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In Reply to: RE: Measurements vs. Reviewers posted by hahax@verizon.net on August 19, 2015 at 09:29:16
Hi,
And Dr. Toole is definitely correct. At Harman, they do measurements that allow them full sound power, as well as directivity at pretty much ever angle. As I said in my article, companies such like that one do volumes of measurements that publications don't.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Follow Ups:
Doug,
That's the way it's supposed to be. The manufacturers are the ones who do the measurements. Not us. I expect no less from Harman. That's their job. Not our job.
Actually that is part of the reviewer's job, to verify a manufacturer's technical claims. Your excuse is can only mean to me that you have neither the equipment nor the skill in all likelihood to make those measurements. Instead you just give your opinion. So you review an amplifier that claims 500 watts per channel, you review it and tell us how great it sounds, and then when I buy it I find out it only puts out 200 watts per channel. Is that your idea of a review? Well it's not mine.
John Atkinson provides speaker measurements without ever telling us how much distortion a woofer puts out. All that supposed deep bass might just be doubling but he and we'd never know it until we hear it for ourselves. I've yet to see one of your reviews that was critical of any equipment. Everything you publish seems to me like an extension of the manufacturer's advertising. Well they're good for a laugh if nothing else.
Without measurements to back it up a review is a practically useless anecdote.
As you can tell from this long discussion, I'm on the side of measurements. Unfortunately most reviewers don't have access to these tools. But I do believe a review can still be useful especially from a reviewer who has written often. You can get a sense of his biases over a long period and use this to know what he's hearing. And I do believe there have been a few really good subjective reviewers such as Gordon Holt and recently Roy Gregory who you can glean tons of info from.
Something like Dayton Omnimic is easy to use and can be purchased on Amazon for $300. I think every audiophile should be equipped to make in-room acoustic measurements and should use them to help system/room setup and optimization. But I know that few do.
If I were reviewing speakers, I would want to make measurements to help with placement and to get the most out of them.
It's not enough. As Doug Schneider has written in this discussion it needs lots of measurements and someone who knows how to interpret them. Otherwise designing or criticizing speakers would be a snap.
You said most reviewers don't have access to measurement tools, which is nonsense. For acoustic measurements, any reviewer has access to suitable tools.
You don't need an anechoic chamber. A chamber is surely nice, but reviewers like John Atkinson and Martin Colloms are able to make useful measurements without one. And more importantly, most speaker designers manage to do OK without one as well.
I'm not even asking for reviewers to possess the engineering background necessary to interpret a full suite of measurements. If all reviewers would just use basic in-room FR measurements to optimize speaker positioning, and then include an in-room measurement with comparison to their reference speakers, we would be a lot better off.
In his speaker reviews, John Atkinson often includes a spatially averaged in-room response compared to another reference. This one plot is more useful than all his other loudspeaker measurements combined, because it correlates best with his subjective impressions. Also, by comparing and contrasting the measurements of various speakers in the same room, you can separate the speakers' signature from the room's signature. I don't know why every reviewer doesn't do this.
I'd actually like measurements we usually don't see and could be hard to do. In one case I'd like to see the transfer function of each driver and its crossover, that is the frequency response of an isolated driver/crossover combo.
Why so hard on opinion only reviewers, a tier one reviewer opinion trumps all , no need to listen just buy ..
:)
I do find some purely subjective reviews to be useful as long as they include comparisons with other equipment of similar design & price or with references I'm familiar with. When that's lacking as well, it's hard to call it a review.
I agree with you.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Hi Peter,
I guess it depends what you figure your job is.
As a review, measurements are valid. As I explained in my article, they might not tell you everything about the way a product sounds, but they do tell you certain aspects about the product, and they can help you to tell a product has been competently designed or not. I don't take magazines too seriously that don't do them.
Doug Schneider
SoundStage!
Have to agree ....
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