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As a professional speaker designer......

... I have some unique and solid insight into the matter.

First of all, let me say this: unless you are INTIMATELY familiar with acoustic measurements, and all their foibles and problems, etc., you are more likley to be mislead or confused by measurement results than aided by them.

Second, any given set of loudspeaker measurements are only truly usefull and meaningful to the person who took them. I can take the exact same speaker, and give you a dozen different sets of measurements, and each one would look like a different speaker was being measured. Each measurement set would be a valid and logical way to take the measurements, and would be (more or less) equally 'valid' as the others, yet they would all look very different from one another.

Third, you would think that I, as a professional, can glean all kinds of insight into loudspeakers which have had a set of measurements taken and displayed, but because of the above situation, unless I know exactly how the measurements were taken, in most instances, I can not necessarily infer that much from the measurement results. In other words, if I am being honest with myself, then looking at a set of loudspeaker measurements that I did not take, does not provide me with that much solid information.

Finally, I want to say that, when I am in the development phase of a loudspeaker, I use measurements extensively (taken in a manner that I find useful and helpful) to guide my design efforts, but when it comes down to the final voicing, I do the final tweaking by ear, based on a set of pre-determined design limits to assure good end results that are not violating impedance minimums or dissipation maximums. Put another way, I do NOT let the measured flatness of the FR curve be the final dictate, what matters is how it listens.

All of the above is a round-a-bout way of saying that, subjective listening is all that SHOULD be required to evaluate a loudspeaker system, as it is all too easy to be fooled by any given set of measurements.

When is flat FLAT? How much of a resonance is too much? What amount of time domain distortion is too much? You can stare at any particular set of the objective measurement results of these kinds of things until you are blue in the face, but the real bottom line is: what does it SOUND like?


Jon Risch


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