Anyone heard Steinway IW 66 speakers?

Has anyone heard Steinway IW 66 speakers? Is it as good as their floor standing models? Is it suitable for home cinemas?

Yes, many times, they're excellent for larger rooms. They're designed specifically for home cinemas. Not as good as some of they're 2ch systems, but then again they're not at the same price bracket as the model D, B and concert LS.
 
Yes, many times, they're excellent for larger rooms. They're designed specifically for home cinemas. Not as good as some of they're 2ch systems, but then again they're not at the same price bracket as the model D, B and concert LS.

How is it compared to Model S? I know IW 66 will be louder, but what about sound quality and dispersion?
 
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How is it compared to Model S? I know IW 66 will be louder, but what about sound quality and dispersion?

By design it's a louder and more direct speaker - quality wise, it's excellent as you'd expect with Steinway.
 
By more direct you mean less dispersion?

Probably a little, it's not designed the same way as in it's not a dipole. However it is engineered to achieve excellent dispersion due to it's tweeter design.

You can't really compare it to an S15 because it's a different design. The important thing is it gets the job done.
 
We have these and most other Steinway Lyngdorf systems on demonstration in our Newbury listening rooms.
 
I am not finding any charts about this speaker. Like directivity, Frequency response, listening window, distortion, transient response etc.

Not sure how I could pay so much without any data.
Data never tells you what a speaker will actually sound like, it can only give a sense of what it might sound like. Any data on a speaker will be relevant to the room that the measurements were taken in. If you are spending that sort of money there is no substitute for an actual demonstration to hear the speakers.
 
I am not finding any charts about this speaker. Like directivity, Frequency response, listening window, distortion, transient response etc.

Not sure how I could pay so much without any data.
As stated above.

Demonstrations are crucial. SL systems do not work like other systems.
 
Data never tells you what a speaker will actually sound like, it can only give a sense of what it might sound like. Any data on a speaker will be relevant to the room that the measurements were taken in. If you are spending that sort of money there is no substitute for an actual demonstration to hear the speakers.

Speakers can be measured in anachoic chambers to remove effect of room.

As stated above.

Demonstrations are crucial. SL systems do not work like other systems.

I am in the US. SL is not common here. Let alone IW 66.
The few SL dealers I find have no demos or just demo 2 channel. I need to demo a fully treated and calibrated IW 66 home theater.

Looks like I have to wait or visit Europe to demo it.
 
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Data never tells you what a speaker will actually sound like, it can only give a sense of what it might sound like. Any data on a speaker will be relevant to the room that the measurements were taken in. If you are spending that sort of money there is no substitute for an actual demonstration to hear the speakers.

Not true (bolded). Example the measurement system Klippel NFS (~100 000$) that ASR and Erins Audio Corner has the room won´t affect the results, many big speaker manufacturer uses Klippel aswell so it´s not some hyped bogus unit. These measurements can be great tool as example the Klippel takes thousands of measurements and gives you the spinorama so you can see the on-axis response with possible flaws, does the speaker have wide or narrow directivity (is there consistency between the on and off-axis sound), is the speaker easy/hard to eq if required, distortion graphs at different SPL levels, horizontal and vertical dispersion (example placing speaker below/top of ear height, does the centre channel give you full sound if listeners past 20degrees etc) , impedance graph and phase angles plus sensitivity (power requirements), estimated in-room response is also quite intresting.

I don´t think anyone is making claims that this is what you need only. There is lot of things people can learn from these and that is why it has raised so much intrest in audio circles. "In a nutshell, if a speaker exhibits flat and linear on-axis frequency response with consistent off-axis performance to preserve critical early reflections, then the speaker will score very highly in blind listening tests and also provide more consistent performance from room to room" I believe the Harman blind tests showed with experienced and newbie listeners that more neutral speaker was prefered by most folks. Otherwise Revel/JBL/Kef would measure roller coaster with boosted highs like new B&Ws which as we can see has mixed feedback, possible listening fatigue in long run is bit worrying. From the measurements you can very clearly see things example with B&W speakers, so if you prefer overly bright sound (perhaps partly due to age related high freq. hearing loss) then these measurements could be great tool limiting the speaker choices for person without running in 20 demos and then finally getting home trial if possible. Naturally they will also tell you if you hate bright sounding speakers what models not to consider! 👍

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
 
SL systems do not work like other systems.

I am trying to learn more in detail about the speaker design philosophy of SL. Their speaker sounded different than any other speaker I heard.
Also trying to learn the difference between RoomPerfect and other high end processors like Trinnov, Dirac etc.
But hard to find any articles or post about these online.
 
SL systems are a closed architecture full digital system.

As stated, a demonstration of the SL systems is required. SL systems work in a different way to conventional systems. They uae boundary woofers and much much higher crossover points. Each system has a speaker file written for the client and is uploaded into the processor by the installer.
 
I am not finding any charts about this speaker. Like directivity, Frequency response, listening window, distortion, transient response etc.
And you never wondered why that's the case? ;)
And even if it's not available to the end user, it should be available for custom installers as that's the only way they could ever do a proper job.
Not sure how I could pay so much without any data.
It's called blind faith in expensive products. Fun fact, there was a (rich) guy at a hifi show many, many years ago looking for new speakers. He found a pair that sounded the best to him by far. He didn't buy them because they were too cheap (around €40k a pair if I remember correctly). He said his friends would laugh about such cheap speakers. So he ended up buying something much more expensive, which he didn't like as much, but at least he didn't get socially bullied by his friends. 🤷‍♂️ There is a market for such products.
Data never tells you what a speaker will actually sound like, it can only give a sense of what it might sound like. Any data on a speaker will be relevant to the room that the measurements were taken in.
This is plain wrong. Your experimental setup is flawed to begin with as you don't measure the speaker in a listening room because as you say, you'd measure the effect of the room. Eliminate that as pointed out by @Gasp3621 and a speaker measurement will tell you pretty accurately how a speaker (not a speaker in a room) will sound. You will set the maximum top performance bar with this, the speaker can't sound better, but it can certainly sound worse when the room interaction comes into play. The myth that SL systems don't need room treatments has been busted many times and only keeps living in the marketing departments.

I am in the US. SL is not common here. Let alone IW 66.
The few SL dealers I find have no demos or just demo 2 channel. I need to demo a fully treated and calibrated IW 66 home theater.
IW66 is probably difficult, for the non-IW speakers, nag your dealer long enough until they will do a home demo for you. They usually don't do this, but in some cases they will. Been there, done that.
I don´t think anyone is making claims that this is what you need only. There is lot of things people can learn from these and that is why it has raised so much intrest in audio circles.
Spot on. It tells you how well a speaker could perform. It also tells you what a bad speaker is right away. It also helps to pick the right speaker for the job when it comes to room size, treatments, listening positions and so on. Without this, it's amateurish to design systems. How would you ever know if all listening positions could be covered within 3dB or 6dB if dispersion characteristics are not know?
SL systems are a closed architecture full digital system.
I keep scratching my head over this... what's your definition for a full digital system? Because it sure is different from mine. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the IW66 requires two channels of amplification, one for the bottom unit which is then daisy chained to the top and the other channel for the mid unit. That mid unit has an analogue crossover for the different drivers which are all driven by one channel of amplification. That's where it breaks my definition of a full digital system in contrast to systems that use a DSP crossover for every driver and a dedicated channel of amplification, such as Meridian, Wisdom Audio, JBL, Genelec, Adam Audio, Neumann and so on. The SL approach here is more comparable to what Alcons Audio is doing for the CRMS MkII. 2 channels from a Sentinel DSP amp, one for LF, one for MF/HF with the analogue crossover for the MF/HF unit.
SL systems work in a different way to conventional systems. They uae boundary woofers and much much higher crossover points.
And how is this different from a conventional system? What is a conventional system to begin with? The woofers are there for the simple fact that they don't do full range in a single unit (the IW66 is three units attached via brackets for example). The boundary concept is for higher gain from walls and corners. It isn't needed when choosing a different design approach depending on use case. Depending on setup the boundary setup might introduce phase linearity issues (that's what measurements actually tell us). But having similar phase shift across all channels is more important than perfect phase linearity.

Of course a full range system won't fit into a small box like the IW66, Model M or S. So something needs to be done. But how is it different? That concept is used by other manufacturers as well. It's been used since back in the 90s, at least that's when I was introduced to it, maybe even earlier. Crossover points vary, from ~40Hz to over 500Hz.

How does the SL concept differ from woofer "boxes" like Genelec W371 (Crossover up to 500Hz) or Neumann 870/810 (up to 600Hz) or 750 (up to 800Hz)? Many more exists from other manufacturers, they're all meant to be used with regular speakers and in some cases are really full digital as my definition above.

So while this might be different from some systems (B&W or whatever), it's not exotic or unique in any way. Many manufacturers are doing it.
 
I have the IW66's and most of the Steinway Lyngdorf range on demonstration in our showroom if anyone would like to hear them.
 
I heard them once...my ears are still ringing. :D




I do have tinnitus, but I can't directly blame Rob for that... my own fault for playing too loud in a band AND my AV system. ;)
 
And you never wondered why that's the case? ;)
And even if it's not available to the end user, it should be available for custom installers as that's the only way they could ever do a proper job.

It's called blind faith in expensive products. Fun fact, there was a (rich) guy at a hifi show many, many years ago looking for new speakers. He found a pair that sounded the best to him by far. He didn't buy them because they were too cheap (around €40k a pair if I remember correctly). He said his friends would laugh about such cheap speakers. So he ended up buying something much more expensive, which he didn't like as much, but at least he didn't get socially bullied by his friends. 🤷‍♂️ There is a market for such products.

This is plain wrong. Your experimental setup is flawed to begin with as you don't measure the speaker in a listening room because as you say, you'd measure the effect of the room. Eliminate that as pointed out by @Gasp3621 and a speaker measurement will tell you pretty accurately how a speaker (not a speaker in a room) will sound. You will set the maximum top performance bar with this, the speaker can't sound better, but it can certainly sound worse when the room interaction comes into play. The myth that SL systems don't need room treatments has been busted many times and only keeps living in the marketing departments.


IW66 is probably difficult, for the non-IW speakers, nag your dealer long enough until they will do a home demo for you. They usually don't do this, but in some cases they will. Been there, done that.

Spot on. It tells you how well a speaker could perform. It also tells you what a bad speaker is right away. It also helps to pick the right speaker for the job when it comes to room size, treatments, listening positions and so on. Without this, it's amateurish to design systems. How would you ever know if all listening positions could be covered within 3dB or 6dB if dispersion characteristics are not know?

I keep scratching my head over this... what's your definition for a full digital system? Because it sure is different from mine. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the IW66 requires two channels of amplification, one for the bottom unit which is then daisy chained to the top and the other channel for the mid unit. That mid unit has an analogue crossover for the different drivers which are all driven by one channel of amplification. That's where it breaks my definition of a full digital system in contrast to systems that use a DSP crossover for every driver and a dedicated channel of amplification, such as Meridian, Wisdom Audio, JBL, Genelec, Adam Audio, Neumann and so on. The SL approach here is more comparable to what Alcons Audio is doing for the CRMS MkII. 2 channels from a Sentinel DSP amp, one for LF, one for MF/HF with the analogue crossover for the MF/HF unit.

And how is this different from a conventional system? What is a conventional system to begin with? The woofers are there for the simple fact that they don't do full range in a single unit (the IW66 is three units attached via brackets for example). The boundary concept is for higher gain from walls and corners. It isn't needed when choosing a different design approach depending on use case. Depending on setup the boundary setup might introduce phase linearity issues (that's what measurements actually tell us). But having similar phase shift across all channels is more important than perfect phase linearity.

Of course a full range system won't fit into a small box like the IW66, Model M or S. So something needs to be done. But how is it different? That concept is used by other manufacturers as well. It's been used since back in the 90s, at least that's when I was introduced to it, maybe even earlier. Crossover points vary, from ~40Hz to over 500Hz.

How does the SL concept differ from woofer "boxes" like Genelec W371 (Crossover up to 500Hz) or Neumann 870/810 (up to 600Hz) or 750 (up to 800Hz)? Many more exists from other manufacturers, they're all meant to be used with regular speakers and in some cases are really full digital as my definition above.

So while this might be different from some systems (B&W or whatever), it's not exotic or unique in any way. Many manufacturers are doing it.
Excellently put.
 

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