to adequately drive at low volumes.

EDIT: To be more clear, I've been looking at the P362 series.


Many of the Primus speakers are among the best in their price class. However, this refers to the original xx0 series, not the new **2 series. A source of mine(that has always proven reliable with industry details, though I can never make any guarantees), claims that the **2 series uses drivers with lesser quality standards in order to reduce production costs. Indeed, in Stereophile a Primus 162 is measured, and does not exhibit the same measured quality as a Primus 160 I had on hand. Stereophile has measured 3 Primus spekaers, two of which were **0 series. The **2 series speaker had overall inferior measured qualities compared to these other two -- even though these were different models -- I am trying to determine the validity of my source's claim.

If you can find a 360(they are still around refurbished if you look hard enough), it is certainly an excellent value. In fact, the drivers used on the 360 are far better then the cabinet used to house them. Especially the midrange driver(I bought one of those mids simply to analyze/measure). However, the resonant cabinet system used and added with the fact that insufficient acoustic absorption material was used in the cabinet, means that the drivers will never work to their potential since the cabinet system is producing such a substantial level of coloration. You can, however, do some modifications(replace the acoustic dampening material with proper material and apply some Dynamat-type material to the enclosure walls to reduce cabinet panel resonance) that will substantially increase the resulting sound quality. Please note that most speakers have poor quality cabinet systems -- this is not unique to the Primus speakers.

-Chris

Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners?

Reply #2 –
Thanks for your observations. I'll keep my eyes out for the 360's - they don't seem to be readily available online, but maybe some will turn up on eBay.

Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners?

Reply #4 –
hi,
I have Infinity Primus 360 (series 2, I think, but not version 362, are there different models depending on country ?) and I'm very satisfied.
But I don't find same measurements that did Stereophile : both of my speakers have a peak at 12-13kHz, a gentle dip near 2.5kHz and a bit two much near 90Hz (this also seen on stereophile's pages)
Despite those minor and correctable accidents, the frequency response is very well behaved over a wide angle.
For me, this speaker seemed to be a good candidate to test Digital Room Correction, so I did some trials, see hereunder (in room nearfield measured, very early stage, I'll have to work on it, blue curve is correction, red is speaker response after correction)

Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners?

Reply #6 –
Quote from: jlohl on
But I don't find same measurements that did Stereophile :


Did you perform anechoic(or impulse response gated measurements with mid and bass nearfield measured and spliced into response to simulate anechoic) measurements, and performed in the same manner as Stereophile made them? A variation in testing methodology can result in substantially different results. But Stereophile's measurements are generally very accurate, as can be verified by correlating/comparing their measurements to Soundstage's measurements(which are performed at the NRC labs in anechoic chamber) of speaker models they both happened to review.

-Chris

Infinity Primus Series - Any Owners?

Reply #7 –
Quote
Did you perform anechoic(or impulse response gated measurements with mid and bass nearfield measured and spliced into response to simulate anechoic) measurements

I have no anechoic room at home nor did I do outdoor measurements but I did a pulse gated measurement.
Maybe the (small) problems I found are related to an evolution in the 360 series specs or production.
I did those basic measurements mainly to test a new correction software, I'll surely check  the speakers more carefully later.