In Reply to: Those darn measurements ! posted by J. Phelan on June 23, 2017 at 15:17:03:
It seems like every time there is a controversial Stereophile loudspeaker review, whether it was a negative review or a positive review with bad measurements, the review is lacking an in-room response measurement. OK, maybe not every time, but it always seems to be lacking when they're reviewing a controversial speaker that is either designed for near wall placement, or employs directivity control.
I don't need an in-room measurement for conventional box speakers designed for placement away from walls with dome tweeters and cone midranges & woofers, because I know from experience how their pseudo-anechoic measurements translate. But in cases like Sjöfn The Clue and the Volti Rival, I think the in-room measurement tells you more than the pseudo-anechoic measurement.
With the Volti Rival, if all you look at is the nearfield, on-axis, pseudo-anechoic response, you might be unimpressed. But if you assume this speaker is intended to be placed in a relatively live, untreated room where power response matters most, a lot of the problems go away. Those ragged looking peaks and valleys in the lower treble are reversed off-axis. Similarly, the rising treble response on-axis is countered by narrowing dispersion off-axis. So I would expect that the power response of the midrange + tweeter is a lot flatter than you might think.
The real mystery here is the level mismatch between the woofer and the other drive units, which seems to be about 5 dB. That should be an easily audible flaw, so it's a bit strange for Ken to say that the speaker has no house sound, compared to his DeVore's. An in-room measurement showing the response of the Volti vs. the DeVore in Ken's room would shed a lot of light on that.
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Follow Ups
- Sad there is no in-room measurement - Dave_K 13:30:36 06/24/17 (6)
- RE: Sad there is no in-room measurement - Ayya Khema 20:51:42 07/01/17 (1)
- RE: Sad there is no in-room measurement - A.Wayne 07:01:15 07/02/17 (0)
- RE: Sad there is no in-room measurement - morricab 02:08:15 06/26/17 (0)
- RE: Sad there is no in-room measurement - J. Phelan 15:54:59 06/24/17 (2)
- I think both are important - Dave_K 13:02:05 06/25/17 (0)
- For some speaker types, I agree - E-Stat 06:40:56 06/25/17 (0)