|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
71.50.140.227
There have been discussions on the assylum before on the pros and cons of Stereophile's John Atkinson using speaker measurements as a way to judge speaker quality. But in the September issue, I was really annoyed by his comment on the Wilson Benesch Square One follow-up: "I'm puzzled both by the Wilson Benesch Square One Series 2's measured performance and by JOHN MARK'S PRAISE FOR ITS SOUND QUALITY." (emphasis mine). Really? Is this a fair comment to make about your own reviewer based only on measurements? Why did you not add your listening impressions before throwing your own employee under the bus? If I were John Mark or any other reviewer, I'd expect a little more consideration from my editor.
Follow Ups:
You're brilliant. Your brain and the thoughts that it produces are in the same category as those the the Great and Most Honorable and Beloved Leader and Prophet - no, not Kim Jong-un - but the Shining Sun Art Dud...oh - I'm not worthy or even allowed to type out his name without His permission [or John Atkinson's or his lawyer's].
How DARE John Atkinson be puzzled that a poorly measuring speaker could sound anything except like the unpaid advertising copy known as reviews in audio magazines. Every speaker induces wild paroxysms of pleasure from reviewers, and we all must believe every syllable written.
> > Is this a fair comment to make about your own reviewer based only on measurements?
Exactly. Only measurements - which are a waste of time and ink and ought to be banned, especially when they show what fools the reviewers are.
N. Thelman, SSI
That's where he should be for this review but somehow he managed to escape. The FR of this speaker looks like a roller coaster ride more suggestive of a $40 speaker than a $4000 speaker. There is a really nasty peak at about 1 kHz that's close to 10 db. There is no response (output) worth talking about below 100 hz. HF response above 10 kHz beams mostly on axis. At least that's how I read the measurements. Small wonder it has its own personality, exactly what a speaker is not supposed to have. Anyway, like all of the magazine reviews, they're good for an occasional laugh. I don't take any of them or the people who write them seriously. Not when they demagnetize their plastic phonograph records and tell you how great that works.
I tend to agree a lot of mr Marks reviews. Probably because we enjoy the same type of sound.
I have an 80's Jadis that can barely manage 30 watts. Everyone that has listened to that amp hooked up to all kinds of speakers has agreed to two things: it sounds different than any other amp ( colored?) AND it sounds gorgeous. Many friends have stated " most beautiful mids ever"
We all agree the amp is not accurate. We all agree it sounds beautiful.
Mr Marks likes the sound
I don't think you can interpret it as that.
They make similar comments with Audio Note gear - measures like heck, but sounds great.
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
. . . by reviewers' high praise of the sound of products which comport themselves poorly on the test bench. This hardly constitutes throwing a reviewer "under the bus," as Art Dudley -- whose reviews have elicited such surprise and puzzlement more than once -- has just been promoted to assistant bus driver!
Again we must fall back on the speculative hypothesis of "euphonic inaccuracy." Carefully performed measurements don't lie -- they is what they am -- but a whole largely unquantifiable set of physical and psychological factors can influence one's subjective evaluation of a component's sound. Both the speakers formally reviewed in the new issue exhibited fairly hinky on/off axis frequency responses, yet received largely favorable subjective reviews. Same with the Falcon LS3/5A last issue. There must be something that sounded "right" to those reviewers, in their personal listening spaces, in what these speakers technically do "wrong."
A real peacemaker, you are. I've been enjoying this thread, but even more with the response below.
You don't know me very well, lol. But we ARE talking about toys for boys so it's not the most serious thing in life so we should enjoy our hobby more and bitch less.
> Carefully performed measurements don't lie -- they is what they am -- but
> a whole largely unquantifiable set of physical and psychological factors
> can influence one's subjective evaluation of a component's sound.
When I first started working with Martin Colloms in the late 1970s, Martin
told me that every now and again, every reviewer "falls in love" with an
undeserving product, ie, even with its faults, it does one specific thing
that the reviewer values so well that he overlooks all that it is doing
wrong.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Ah, that explains BJR's love for Totem Dreamcatcher which you found lacking in your measurements.'....in the past 28 years, I have never enjoyed music more through anything else, regardless of price.',gushed BJR, in spite of strong port resonances and elevated top octaves.
Good show.
Cheers
Bill
Sometimes the reviewer falls in love with an undeserving product. I think I'll renew my subscription. This has been very entertaining.
John and Mark,
I read the review and took in everything that was written. When I got to the end of the measurement results and read John's statement, it told me something very important... If I was interested in that particular speaker, I should probably give it a good audition before buying. So in the end Stereophile magazine did it's job. I got the impression of it's sound from Mark and some hard data from John, both being very useful.
I got an impression of its sound from JA's measurements and comments, and from JM . . . .
I don't think that Wilson Benesch sets out to design an inaccurate loudspeaker--I don't think many companies do.
(I am not criticizing you, but this thread tells me that many people seem to comment without having read everything that I wrote about the speaker--and it's all relevant, especially the prologue that most people seemed to have skipped to get right to "Listening.")
What I think that they did set out to do (it says right there in my column) was to make the least-expensive speaker they could while still staying true to their core values. And in the event, to price it circa $4000 in the US, it turned into a bit of a loss leader... .
When a competent designer is designing to a price point, the usual industry metric is that he has to deliver the speaker and the box and packing and owner's manual and warrantee card for 20% of the MSRP.
OK, suddenly, it's $800 for parts and labor, so how do we divvy that up?
The result is not likely to be a floor-stander, not when the hardwood veneers come from the same company that provides them to the Bentley car company. And on and on. So, we now have a small-ish box (about half the size of the last ATC standmounted speaker I wrote about) with a tweeter, a woofer, and an ABR.
Perhaps they could have designed a speaker in the LS3/5A range as far as extension and dynamics goes, but who would buy that? So, the bass had to be real down to a non-trivial point, and the treble had to be clean, and--perhaps other choices that were already made mandated the frequency response that puzzled JA--or it even might be the case that Wilson Benesch measures their speakers differently.
I never said that the Square Ones struck me as being flat as a laser beam. I said I was beguiled when they made music. That the Square Ones ended up being a personal statement SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN AN UNENDURABLE SURPRISE to anyone who had bothered to read the prologue of that column, which because I wrote it, I quote from here:
START:
Chris Huston is as soft-spoken and unassuming a chap as you would ever hope to meet. A real gentleman of the old school. Chris has an amazing backstory. He and John Lennon were close friends at Liverpool's College of Art. Lennon and Huston later had "dueling bands" that played at Liverpool's Cavern Club. Chris' band was "The Undertakers." Jackie Lomax was their featured singer. Like the Beatles, the Undertakers spent time playing gigs in scrappy clubs near the Hamburg docks. However, Chris is not just an historical asterisk in the music encyclopedias. He co-engineered Led Zeppelin II, earned a Grammy award for producing The World is a Ghetto, and has produced or engineered more than 80 gold and platinum records.
I was discussing loudspeaker design once with Chris. He asked a philosophical question that brought me up short. Chris asked, "Should a loudspeaker have a 'personality'?"
I had never thought of things in quite those terms before. It took me a moment to collect my thoughts. I quickly ransacked my memory for audio "peak experiences." I then answered, "Yes." Chris than came back with one of the most concise and insightful bits of audio wisdom I have ever heard: "A loudspeaker without a personality is like a song without a hook."
[And then:]
Finally, they [Wilson Benesch] offer a sound quality they feel is different from any other loudspeaker's. Craig Milnes remarked, "Voicing a loudspeaker is a very personal thing, I think."
END. [NB I cut and pasted from my submitted copy; the print magazine text may differ slightly.]
I don't think I could have been any more clear than that.
The Wilson Benesch Square One was: VOICED.
It has a VOICE. A PERSONALITY. [So all that stuff at the top was not just so I could hit my word count target.]
Therefore, it is not going to sound just like everything else.
My friend the cellist Nathaniel Rosen has a catchphrase along the lines of, "Everybody loves individuality, especially the kind that is just like them."
Not one person who came into my listening room said anything like, "Wow, what a weird-sounding speaker." I think most would say it sounded detailed while still sounding warm and inviting.
Anyway, the teapot has been sloshed around enough, I think.
JM
It was interesting to compare the measurements of the Wilson Benesch speakers and the Falcon LS3/5A in the previous issue. Below 1.2kHz or so, the on-axis response is nearly identical: significant humps around 100Hz (like probably the majority of small 2-ways) and 1kHz, with a deep saddle between them. While they are voiced quite differently above that range, both speakers' response peak at 1kHz (an artifact of the woofers used, since it is both well above box loading and below crossover frequency?) HAS to contribute significantly to the sonic signature or "personality" of the speakers.
As for the treble responses, I see different things going on. The Falcons place both drivers down -6dB at crossover and in reverse polarity, a quasi-LR2 alignment which has become fairly standard practice in recent years. They sum reasonably flat through the crossover region, with a slightly lifted HF response (an obvious design choice) and a lot of hash in the upper treble, probably attributable to diffraction nasties off the protruding cabinet edges. The WB appears to be using Butterworth transfer functions, with both drivers in positive polarity, down -3dB and 90 degrees out of phase at crossover. Measured on the tweeter axis, this will quite predictably result in a peak at crossover frequency and a phase cancellation dip just below. On the "correct" axis, somewhat below the tweeter, this should level out a bit as the phase falls into place.
As a speaker DIYer who works long and hard to achieve the flattest, most neutral response with the best possible phase tracking an octave or more either side of crossover, I find it intriguing that these rather gross response anomalies should sound pleasing to two highly experienced listeners. I've got an old graphic EQ in a closet somewhere. I may have to dig it out, put it in the system, and dial up a big spike at 1kHz just to hear what that sounds like. Who knows, I might like it!
Just a thought:
You need to re-create all conditions of that peak. It is pretty sharp. I believe a GEQ will have a much lower q cenetered around each frequency. Remember: A feedback destroyer works by finding reaonant frequencies, and filtering them out with ultra-sharp filters. Concidered to be inaudible, but a microphone set to 1/48th or higher woukd likely pick it up. Cool, but most times too much information is no good either because we then take it and fool ourselvs things are there, or not there, that are or arent....at a single point in space, one speaker driven, and so on. The complex sum of what we hear with both channels driven, room interaction, and HRTF's does not always mean a single responce measurement is quantifiable as "good information". Its a snapshot, like the Alamo, from one direction you see majestic history, from another you see 'meriga. More important that anything, and those very few I trust can weigh everything involved, and the summation of ALL data points concidered with good, well educated coorelations formed yeilds a very good picture. I am unsure any reviewer or publisher gets it right all the time however I am always inclined, when the data seems marginal, to aire tword the human expirence.
Edits: 08/18/15
Plus it's op-amp based and probably degrades the signal, adds a tiny amount of hiss, the bands aren't narrow enough, and everything you said.
1,000 Hz is a funny neighborhood...
If the recording you are listening to is of a baritone singing Schumann's "Dichterliebe," there's one song with an unaccompanied prologue, "Ich hab im' Traum geweinet."
The first five notes are B-flats at circa 474 Hz, and being low male voice, the overtones are weak. If you were to EQ that phrase with a narrow 6dB peak circa 1,000 Hz, I rather doubt it would sound shockingly different at the listening position.
Whereas 1,000 Hz is near the fundamental of the first notes of the violin solo part of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (B = 987 Hz), and a peak up there may at the listening position just seem that the soloist's mic (or mics) was goosed up in the mix somewhat.
(I say "up there" because even though 1kHz is below almost all applicable crossover frequencies, I do not consider it "midrange" but rather, looking at a piano keyboard, it is treble. Are the any music listeners who think that he opening of the solo part of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto does not take place in the treble region?)
So, I will continue to state that in its price range, I think that the Wilson Benesch Square One is a very respectable contender with much to recommend it--at least from the listening chair.
But most people already know that, as previously mentioned, I have loved the sound of Shahianian's larger speakers; but in the interest of alerting the unwary, I did go so far as to call their sound "wide-screen" and "Technicolor."
At the end of the day I think this is another case of Horses for Courses (please follow the link below, as it is one of my best all-time efforts), and that the most important thing is that no French people were harmed in the making of my column.
ATB,
JM
I like your term "intriguing," rather than the term JA used, "surprising." Why would JA be "surprised" that a reviewer enjoyed a speaker that didn't measure the way JA thinks it should? As mentioned multiple times in this thread, it happens all the time, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'd also like to comment on some of the IN-ROOM speaker frequency response measurements that JA has published in the past. I think these are fascinating in that, in just about every case, when two even vastly different speakers are compared in-room, the graphs seem to track each other almost perfectly. I would say we are seeing a frequency response graph of the room, just as much as the speaker.
I've also noticed that in JA's room, there is a frequency bump at 50-60 hz and a drop-off at 40 hz with just about every speaker he tests there, then a rise again at 30 hz. Based on the Stereophile Test CD test tone track, this is the same type of response that occurs in my room. Perhaps this is more common than not?
Edits: 08/18/15
And the second most important is whether the amp is well-suited to driving the speaker in terms of its electrical load and back EMF.
I don't think that there is any question that having flat measured frequency response is one desirable characteristic for loudspeaker performance. But it is not the only one. The character of the dispersion is important, and the presence or absence of distortion is important.
I think that it is a respectable position (I did not say it is the majority position) that phase coherence in the crossover region is so important that if in order to maximize that in a particular design at a given price point, flatness of frequency response might have to give way.
I have heard at least one loudspeaker that claimed to measure flat anechoically that could be problematic in real-world rooms, with the result that the speaker was tri-amped with active crossovers... which I am sure were meant to be used.
I am not a loudspeaker designer. However, I think that I have a fair amount of experience as a listener, and some of my recordings have found favor. I wish that I could say that the sum total of all the wisdom I have gained since 1966 or so could be expressed as: "Buy a loudspeaker with the flattest quasi-anechoic measurements you can find, and live with it and be happy regardless of what your room is like," but that is not the case.
Which is why I am a big fan of room treatments, which I last dealt with at the attached link.
ATB,
JM
Those diffusors make me dizzy ............ yeow
I really like those concentric circle diffusors. Maybe for the next project, I'll be spending a LOT of quality time with my router!
No news here, all Stereophile writers get thrown under the bus usually by the readers. It was just John Marks' turn in the barrel.
Edits: 08/17/15
The spice of life?
...when major equipment reviews had another reviewer comment, I recall some disagreements about the quality of the sound to the extent of one reviewer calling the other, "You ignorant slut" with tongue in cheek, of course.
Back then, ignorant slut ............... Ha !
Two people disagree and the walls come tumbling down? I think not. A disagreement between gentlemen.I greatly value both of their opinions as both are reviewers, audiophiles, and especially that they both love to record music as best they can.
I remember an SACD player that Fremer liked and JA said measured poorly, so from that point on a review with no measurements always left some miniscule doubt for me.
Still, if Mr. Atkinson or Mr. Marks liked something I would have no problem investing in it.
Jim Tavegia
Edits: 08/16/15
I guess now factual statements that shine a light the advertising/review paradigm are vapor. Nice job JA.
Numerous spherical objects. Imputing corrupt intent is a cheap shot. Not fun, not enlightening, and best ignored (but I couldn't resist, sorry).
> I guess now factual statements that shine a light the advertising/review
> paradigm are vapor. Nice job JA.
Nothing to do with me. I suspect that the Preventing Dead Horses From Being
Beaten Society filed a complaint with the authorities. :-)
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Ok, then, Moot Point, since it will be taken care of by the Forum Gods. Regardless of any validity.Then, permit me, if I am may, to ask a question about the Jitterbug. I have not seen your review yet. I have ordered on to use on the output of my Bryston BDP-2.
I noted you say your measurements did not correlate to the improvement in sound quality. I am not surprised, as it seems not everything is measurable, especially in digital audio.
How did you use the Jitterbug? Multiple units in series? In parallel? At the host and receiver side? I'm starting with one and will move on from there.
Edits: 08/16/15
> How did you use the Jitterbug? Multiple units in series? In parallel? At
> the host and receiver side?
First with a single J'Bug at the host end of the USB cable, then with a
second J'Bug plugged into a second port on the same USB bus. (AudioQuest
does not recommended using more than 2 in parallel on the same bus.)
I did find some measurable differences between one or two JitterBugs and
no JitterBugs, but as I explain in the review they were smaller than the
difference I found between powering my MacBook Pro as the host from its
battery or from its AC adapter.
For the measurements I was using a very short USB cable. One thing that
emerged after the review had been printed was that Gordon Rankin suggests
using a very long USB cable to bring the measurable difference out from
the DAC's noise floor. That's something I will try when I get a respite
from preparing the next issue.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Thank you. So if I understand correctly, Rankin only recommends the use of a long USB cable for measurement purposes, but not for use in general?
You may find it amusing, that despite AQ's suggestion of using no more than 2 Jitterbugs, of course there are out there posters on various hardcore computer audio forums claiming the use of 4 and even 6 Jitterbugs improves performance.
> So if I understand correctly, Rankin only recommends the use of a long USB
> cable for measurement purposes, but not for use in general?That's correct. The long cable will marginalize the USB transmission to
the point that the effect of the JitterBug will be more easily measurable.
IIRC, Gordon told me that he used a 5-meter USB cable when working on the
JitterBug's design.> You may find it amusing, that despite AQ's suggestion of using no more
> than 2 Jitterbugs, of course there are out there posters on various
> hardcore computer audio forums claiming the use of 4 and even 6 Jitterbugs
> improves performance.Not so much amusing as puzzling. As I understand it, the JitterBug
filters the balanced data lines, so adding additional JitterBugs will
eventually reduce the cable's bandwidth below that necessary to optimally
transmit the data.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 08/16/15
Thanks for the additional information. Of course, there is much hysteria that develops around all new computer audio tweaks.
There is much discussion on CA about the fact if these add ons work so effectively, like the Jitterbug, the Schit Wyred, or the UpTone REGEN, it
provides little confidence in the USB transmission system.
JA and AD are even more often at odds when it comes to measurements vs. enjoyment, and AD got promoted.
The integrity of Stereophile reviewers is very high compared to the average gear magazine.
No, it doesn't match Plato's standard of the "ideal". Nothing in this world does, especially if you have to sell it.
All categories are arbitrary.
If I am wrong, fuzzy logic wouldn't work.
Plato has a good deal to answer for.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
...and is posting under the name Ladok. Good lord, will these outbursts of righteous indignation never end? Throwing John Marks under the bus? That's ridiculous. I don't know what kind of thrill so many people here get just by raising spurious arguments against a prominent magazine in the field. These posts just keep coming, feeding the egos of those who think it is some kind of accomplishment to take issue over insignificant points with an industry leader just because it's there. I think a good "Never mind" is in order.
-Bob
By the way, it's called "Critics Corner," not "Kiss-Ass Corner." And I don't think anyone appointed you as the arbiter of what is or isn't appropriate subject material for posting on this site. You can disagree with me all you want, but any attempt at censorship will be politely disregarded.
Is that I got John Marks' name wrong. Sorry, John. As my old newspaper editor once told me, "Accruacy, Accruacy, Accruacy!"
Lol
"If it measures good and sounds bad, -- it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, -- you've measured the wrong thing."
D. von Recklinghausen
In Floyd Toole's book "Sound Reproduction - Loudspeaker and Rooms" he mentions very early in the book a quote from some loudspeaker pioneers. Again, apologies for not having it handy however my library is currently packed away. It simply states:
"Not everything meaningful is measurable, and not everything measurable is meaningful"
A single aberration, high -q may not be audible. This was proven to me (which yourself is the only one you ever need convince of anything) when a loudspeaker which won an informal shoot-out actually had a 6dB dip, in the vicinity of 2.5Khz, except the -3dB F1 was 2421 and the -3dB f2 was 2680. It was undetectable by a group of audiophiles and loudspeaker designers alike. At the end of the day, choosing to keep the flaw in the frequency domain only to make up for it in phase coherency, off axis response, distortion, among other aspects of measurable loudspeaker fodder was a smart choice. Now: we can split this hair until it is microscopic, and perhaps a VERY large and prominent loudspeaker company should have had more attention to detail, but they did not in this case and any assumption good or bad as to why will remain just that.
We are a very VERY flawed species. We all like to think we hear far better than we actually do, and we are not subject to things like the availability bias. However I would question if JA heard what he did because he saw it measured, or once he saw the measurement he used it to explain what he heard and his memory got the best of him and filled in some blanks. It may not be either.
I trust JA's measurements. I trust John Marks' ears. However no medium is perfect and at some point, it's time to start listening to the music. We all started somewhere and frankly, the experience matters far more than perfection. At some point you have to stop and listen to the music without looking for flaws. When you do you will find yourself getting goosebumps more often as you are moved not by how bad a product is, rather the music you hear.
Loudspeakers are terrible - not yours of coarse - but in general. They are by far the highest distortion devices in most systems, they are terribly inefficient, and really: They are the bastard children of any system. They get blamed for a lot of flaws that are not their own, but also get credit not due when the electronics are polishing a turd. What makes them interesting to most is that they are the most tangible to the music you can get. Their premise is fairly understandable and switching one for another generated the largest change both visually and audibly.
Loudspeaker designers who appreciate the art (Addressed in Toole's book very early - chapter 2) as well as the science, respect both, and understand why they are really designing a loudspeaker have a great deal to balance. If that means leaving a hiccup to avoid flattus - well I can be glad they made the choice and will enjoy the music - which seems to be the case in the title match "JA Vs. JM : Wilson B. or die. JA was clearly from mars where JM was from Venus. Does not make either one of them "more righter" than the other. I will end with stating I had the pleasure of hearing the Square one and I, for one, found them very enjoyable with some of the best honest to goodness musical resolution and I have ever heard. While the bass they had was amazing in quality it lacked severely in extension and unfortunately a loudspeaker which cannot extend at least to the bottom of a 4 string bass has very little use for me and my musical tastes. Does not mean I think it was a bad speaker - quite the opposite and it should be considered no matter the musical taste if that is the size/range one is shopping in. This leaves fate ultimately being that of the individual where it belongs.
IMHO-YMMV
> I would question if JA heard what he did because he saw it measured, or
> once he saw the measurement he used it to explain what he heard...
That is a great question. It is why Stereophile's reviewers don't see any
measurements until after they have submitted their reviews.
Obviously, the exception is myself, which is why I don't do any measuring
of a product I am reviewing until after I have done the bulk of the
auditioning. In the case of the Wilson-Benesch speaker, I heard the upper-
midrange emphasis with the MLSSA signal as soon as I started measuring it
and once something is heard, it is very difficult to unhear.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
John,
I noticed that J.M. said he listened with the speakers completely toed in to the listening postion. What toe-in angle did you listen at?
My reason for asking is that the high crossover frequency that Wilson Benesch uses in their designs will make the speakers very sensitive to toe-in due to the mismatched dispersion characteristics of the drivers. And in all their demos they seem to have the speakers pointed straight ahead.
The W-B tweeter used in their Geometry series speakers has a shallow waveguide, which presumably helps improve the handover. I would not expect the waveguide to affect the midrange balance though.
It should sound fantastic with toobs and bright and horrible with SS ...
But if anyone wants to call the Luxman M-700 "tube-like" in its musical refinement, I will not throw down the gauntlet.
I don't own any gauntlets...
jm
Is "toob like" a positive ....?
> I don't do any measuring of a product I am reviewing until after I have
> done the bulk of the auditioning.For example, with the AudioQuest JitterBug that I reviewed in the September
issue, I spent a day trying and failing to find significant measurable
differences made by the thing _after_ I had completed my auditioning and
had been convinced it made a significant improvement to sound quality.If I had done the measurements first, it would have been all too easy for me
to dismiss the JitterBug as having no audible effect.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 08/16/15 08/16/15
This message has been moved to a more appropriate venue .
At least it shows that the editor and the reviewer are not in bed together to promote products. Both offered their honest assessments and they are what they are. What's wrong with that. Sort of keeps things interesting, no?
marc g. - audiophile by day, music lover by night
Edits: 08/15/15
This message has been moved to a more appropriate venue .
.
...he has questioned reviewer's listening opinions before when there is something unusual in the measurements you might think they would notice.
As he should.
I don't feel thrown under the bus.
So, I agree with you Mike, and thanks for posting.
Even back when I was writing for TAS, John Atkinson and I had a cordial relationship and at some point we worked out a tacit gentleman's agreement that we agreed to disagree on the sound of the big Shahinian loudspeakers.
So, John and I have disagreed about sound in the past and most likely will in the future, and it has not impacted my sense of self-worth all that much; and our few disagreements have never left me feeling that John believed I was deaf.
I also have to point out that while we may have somewhat differing approaches to sound, I think that it is rather surprising (but perhaps not) that over the years, time and again, when I mentioned a favorite work or recording, John would reply that the same has long meant much to him.
Examples include the Sir David Willcocks "An Oxford Elegy" (as rarely-heard work as any from any major composer), and the pipe-organ piece "Master Tallis's Testament," which was included on "Pipes Rhode Island" and was a pleasant surprise for John when I played the work-in-progress on the large MBL speakers at a NYC hi-fi show. You really could have heard a pin drop--a peak experience.
In my listening chair 8 or 9 feet from the centerline between the speakers, I was not consciously aware of the wrinkle circa 1,000 Hz that shows up in JA's measurements.
Being a columnist and not a reviewer, I get to "scratch and sniff" loudspeakers, and if I decide they are not worth recommending, I send them back, and so experiences over the past year or year-plus have told me that the Wilson Benesch Square One Series II is--by my tastes and prejudices--an excellent loudspeaker for the money, and I enjoyed my time with it immensely.
So, a tempest in a teacup rather than a de-bus-ustration.
(We need a word that is "defenestration," except from a bus.)
I also have to point out that even though JA never "got" the Shahinian sound, he graciously included the Obelisk in the 50th-Anniversary issue's list of significant audio products.
I was touched, and I think it must have meant an awful lot to Dick and to Vasken.
OK?
John Marks
John:
How 'bout"subbusification"?
On the issue, I'd have thought that "I don't hear what you hear" is a reviewer's daily meal and the reason why sites like this exist; not much point in conversing only with those who agree about everything. Anyway, I am glad that you don't feel offended in the salient context. Of course, others' feeling offended on your behalf is another issue and at a higher level of abstraction.
Jeremy
> Is this a fair comment to make about your own reviewer based only on
> measurements?Yes.
> Why did you not add your listening impressions before throwing your
> own employee under the bus?My own listening impressions were not out of line with the measured
performance. And I did share my findings with John before committing
them to print.> If I were John Mark or any other reviewer, I'd expect a little more
> consideration from my editor.My reviewers are grown-ups. They are fully aware that our primary
responsibility is to our readers, not to them.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Edits: 08/15/15
And surely disagreement is the spice of life?
Jeremy
Well then, the "grown up" thing to do would have been to criticize the way the speakers measure without making it sound like the reviewer must be deaf.
I dont get it , in actuality this is what one would expect from stereophiles two reviewer process , subjective and objective reasoning , I'm glad JA made his point , my only wish is for them to do it more often....
Regards
Edits: 08/15/15
> the "grown up" thing to do would have been to criticize the way the
> speakers measure without making it sound like the reviewer must be deaf.
That is exactly what I did. You are projecting too much into what I wrote.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Nice work, your guardian angels wave their magic wand again. A "more appropriate venue"? What a joke.
" If it sounds good and measures bad, you are measuring the wrong thing"
Do you think that a subjective analysis of imperfect software is always more accurate than measurements, especially multiple measurements made by some one with decades of experience both measuring and listening giving such a person some perspective on relating listening to scientific measuring. The reasons we do both is to warn both sides of potential problems. Good measurements done by discerning people do work and give us meaningful insight. Just one example. Decades ago a friend picked record cartridge, not knowing even who made it from a frequency curve and a KHz square wave. It is doable, not all the time but often.
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: