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In Reply to: RE: High end audio = musical accuracy, you must be kidding! posted by KlausR. on January 30, 2008 at 06:29:54
"Second, what makes you think that my speakers use Class D amps? FYI, they don't!"
They have at the very least switch mode power supplies. As to the description well they mention very low power dissipation, does that sound like Class A or even AB to you? Maybe Class B otherwise class D. It is not the power supply that dissipates energy it is the biasing of the active amplification circuits. A switch mode power supply just makes things smaller and cheaper. You can make a Class A amp using a switch mode supply. The specifically point out low dissipation of energy and coupled with their A/D DSP based equalization and it seems pretty clear the way they went. Unless you have documentation to the contrary?
"Where did I say such a thing? FYI, I didn't!!!"
Doesn't matter what you SAID its in your speaker's design, which is clear from the measurements provided. You are holding them up as the gold standard so therefore you implicitly agree that this is an important design criteria.
As you can also see from the maximum SPL, the spec of 1% at 123db is misleading. The bass can't even get to this level with the power built in (max is about 105db at below 70hz). This is typical nonsensical specification making. In fact, the only place they hit over 120db (not that I care about how loud they get just showing the fallacy of specs that even there own measurements put to lie) is between 200 and 1Khz. As I said, rubbish specs. The distortion in the bass is quite high compared to say the Wilson X1 below 100Hz. Don't believe me? Look here:
http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/909/index10.html
As you can see even at 18Hz and 106db the Wilson X1 has lower distortion than your speaker at 60Hz and 100db. At the same frequency its a joke! The Wilson is -50db at 106db and your speaker is only an audible -20db!!
The frequency response, in-room and NOT anechoic, is +- 2.5db from 20Hz to 13 or so Khz. That is pretty damn linear in-room. With DSP (like your speakers have) we can make that pretty much how we want.
Your speakers measure very flat in FR, no surprise given DSP built-in, but tell me how that measurement was made? Anechoically? Then it bears little resemblance to the REAL FR in-room. Now I know with DSP you can make it better again (I use DSP myself remember?). So I don't even count FR as important anymore because it is so easily corrected.
"Does this look like nearfield?"
Yes it does. Are yours mounted on the wall like that too?? I am sure that is really good for soundstage...not! What about those monitors on the desktop?
"As for the car analogy you brought up, if anything is rubbish, then it is this analogy. The technical goal of hifi is faithful (read accurate) reproduction of the recorded event. Very clear and only measurably accurate gear has the capability to achieve that goal. Now cars: what's the technical goal of a car? To get you from A to B. Any car with a working engine will do that, goal achieved, no need to measure anything. Now be more restrictive: to get from A to B as fast as possible, A and B being the end points of a 2 mile straight line on an airport runway. Now guess what measurements you need and which car will win?"
Your whole line of reasoning is rubbish, Klaus! Nobody buys a car this way!! No one. Nobody should buy audio this way either.
Your definition of the technical goals for audio are IMO thinking from a pure engineering perspective and not the end users perspective. The technical goal of audio is to reproduce the sound as accurately as possible...to the LISTENER. It is ASSUMED by the engineering community (at least the majority of them) that this can be achieved by making technical measurements as good as possible (they have also ASSUMED what makes a good measurement). This assumption has been shown over DECADES to be a false assumption and that it is much more complicated to make audio that SOUNDS good to listeners than the mere specs and measurements suggest. Otherwise, we would have achieved perfection a long time ago.
For example, it was once assumed that perfect FR for speakers would make them sound all more or less the same. In fact its not the case. Then distortion makes its presence on the measurement scene, but most speakers have relatively benign low order harmonic distortion that honestly doesn't make much difference. If you want to look where speaker sound different look at the materials used, the dispersion, the cabinet, the crossover etc. All of these are 2nd or lower order effects but they define the overall character of a speaker.
I have played around with DSP a lot and my friends and I have TACTed and Behringered plenty of speakers. Even if I make the FR curve the same, if I change the phase between the drivers it sounds different! The measurements of your K&H speakers tell me NOTHING about how they would sound in a real room except that they will throw sound consistently in a lot of directions and that they may well be bright sounding because the FR is flat to 20Khz and the dispersion is still around 30 degrees without dropping off.
"Where do my speakers have wide dispersion? "
Its right there in the measurements by K&H!! 30 degrees at high frequency is pretty wide actually.
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