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In Reply to: RE: Could you do a review of a borrowed product? posted by mwhitmore on May 18, 2014 at 17:00:33
Yes the 3.7.
Why was it not reviewed????
Because the manufacturer gave some BS about "proprietary" frequency response.
LOL!
Follow Ups:
> Yes the [Magnepan] 3.7. Why was it not reviewed????
I discussed this matter in the magazine, on the Stereophile website forum,
and on Audio Asylum. Magnepan will not submit products for review unless
I agree not to publish measurements. As I don't believe it appropriate
for the magazine to totally abandon its policy when a manufacturer requests
it, there was no review.
> Because the manufacturer gave some BS about "proprietary" frequency
> response.
Magnepan's Wendell Diller felt that my publishing the MG3.7's behavior
would give proprietary crossover information to Magnepan's competitors.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
CONSENT of the maker of the object to be reviewed? Ridiculous.
BUY a sample and TEST it. Report whatever objective data you evolve and allow fair 'subjective' comment.
Resell on the open market to defer your costs.
Magnepan is concerned with 'proprietary' crossover information! First, as if physics has either been suspended or reinvented for the 3.7 and ALSO, such proprietary information is available to ANY other manufacturere by the simple expedient of PURCHASING a pair for test and dissection.
Car companies have been buying each others stuff for decades without 'foul' being cried by anyone.
Nutty
Too much is never enough
...would steal the crossover info?
Who else makes planar magnetic speakers with ribbon tweeters?
Uh, no one.
So the reality is they don't want anyone seeing the measurements in print.
I vote for a full review, with measurements.
It is a significant audio product, so you owe it to your readers.
Give them manufacturer the option of loaning the magazine a pair - if they won't then I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to borrow a new pair.
nt
This is all conjecture but I suspect the real reason for Magnepan’s reticence relates to the difficulty in obtaining accurate measurements for large planar (dipole) speakers, with the result that the measurements for planar speakers and dynamic speaker may not be directly comparable. Yet, readers would likely hold the planar speaker to the standards of the dynamic speaker.
IIRC, this difficulty in measuring planars was discussed by John Atkinson some years ago in a video about taking speaker measurements.
I seem to recall from the video and related discussion that the difficulty resulted from (1) the large size of the planar speaker and the fact that it outputs a wave of sound from the entire top to bottom of the speaker rather than a direct sound emanating from a point source, (2) the fact that the planar speaker is a dipole and radiates sound from the front and back of the speaker in both directions, rather than mostly just from the front, and (3) the resultant importance and variability of the room in taking measurements, with the room interaction dependent upon the size and shape of the room and its construction material.
Because of these factors, planar speakers often just don’t measure linearly in the same fashion as a dynamic speaker, and I would think that Magnepan would be concerned that the measurements would be misinterpreted by the readers.
Yet Magnepans still sound great.
.
I have taken measurements of Maggies in various rooms and you are correct! It surprises me how rarely (almost never actually) anybody discusses the elephants that are in the room. We (the Maggie owners) seem to also never publish our measurements, I've never asked for any nor been offered any, it's like it's a self-imposed cone of silence. Or a cult. Most likely we don't need the grief of presenting facts. There are solutions of course.
I don't think I'd call it a cone of silence, I've seen people post a fair number of measurements over the years.
or could not one of Magnepan's competitors, assuming they wanted the information badly enough, at the risk of voiding the warranty, simply purchase a 3.7, measure it for themselves, and take it apart and have a looksee? Sounds specious to me.
Like a competitor can't just take apart a Maggie crossover and see what's in there? As opposed to trying to reverse-engineer it from a measured frequency response which includes multiple other variables, including unique-to-the-brand driver behavior?
I think they just don't want anyone to see how badly their measurements suck.
The measurements don't actually suck, check out the measurements that Stereophile did do back in the day or that some that others have done in the years since. The Stereophile measurements do exaggerate the bass response because they're made in the near field -- there's a discussion appended to the review of the 3.6 that explains that. I can see though that a reader who just looked at the graph without reading JA's explanation might be misled.
IIRC, Magnepan had no problem with TAS reviewing their product, but TAS doesn't do measurements.
It seems to me that they either didn't want potential customers (who care about measurements) to see how badly their speakers measure or perhaps they just don't agree with how JA performs his speaker measurements.
Has anyone on the AA asked Magnepan for their take on this subject?
Cheers,
Al
"Magnepan's Wendell Diller felt that my publishing the MG3.7's behavior would give proprietary crossover information to Magnepan's competitors."
You should just borrow one and conduct whatever measurements you wish. Be damned with what the manufacturer wishes. They have no proprietary rights in the performance of their products. If you wished you could even reverse engineer the complete design and publish that and there would be absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. (Someone using this design to build a competitive product might run afoul of any patents, but these would not have been issued without publishing the technology details, because that's how patents work.)
The fact that you do not do this is a strong indicator that Stereophoile is in bed with manufacturers. I don't think that is an intention that a magazine should project. If I am wrong about this and it is impossible to run a profitable magazine without this collusion then this would confirm the belief many have that magazines are not to be trusted or used for purposes other than entertainment.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Well if you've been yearning to get your collusion and lack of trust statement out there you certainly couldn't have picked a more flimsy pretext for the launch!
Talk about taking leave of one's senses!
Sad
Never trust an Atom, they Make Up everything!
Obviously the magazines would be very different under your enlightened leadership. I find it grossly inappropriate to make this kind of accusation without strong proof.
"I find it grossly inappropriate to make this kind of accusation without strong proof."
I made an observation, not an accusation. Stereophile is the most straightforward of the audio publications available today, but it has not reached the point where it is above suspicion. For that to happen, it would have to be "as pure as Caesar's wife".
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Not sure that is fair. Stereophile has a policy - Magnepan doesn't want to play by the policy which is fine because the measurements will concern Magnepan because they don't look good (not for the ridiculous reason Magnepan gave but then what are they going to say - "our speakers' measurements are atrocious and we don't want people to see that" of course not.
Stereophile has said they have trouble measuring certain speaker designs - so what Magnepan should have done was provide their own measurements suite to Stereophile and they could publish both. Or write a manufacturer's comment directing people to a link with their measurements.
There are thousands of speaker makers out there that would be happy to follow Stereophile's policy - even the makers who disagree with the way Stereophile does their measurements. Heck every SET maker who sends a SET amp to them knows their amp is going to come out looking bad compared to $400 Solid State receivers.
I don't think people who buy SET or for that matter Magnepan are all that interested in measured performance.
But that's an argument to made to Magnepan not to Stereophile.
Actually, they measure fine. Here's a measurement of the little MMG's that my friend JBen posted over on the Planar Asylum:
However, look at this measurement from Stereophile:
http://www.stereophile.com/images/archivesart/magfig3.jpg
A reader looking at that would think that it has a 20 dB rise in the bass! Ouch! It's mostly an artifact of the up-close measurement technique but I can see why Magnepan might be reluctant to see a graph like that in a review -- one that shows the bass equalization that compensates for the 6 dB/octave dipole cancellation rather than the frequency response at the actual listening distance. JA would of course explain that it was a measurement artifact but how many readers would just glance at the graph without reading the fine print?
Of course, I don't blame people for thinking that Magnepan is hiding something here.
I don't think people should be buying based on a frequency plot which changes in every room at every distance anyway. I have good and not so good measured speakers come through here - the best have been the ones that didn't look too good in Stereophile. Not to mention what their reviewers have liked and have bought over the years.I don't buy Magnepan's argument about worrying over being copied. That is the issue here. I have the great measuring LS-50 here and my next speaker when I can pull the money together is going to be the Audio Note E/Spx HE Alnico (which won Product of the Year in Asia). But the measured results were not too good at Stereophile. And I doubt Audio Note much cares. here in Hong Kong they were being sold at a dealer along with speakers that are one of John Mark's dream speaker and will measure superbly. The AN E is still being sold the other has been dropped because they couldn't sell any of them against the E. They can't keep up with demand on them...and that's with very middling Stereophile measurements. Magnepan will sell regardless of the plots.
People who buy or consider to drop speakers off their list based mainly on measurements probably aren't buying this sort of stuff anyway (and IMO wouldn't know quality sound if the Philharmonic played outside their window.
While I am not personally a fan of the Magnepan sound I do get why people are fans of them - and really if you love the sound of Magnepan and it turned out that the measurements "supposedly" stunk would that change anything? Indeed, years before the AN E was measured I said - in order for them to sound better than the typical boxed slim line (2-5 six inch woofers under some sort of metal tweeter that glut the audio market) the AN E would have to measure significantly differently than those (like designed) speakers. And since those "like design" speakers were supposedly considered to measure well - then the AN E would have to measure poorly by those same criteria. But since the so called deemed "good measuring" speakers sound quite a LOT WORSE than the AN E then it was easy for me to chuck that part of Stereophile's analysis - since they also didn't perform pair matching measurements, distortion measurements. Measuring one speaker mid room is a waste of time.
The flagship B&W and Quad 2905 were found by Ken Kessler to be 2.9 and 5.9db OFF from each other. The dealer wants to claim the latter is one sample but of course he would. By measuring one speaker you are not measuring a "stereo system" you are measuring mono. Big fat waste of time - but it's cheaper and faster so let's do that.
Dipoles can't be measured properly so why measure the frequency - put something else in like pair matching and distortion. One size measurements doesn't fit all.
Edits: 06/06/14 06/06/14
Well, personally, I like seeing the measurements because they help me better understand the relationship between measurements and audio quality. But I agree, they can't tell you all that much about how good a speaker is. The more practiced you are at reading the measurements the more you can infer but they're at best a partial indication of what the speaker sounds like.
Of course Magnepan's concerns are for business and if they conclude, rightly or wrongly, that a misleading measurement will harm sales more than a review will benefit them, I can see why they wouldn't want to submit a model for review.
BTW, large planar dipoles can be measured, they just have to measured at the normal listening distance because the nearfield measurements are very different from the measurements at the listener's seat. And in the end, it's what reaches your ears that counts. But according to JA, it isn't feasible for Stereophile to do that.
nt
> You should just borrow one and conduct whatever measurements you wish.
I did think about that, but in the end felt that denying Magnepan review
coverage would probably be a more fitting outcome. Other worthy speakers
would get the benefit of our coverage, which would be Magnepan's loss.
> The fact that you do not do this is a strong indicator that Stereophile
> is in bed with manufacturers.
Good grief, why do you trot out this tired old canard? I made a judgment
call is all; you would have made a different one. That doesn't mean I am
corrupt and you are as pure as the driven snow - sometimes a cigar is
just a cigar!
And I don't think Magnepan has advertised in Stereophile for years.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
that's rather odd; can't anyone - with suitable equipment - perform those measurements and a competitor surely knows how to do the measurements.
thanks for interest.
roger wang
"that's rather odd; can't anyone - with suitable equipment - perform those measurements"
Absolutely! And if a competitor were really concerned about matching some attribute of their performance, buying a set is damn cheap R&D especially since they'd need one anyway to compare the results.
I think the excuse is both silly and lame. I'd guess that what they are really concerned about is simply poor looking measurements. Panel speakers are rather chaotic beasts and prolly a lot tougher to meaningfully characterize than systems that are more of a point source because they radiate over such a large area WRT the room. None the less I'm not impressed with their behavior and this information lowers them several notches in my book. If they can't justify their design they can keep it!
Rick
> Panel speakers are rather chaotic beasts and prolly a lot tougher to > meaningfully characterize than systems that are more of a point source > because they radiate over such a large area WRT the room.
Yes, they really need to be measured from a distance. Not practical given the practical constraints of Stereophile's testing program, I asked JA about this a while back.
In addition, I suspect they don't feel a pressing need for reviews to sell their speakers. Why be in a position to feel a need to explain measurement results?
-Wendell
Edits: 05/19/14 05/19/14
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