Loudspeakers

A speaker of this size, impedance and bass extension (details of which follow) was never going to achieve Fyne's specified 89dB sensitivity. Our measured pink noise figure of 86.4dB, averaged for the pair, is fully 2.6dB short of that claimed but much more in keeping with the F301's compact dimensions. If you require that impedance never falls below 80% of the nominal figure then the F301's claimed 8ohm impedance is optimistic too. Although our measured minimum of 4.6ohm is still quite high for a modern speaker, it indicates a 6ohm nominal rating is more appropriate. But the F301 is easy to drive nonetheless: low impedance phase angles mean that the EPDR (equivalent peak dissipation resistance) falls to a minimum of 2.7ohm at a low 20Hz, the 2.9ohm at 140Hz and 3.0ohm at 413Hz being more relevant in practice. So the F301 should not over-stretch the class of amplifier it's likely to be partnered with.

Forward frequency response [Graph 1, above] was measured at 1m on the tweeter axis with the bass-mid driver's grille removed. While the overall trend is pretty flat, the unevenness is enough to result in rather high response errors of ±5.0dB and ±4.5dB respectively, although pair matching over the same 200Hz-20kHz frequency range was good at ±0.8dB. Diffraction-corrected nearfield measurement showed bass extension to be 55Hz (–6dB re. 200Hz), entirely in line with expectations for a compact standmount design. The CSD waterfall [Graph 2, above] hints at resonances associated with the 800Hz and 1.4kHz response peaks but at higher frequencies resonance suppression is generally good, albeit with modes associated with the 4kHz peak and 8kHz 'wiggle' visible in the on-axis responses. KH