Icon Audio FRm 3 Loudspeaker User Manual

Icon Audio FRm 3 Loudspeaker

Product Information

The FRm 3 Loudspeaker is a unique and flexible audio device designed to deliver exceptional bass, midrange, and treble performance in a variety of situations. This pair of loudspeakers is equipped with adaptable features that allow you to customize their use according to your specific system and room acoustics.

These loudspeakers have undergone a rigorous final inspection and listening test by the Icon Audio team in Leicester to ensure optimum performance and reliability. They come with a range of accessories, including speaker covers, filter boxes, short cables, spikes, and copper links.

Product Usage Instructions

1. Unpack each speaker carefully, ensuring that they are in good condition. If any issues are found, report them to your dealer. It is important to keep the packaging for future shipping purposes.
2. Position the speakers in the approximate listening position as indicated in the diagram on page 3. If required, fit the spikes after final positioning.
3. Connect your amplifier to the filter box. Position the filters at the rear of the FRm speakers. Use high-quality multi-strand speaker cable (e.g., QED 79 strand) and observe polarity (normally + is red) when connecting to the input terminals of the filter box.
4. Connect the filter box to the speakers using the supplied cables. The FRm 3 model requires two pairs of cables. Connect the top speaker terminals to those marked “Upper” on the filter box, and the lower terminals to those marked “Lower” on the filter box.

For more advanced tuning options and detailed information about the product, please refer to sections 7-12 in the user manual.

Introduction

Thank you for buying a pair of FRm 3 (Full Range modified) loudspeakers. These loudspeakers are unique in that they are very flexible in their use, The bass in particular and midrange/treble performance is adaptable to a range of different situations.

Please read the “set up” guide when first using to become familiar with the options available to tailor their use to your particular system and room acoustics.

Final Inspection Your Guarantee of Quality

To assure you of optimum performance and reliability, these loudspeakers have passed our rigorous final inspection and listening test by the Icon Audio team in Leicester.

• Date …../…../…..
• Model …………….
• Veneer …………….
• Serial Number …………….
• Customer ……………………………
• Check cabinet finish ……….
• Internal wiring check ……….
• Filter wiring check .………
• 24 hour listening test ……….
• Sound Quality ……….
• Channel Balance ……….

Box Contents

• 1x FRm Manual
• 2x Loudspeakers
• 2x Speaker cover
• 2x Filter box (for 2 drivers)
• 4 pairs short cable
• 8x Spikes
• 2x Copper links

Upgrades:

• Internal Silver wire ……….……….
• Filter capacitor ……………….
• Capacitor grade (Audio) ……….
• Other
• Signed off by ……………………….
• Notes:

Standard Connection of filter box

Initial Positioning

Ideally your room shape and size will be similar to one of the diagrams above. If not try to get an angle of between 60°-90° from your listening position, between 1ft (33cm) and 3ft (1 m) away from the wall. The closer to the wall the more bass will be reflected. Sitting at or near the centre of the room will reduce the bass you hear so careful positioning should enable you to obtain the bass balance desired.

QUICK SET UP GUIDE

1. Unpack each speaker carefully. Make sure that it is in good condition. If not report to your dealer. It is important that you keep the packaging for future shipping

2. Position in approximate listening position according to diagram (page 3). Fit Spikes (if required) after final positioning.

3. Connect your amplifier to filter box. Position filters at the rear of the FRm speakers. Use good quality multi strand speaker cable. E.g. QED 79 strand. Connect to “Input” “+” and “-“ observing polarity. Normally “+” is red.

4. Connect filter box to speakers, using supplied cable(s). The FRm 3 model uses two pairs of cables; connect the top speaker terminals to those marked “Upper” on the filter box. And the lower to the terminals marked “Lower” on the filter box.

5. Check the polarity of “+” & “-“ speakers at all connection points on both speakers. This is essential for correct performance. Red is “+”, Black is “-“.

6. Fine tune positioning by looking at each speaker from your listening position. The speakers should be facing you directly, so that you cannot see either side of the cabinet. Each speaker ideally should be exactly the same distance away.

7. “Toe in”
   Some people prefer the sound if the loudspeakers are angled towards the listener, this is a personal preference to get the stereo image that suits you.

8. Running in
   If the speakers are cold, they will take up the 48 hours to normalize. The majority of the “running in” period is approximately three months (although continues for over a year), as the high quality cone suspension takes longer to “free up”, and to “run in” and for the cone material to its optimum sound quality. Do not play them at excessive volume for a few days. The more you use them the better they will sound. Full range music of any kind with a good bass content will help. A noticable improvement will be heard after a month. After 3 months of use the speakers will be near their optimum. When the speakers are in a cold room they may take 30 minutes of use to “warm up” even when “run in” (this is true of all speakers).

Stray magnetic fields
The speaker drive unit magnets have magnetic fields that extend beyond the boundaries of the cabinet. We recommend you keep magnetically sensitive items (computer discs, audio and video tapes, swipe cards and the like) at least 0.5m from the speaker.

Getting the best out of your FRm 3 loudspeakers

After you have assembled your Hi Fi system you naturally will want to get the best results. You probably know there is an intimate relationship with your amplifier. An ideal amplifier for the FRm speakers is a low to medium powered valve or transistor amplifier. The power needed will vary with room size and the desired maximum sound level. Ideally between 10 to 80 watts will be ideal. Single Ended “Class A” amplifiers or and push-pull amplifiers. Larger “Class A/B” Push Pull valve amplifiers will also work well as you will be using mostly the “Class A” part of the power curve. “Pure Triode” valve amplifiers are considered by many to have a more pleasing sound, These could be amplifiers using valves (or tubes) such as 2A3, 300B, 845, 805, 211, 6C33 etc.

If your valve amplifier uses 6L6, KT66/88/120/150, EL34, EL84, 6550, (and other pentode types) it is probably using the “Ultralinear” method which gives 90% of the power of Pentode operation and 90% of the quality of Triode operation. You could consider converting to 100% Triode. Icon Audio and most good valve engineers can perform this easy and reversible modification for a relatively small cost. (More information on request) The 10% difference between “Ultralinear” and Triode IS very noticeable, the small power loss will hardly be noticeable. Most Icon Audio amplifiers using pentode valves can be switched into “triode operation, plus some other brands.

Listening Room
Although often overlooked, this is the final component of your system which can “make or break” the results you get. For example a room with tiled floor, lots of windows will sound hard and bright. Whereas a room with a carpeted floor and lots of soft furnishing will have a more pleasing and accurate sound as the sound reaching your ear is mainly from the speakers, and not as a result of reflections from the walls, floor, windows etc. When you consider the trouble you have taken to set up your system, the small investment in time and trouble needed to correct listening room problems can give a huge improvement in listening quality. It should be remembered that most loudspeakers are developed in an “anechoic chamber” where no sound is reflected at all!

Obviously many rooms fall in between these two extremes, and many things can be done to improve hard bright rooms such as closing curtains, hanging drapes, fitting acoustic tiles, laying rugs and mats. These will all absorb and break up unwanted sound.

Listening Position

This is the final link which again can make the difference between a “good” system and an “excellent” system, and is relatively easy:
Position the FRm’s similar to the page 3 diagram and listen to the bass, if it is a little “boomy” bring the speakers forward a little at a time until the desired bass quality is achieved. Moving your speakers further away from the corners whilst keeping the same distance from the rear wall may also help as more bass is reflected from the corners than the rear walls. Also consider your listening position. The least bass will be heard in the centre of your room so sitting closer to the rear wall will increase the perceived bass. Try not to have your speakers too far apart; this can “stretch the image so that it is not well defined. In an ideal set up you should also be able to hear a well defined centre image and even sounds “outside” your speakers. Ideally about 1m from the side wall is required to get the full effect. When correctly set up you will be able to hear sounds that appear to be coming from either side and even from behind of you! (Depending on the recording).

Whilst it may not be possible to do all the things suggested here, a compromise may be found which is acceptable to the room layout and other functions of the room, sometimes on a temporary basis e.g. for serious listening, moving your speakers to a better position, or moving a chair or sofa out of the way. Please experiment, as a small adjustment may make a noticeable difference.

More Advanced tuning

In most situations the “Standard” wiring will be found to work well as described above. In which case the installation is complete.

Filter 2 use:
Should a more “forward” presentation be desired insert the supplied copper link between the “Filter 2” terminals. This has the effect of “lifting” the mid-range and treble slightly.

The FRm 3 is very versatile and several other combinations are possible which may suit your equipment/room/musical taste better. All that is necessary is to reconfigure the wiring as shown. When making changes you may need to switch your amplifier off, although this is not necessary with Icon Audio amplifiers When auditioning changes it is advisable to play several pieces of well known music to judge the difference in overall balance. In some cases you may find little difference.

Bass unit as Passive Radiator:

Here the bass from the upper unit causes the lower unit to act as a passive radiator. The bass will be less solid but still have good extension on low notes.

Bass unit as Damped Passive Radiator:

Here the bass will be much tighter, ideal if you want to limit any bass “boominess” due to room acoustics. It will require a short piece of solid or stranded copper wire for the “link” (not supplied).

Parallel Full Range:

Ideal for a very large room where maximum efficiency is required. Slightly warmer presentation, with full range slightly lower impedance. Not ideal for very low powered amplifiers.

Series Connection

This method gives a 16 Ohms impedance with probably the generally lower efficiency and a lower bass balance, generally sounding more neutral.

Background to FRm 3 design

We have been making all kinds of valve amplifiers since 2000, and have become aware that many modern and some older speakers are very complex in terms of their crossover (or dividing network) which is usually out of sight, inside the cabinet, this forms a barrier which can seriously degrade the output of amplifiers, especially the lower powered simple designs where much of the simple purity is lost. On the other hand, some of the “full range” speakers available on the market do have great purity and efficiency but can have an unacceptably “forward sound” in the midrange, which makes them less than ideal for full range and especially popular music.

So we set ourselves a goal to develop a loudspeaker system that uses a full range drive unit, large enough to deliver deep bass from a simple cabinet (with lower cost advantage), but also with a very pure mid-range and extended high frequency. The final design the 8” FRm unit was achieved by many hours of listening to many kinds of music (mainly acoustic) and fine tuning by our listening panel.

Any full range speaker will always have the disadvantage of a frequency peak in the upper midrange. To counter this we have used a very simple circuit to attenuate this frequency peak so the tonal balance is more linear. This is not a crossover, instead it is a filter for the upper midrange. This has the effect of raising the impedance of the speaker and therefore limits the output at certain frequencies, this way no power is wasted, having the advantage with lower powered amplifiers that this unused power is then available for another frequency especially bass, thereby improving the performance and lowering the distortion of the amplifier.

The FRm 3 is the largest of these systems having two drive units, designed with larger rooms in mind or where extended deep bass is important to the listener. And if necessary with bigger amplifiers capable of a very large sound output.
If you consider, full range loudspeakers have a great deal to offer compared to a conventional 2 or 3 way. Going back to basics, the only reason a loudspeaker has more than one unit is because one has difficulty covering the whole audio spectrum from which is normally thought of as 20Hz to 20,000 Hz. The reality is however that the additional complexity of using more than one speaker can cause problems in other ways which although not as obvious as poor frequency response, can make life difficult for the amplifier driving the speaker, especially lower powered valve amplifiers. For example a typical 2 way speaker uses a larger speaker for bass and midrange with a small dedicated “tweeter” to reproduce the treble part of the spectrum. All well and good you might say but if we consider exactly what happens the problems in doing this become more apparent:

If we ask a loudspeaker to reproduce a rising frequency there will become a point where the crossover will limit the energy being supplied to the bass unit and will start to send it to the tweeter. At that point both speakers will try to reproduce that note and therefore there will be distortion and confusion to the ear as time delay and phase shift start to add distortion to the way that frequency is reproduced. The result is not a “bad” sound but a loss of detail in the stereo image. The test equipment used by a manufacturer will be looking for harmonic distortion and a flat frequency response, so if the speaker passes those tests it will be classed as “good”. The reality is that we are not sending simple frequency sweeps to a speaker, but complex musical information. A single note from a piano, violin, human voice etc will contain low, medium and high frequencies which will be split into two or three parts by the crossover for the ear to put back together again. Now although the frequency information will be correct some essential phase and detail will either be lost or misunderstood by the time the three parts are separated by the crossover, reproduced by the three speakers for our ears to try and understand the original meaning.

Musical information which often consists of the orchestra and singer(s). Obviously one device (i.e. the microphone) is able to pick up all these sounds at the same time as we use only one microphone for the whole frequency range so a “perfect” loudspeaker would behave in the same way. But because is the “norm” to have a 2 or 3 way speaker most people assume that this is essential. This is not true!

Our full range loudspeaker is specially developed to reproduce the whole of the audible range of sounds. You will immediately hear that this has a kind of purity and immediacy that is lacking from multi driver speakers. In the past we have had experience working with and making cabinets for full range loudspeakers such as Fostex, Lowther and older Wharfedale and Tannoy designs. These are still highly regarded by many audiophiles as having qualities which modern designs seemed to have lost. What we are aiming to achieve with the FRm series is a Full Range speaker that is a combination of the best of old and new.

A small disadvantage of FRm 3 speakers is that they are more directional than conventional speakers because the treble radiator is “recessed” in the cone. This is similar to Tannoy “Dual Concentric” speakers and Electrostatic types. So careful positioning is needed. When listening the drive units should be at “ear level”. In some cases it may be necessary to tilt the speakers back slightly. This may be done by adjusting the spikes lower at the back, or not fitting the rear spikes. This will give increased definition of the sound stage. You should then be able to “pin point” instruments left, right and centre and even “outside” the speakers with excellent “front-back” definition as well.

Dynamic Range;
Due to the “no power wasted” design and the lack of a “crossover” a much larger amount of the amplifier power is converted into sound, giving a dynamic range much larger than conventional designs. This is especially noticeable when comparing to electrostatic types.

Maintenance

The FRm series requires little maintenance. If the loudspeakers have been well looked after and kept in a dry environment they should give many years of service with no problem. The connections on the rear, to the filter box and amplifier will benefit from “breaking and making” at least annually by disconnecting and reconnecting several times to ensure a good low impedance connection is maintained. Copper wire is prone to corrosion, the exposed wire should be bright and shiny, dull corroded wire will have a high resistance and degrade the sound. The drive units are quite strong and are able to deliver a high level of sound in a medium to large room. Handling power is approximately 75 watts of undistorted speech and music (NOT continuous sine wave). Amplifiers of up to 100 watts may be used. However, the FRm series does not have any protection against abuse and accidents so beware of “switch on thump” and other accidental surges.*

Cabinet Care
The cabinets are stained wood real veneer on audio quality MDF. To remove dust we suggest gentle wiping with a slightly damp cloth with an occasional polish. Avoid excessive sunlight as this could fade the natural colour and damage the drive unit surround, UV light in sunlight will cause premature deterioration of the cone roll surround.

These faults are not covered by the warranty.

Specification & Features

Typical values

• Icon Audio developed and manufactured drive units.
• Rare earth alloy high-frequency dome
• Custom paper cone for optimum bandwidth
• Long throw coil and roll surround for extended bass
• 96db approx output, 1 watt @1 meter (2.83v)
• Designed and tested with low-med power valve amplifiers
• Suitable for amplifiers 10 to 100 watts, @ 8 ohms
• Audio grade MDF cabinet
• Real wood veneer finish
• Standard finishes rosewood cherry or walnut
• Plinth and adjustable spikes included
• FRm 3 Size in cm W29, D28, H104, 29kg ea
• 4n Copper wire voice coil
• High purity 99.99% copper multi-strand internal cable
• Low impedance choke
• Soldered internal connection for long term low resistance
• Supplied filter box with high-quality components
• Heavy gauge custom chokes for low impedance
• All hand wired point to points without printed circuit
• Nominal DC impedance 7Ω (full range unit)
• Freq response FRm3 30 – 19kHz (room dependant)
• Solen/SCR hi-fi audio capacitors (recommended Jensen upgrade Copper foil upgrade available)
• Gold-plated Input & speaker terminals
• ROHS compliant

Guarantee

Thank you for purchasing one of our products. We trust you will be pleased with it.

These loudspeakers are guaranteed by the reseller you purchased from for 12 months from the date of purchase for parts and labor, excluding shipping. Please keep your receipt as proof of purchase, this may be needed. All units are individually tested for performance for at least ten hours before despatch to you. In the unlikely event that you believe the unit is not functioning correctly, it may be helpful to contact us first as we may be able to assist you. Then we would request that you return the item to your dealer.

You are advised to inform us of any change of address or change of ownership in order that we may keep you up to date of any upgrades or improvements. Check our website.

Exclusions
Natural veneers are subject to small flaws. Some fading and slight cracking is normal over time. We reserve to reject claims for faulty units where tests reveal abuse or overload (e.g. burnt-out voice coils). Claims for any damage should be reported to the sender and/or shipping company must be reported within 24 hours of receipt. This loudspeaker is designed for normal domestic hi-fi use. They are not guaranteed for commercial, Public Address use, or use in other situations without authorization. The guarantee becomes void if the unit has been modified in any way not approved by Icon Audio.

Packing Instructions

It is essential that the original box and packing be kept in good condition, as this provides vital protection from damage during transit. Please do not write on the box, but use labels. Please note we are unable to supply replacement packaging.

• Re-use the supplied plastic bag to keep the speakers clean and free from dust/dampness.
• The spikes should be removed and packed so that damage will not occur to the cabinets.
• Do not store in damp conditions as the cabinet and drive units will be damaged.
• If the speakers are shipped insurance is desirable due to the high unit value.

icon Audio UK LTD.
351 Aylestone Road Leicester LE2 8TA UK
www.iconaudio.co.uk.
Phone +44 (0) 116 244 0593
Cell +44 (0) 778 715 8791
Email: sales@iconaudio.com.

References

• Valve Amplifiers & Hi Fi Equipment | Buy Online | Icon Audio

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