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Some people such as Richard Hardesty state good speaker measurement is the cornerstone of performance. He states while good speaker measurements doesn't ensure a good sounding speaker, one that displays uneven frequency response, time coherence, or phase anomalies shouldn't even be considered for further subjective review. He states a speaker is adding distortion if it can't accurately reproduce the waveform from the input recording.Others disagree with this premise and believe subjective listening is the only true measure of a speakers performance. Some in this group believe colorations in speakers are a good thing because they enhance the listening experience. But does this imply as listeners we're moving away from trying to recreate a live acoustic event?
How much attention should we pay to speaker measurements when they're provided in reviews such as Stereophile? Or if they're not provided such as with TAS does that make the review suspect? Further when speaker measurements conflict with a positive review, does that make the reviewer credentials suspect?
Follow Ups:
Unless, you are the rare one who is perfectly familiar with the master tapes? Most of us are forced to use our own fantastic judgements about sound in this hobby, and the word "judgment" implies the presence of subjectivism. Sometimes, I think these objective eggheads are flattering themselves a little bit.
"Audiophiles" might wonder why we might be sometimes regarded as a little odd and perhaps rather "anal" by the rest of humanity?...Hell's teeth!...
Bill.
So the objectivist/subjectivist debate still has a faint gaspy breath left (bfd). As far as I'm concerned, if one does not well and truly enjoy listening to music. If they are not well and truly actually having fun. As in a romping rollicking goofy fun good time. Then they have my sympathy.Certainly some do enjoy reading Phile (no law agin masochism either). And some enjoy reading/watching their meters (even some tube amp manufacturers/designers). However one gets there, they get there. But not getting there, not having any fun? There still is a little fun left [in spite of what we've told the twenty-somethings ("we used all the fun up")]. There really is.
The fun is out there.
There are far too many speaker brands and models for one person to hear -- so measurements can steer you toward speakers that are more likely to be above average ... a group which may include something you really like.Better than flipping a coin, and not always in agreement with the "I'm so excited by this new product" reviews (text).
Most audiophiles (people who enjoy listening to recorded music) are also StereoEquipmentPhiles (people who like audio components) ... so some portions of our time is devoted to listening to music, and other portions are devoted to learning about audio, fine-tuning our systems and auditioning new components.
The only important question is whether an audiophile can 'put aside' the equipment and enjoy his music with a 'one-day-at-a-time' attitude: "My components are good enough for today and I will not find fault with them while I listen to my music".
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
It tends to mean that you end up listening to a lot of speakers with similar measurements and much less variation in sound than exists across the market as a whole. I think you can pre-select speakers for audition on the basis of characteristics that are important to you and sometimes, for example with speaker efficiency if the speaker is going to be used with a low power amp, it makes exceptional sense. You definitely don't want to waste your time with 85 dB efficient speakers if you're going to pair them with a 1-2 w/ch SET in a reasonable sized room.But I think shortlisting by specification is often unnecessarily limiting. It ensures that to some degree you won't be exposed to the full range of different approaches and products out there. It's possible that you might well be pleasantly surprised by a speaker you would not have chosen for audition on the basis of measurements. I've often found that some of the best things in life come as a surprise. I like to allow myself some leeway to be surprised whenever I can. When speaker shopping I tend to assemble a list of speakers in my price range that I am interested in for one reason or another, and to listen to anything else in that price range which the dealers I visit may have in their shops.
David Aiken
When I find two things I like equally well, that is.
After a period of time, on all the various audio forums. Patterns begin to emerge. Not necessarily clear in the beginning. But after time they can be divined. I.E. some people enjoy their hifi's, and listening to music, more than others. And ..... some general types of equipment could even be associated with those patterns. Which doesn't have a single foogin thing to do with Sterophile, measurements, audio equipment dealers, or how ever "many speaker brands and models" dance on the head of a pin.After going S.E.T. some eight or nine years ago, and then resultantly looking at measurements of commercial loudspeakers. I was steered only to fields of manure. I will not tread those fields again. I've built my own speakers the last five or so years, and don't anticipate any change in that m.o. during my lifetime.
From a previous post of mine, in High Efficiency: "Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed with the rich buttery sound carrying the music aloft, I exclaim to no one: uh huh .... that's right, I own the damn frequency!"
C'ya-bye :-)
In these days of digital correction it is possible for a speaker to have virtually ideal measurements on and off axis--and be almost unlistenable.I learned this the hard way. Good measurements are highly desirable. Good sound reminiscent of live music (with the right sources) is even more so.
You decide which speakers you like first.Then you search for measurements of them that would have predicted, or at least suggested, that you were likely to enjoy them.
If any measurement(s) can be found, then that measurement correlates with what you hear.
"Virtually ideal measurements" that are "almost unlistenable" is an oxymoron.
Just becuase you design speakers that get good reviews doesn't mean we have to agree with everything (or anything) you write!
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
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If any measurement(s) can be found, then that measurement correlates with what you hear.How do you know what you want to be the answer is the answer? Engineering fools have been doing that for decades using simplistic metrics like THD.
rw
in basic deductive logic?Seriously, - you really need some help with logic.
Watching the reel as it comes to a close,
Brutally taking it's time,
People who change for no reason at all,
It's happening all of the time.
Your comments are understandable but completely off the mark.Some years back I collaborated with a company called DGX to build a fully corrected dual 8" 2 way floorstander. It was a sealed design with big magnet woofers and the expensive Morel softdome. The correction provided flat FR from 20Hz to 20kHz on axis, excellent off axis linearity, a recognizable square wave, phase coherence within 10 degrees of perfect broadband, and low distortion. Everything you could want.
Measurements were made in the world's largest anechoic chamber with great care by an experienced engineer.
Hooking it up at CES I found the sound appalling: grainy, harsh, thin, colored, quite unrealistic and ultimately unlistenable. You should have been there. I refused to exhibit the system and had an expensive falling out with my business partners.
Good measurements with bad sound is no oxymoron.
BTW I later had a similar experience with digital correction in my own heavily treated soundroom. Great measurements, poor listening quality. The engineers for the company which made the software and hardware were present at the time.
Later the DGX people attempted to market their own corrected speaker which failed in the marketplace. Audio Magazine received a review pair, confirmed the measurements, but found the sound wanting and refused to review it.
You may have thought the set of measurements used were the right measurements for speakers.But after you listened to the speakers, you found out those measurements were, at best, not 100% accurate (for your ears), or at worst, were not the right measurements at all to identify speakers you will like in your room.
Of course you are using only one set of ears in one listening room to claim measurements don't always work -- we have to ASSUME most other listeners would have the same opinion, and we have to ASSUME the speakers would sound just as bad in another room (the sound quality description reminds me of Blose Acoustimess Shreikers).
Bad measurements will usually correlate with speakers that sound bad, or are at least colored.
"Good measurements" will usually correlate with good speakers.
But no measurements are perfect.
Measurements may not have perfect correlation with subjective auditions in our own rooms, but they are much better than flipping a coin when it comes to deciding which of hundreds of speaker brands and models we ought to audition before we buy speakers.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
Your post is a long non-sequitur. I chose not to exhibit a bad-sounding speaker system that had nearly perfect anechoic measurements, which you advocate as some kind of benchmark. As John Risch and I have now both pointed out many common speaker measurements are worse than useless because they are misleading, and they are the ones that usually get attention from audiophiles. You dispute my professional opinion and experience, which is your privilege on a public forum. But your opinions are unfounded and of no value here, on least on this subject.
If "many common speaker measurements are worse than useless because they are misleading", then I have to assume you do not use these measurements for your own speakers ... although you claim to know a lot about these measurements for a person who rejects them as "worse than useless"!Are you claiming that "nearly perfect anechoic measurements" are WORSE than flipping a coin when deciding which speakers to audition?
If so, we disagree.
Do you just like to argue with, and insult, any audiophiles who don't agree with everything you post?
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
"Put that in your pipe and smoke it."That was you, ending your reply to Mr. Cheney's first post. Maybe you deserve to be treated with a touch of disrespect. Good behavior shouldn't be limited to the professional manufacturers. "Do you just like to argue with, and insult, any audiophiles who don't agree with everything you post?" Again, that was you. Looking at the posts in this thread, you reaped what you sowed.
Robert, perhaps you would have noticed my complement in the prior sentence if you had not been so busy data-mining to get the ONE sentence just perfect to throw back in my face!I disagreed with Cheney in my post, so he would have come back with a hard-hitting putdown-post whether I had included "Put that in your post and smoke it", or not. And that line was intended to be funny --it's hardly a character attack by the standards here.
Cheney didn't disappoint me with his usual hard-hitting I'm-an-expert and-you're-not counterattack post, which is quite common for him in posts (check his history), and is proof that he actually wrote the post rather than an employee, who would have been polite ... because Cheney is a rude blowhard when someone doesn't agree with him. He has also designed very good speakers and subwoofers over many years, proving that what the audio world really needs is MORE rude blowhards like Cheney!
Care to volunteer?
heh heh
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
After following (and sadly in the past being a part of) the attacks on the "pros," I've come to believe that very few are actually "rude blohards" as you suggest, but get that way because their efforts at being good sports and participating in the Asylum are usually met by some buttwipe hiding behind a moniker and a keyboard doing everything possible to piss them off. (Granted, there seem to be a few over at Propheads who have always been cranky beyond belief: they get what they deserve.)I thought it poor form to goad Mr. Cheney on, when your disagreement with him could have been a simple, and friendly, one. If you take the high road, and Mr. Cheney still attacks like a rabid dog, then who could possibly think anything other than what you have suggested: that he is a "rude blohard." But if he behaves civilly in reasonable discourse, then we all win.
Cheers Richard....
There is no such thing as a friendly disagreement with Cheney because he will not compromise and will instantly revert to the "I'm an expert so I must be right" logical falacy (WHICH HAS A FANCY lATIN NAME I CAN NEVER REMEMBER).Cheney said he could use digital correction to make a speaker measure perfect but it didn't sound good. Then he gave one example of one speaker that measured well anechoically but didn't sound good to his ears in one particular room at a show.
Risch claimed measurements are too misleading for the common audiophile.
Not one of these "experts" addressed my main point that measurements can help us locate speakers worthy of an audition when there is not enough time to audition every speaker for sale ... and when nearly every review (text) seems positive.
I never said speaker measurements were even close to being perfect ... but that doesn't mean they are worthless,as Cheney and Risch would have us believe.
Now get lost, or add some audio content to this thread instead of instigatin'.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
The thread was interesting and informative until you tossed your brand of playground bullying into the mix. You seem to be in denial of your own culpability in these little battles that spring up around you. I always got a kick out of taking on the bullies in the playground. I still do. Now on to "audio content.""Not one of these "experts" addressed my main point that measurements can help us locate speakers worthy of an audition when there is not enough time to audition every speaker for sale ... and when nearly every review (text) seems positive."
Your main point was flawed. "Measurements" in the abstract mean absolutely nothing: they have to correlate with what can be heard, or they have no use. Brian showed an example of why this is so. When those same "measurements" that have no clear corollary in what is actually heard are presented to the typical audiophile (who is not an engineer or speaker designer, etc.), then those measurements are misleading. They are simply not indicative of how a speaker will sound in any given environment. Therefore, I think Risch had a point.
"Not one of these "experts" addressed my main point that measurements can help us locate speakers worthy of an audition when there is not enough time to audition every speaker for sale ... and when nearly every review (text) seems positive."That's because thay don't agree with you. Either do I. I can't hear "measurements." But I can hear music that I know, played through equipment that I know, in a space that I know. If you actually bothered to read any of these reviews that you claim are all essentially the same, you'd note that the descriptions of the performance of the speaker, with particular music choices, varies immensely. It isn't hard to determine which reviewer has similar tastes to oneself, or which conditions (room, equipment, music choice) applies best to one's own situation. So I think you're just plain wrong there as well.
"I never said speaker measurements were even close to being perfect ... but that doesn't mean they are worthless,as Cheney and Risch would have us believe."No, it doesn't. But it also doesn't mean that the extremes are the only possibility, but you seem unable to reasonably debate that. If you had, you wouldn't have taken such an aggrwessive stance to begin with. Now "put that in your pipe and smoke it," and "get lost" yourself.
Me, "aggrwessive"?
Surely you jest.
I'm a pussycat!The two speaker designers are strongly biased toward listening to their speakers because they know from experience that sometimes speakers with what appear to be average, or below average, measurements, may sound much better than they measure, or vice versa.
Every speaker designer in the world, including DIYers like me, is going to say "listen, don't measure" ... even as THEY repeatedly use measurements to aid in their designs!But we audiophiles don't have the timne to listen to every speaker for sale, so we may be able to find one or more measurements that help us identify great speakers, or help us eliminate poor speakers, so we end up auditioning mainly good speakers.
YOU BELLOWED: "Your main point was flawed. "Measurements" in the abstract mean absolutely nothing: they have to correlate with what can be heard, or they have no use"
RG response:
In my post to Risch, which I don't expect you to read, I included an important and obvious caveat:
"I'm assuming a listener over many years has compared speakers, whose sound quality he has experienced at home, with their published measurements, and HAS found some measurement(s) that generally correlates with speakers he likes and/or dislikes at home."You may not have found any measurements that correlate even roughly with what you hear.
That's too bad, because there are far too many speaker brands/models to audition, so that means you have no way to determine which speakers deserve a chance, other than the almost always positive reviews.
When you compare reviews of similarly priced speakers, each reviewer may have different comments about how the speakers sound in his room, but it's difficult to determine which speaker is rated the best:
Each reviewer seems to enjoy the speakers, each review conclusion is almost always positive, and there is no A,B,C,D,F grade posted to summarize the review.You should end all your attack posts by stating you are not related to the actor Robert Young, who often played nice guys in the movies.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
I wonder if your own posts could withstand the type of "critical analysis" you apply to others. Most likely not."But we audiophiles don't have the time to listen to every speaker for sale, so we may be able to find one or more measurements that help us identify great speakers, or help us eliminate poor speakers, so we end up auditioning mainly good speakers."
Again, for the hard of comprehension: in the abstract, measurements are useless. In context, if one can correlate a type of measurement with a type of "sound," then they have meaning. However, that meaningful correlation can only occur AFTER extensive listening. If in the process of that extensive brain-training one can't learn to distinguish a good speaker from a bad one, then I am truly sorry for you. Not wanting to claim to represent "audiophiles" as you seem to have done, for myself my reference is what things in nature really sound like to me, not how a speaker measures.
"That's too bad, because there are far too many speaker brands/models to audition, so that means you have no way to determine which speakers deserve a chance, other than the almost always positive reviews."That's silly. I go to brick-and-mortars, and I listen. Some speakers are good, some are not, and some are great. I've never used a single measurement as a guide of any sort when auditioning speakers. I've never felt the need. You may think my choice of speakers a poor one, but why would I care?
Regarding the reviews: even if as you suggest most reviews are just smiley-faces, I wouldn't see that as a huge problem (I don't agree, though: did you read the review of the Zanden stuff in Stereophile? No? You don't read the rags? Oh, I see....). I would expect the reviewer to have already culled from the review herd those products not worth listening to.
"When you compare reviews of similarly priced speakers, each reviewer may have different comments about how the speakers sound in his room, but it's difficult to determine which speaker is rated the best"No its not. YOU determine what speaker is best for YOU. Like measurements, you have to correlate your own experiences with the comments of a (hopefully) consistent reviewer. That correlation happens by....listening.
Regarding your final parting shot: have at it, Nut. Hypocrisy suits you. Your post history can't survive the same scrutiny you seem to have put mine under.
"Your post history can't survive the same scrutiny you seem to have put mine under."RG
Scrutiny?
I don't even read your posts!A typical audiophile will probably never hear 75% to 95% of the speaker models available in his price range. So there's a good chance he will miss hearing what would have been his favorite speaker if he'd listened to every model available in his price range.
Measurements help me identify speakers more worthy of an audition than simply choosing models at random, or simply choosing to audition speakers because they happened to get a favorable review in one magazine I read (and any favorable review in a major audio magazine is likely to at least somewhat bias my audition).
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
One must blow pretty hard to make any kind of impression on Mr. Nut, who is so set in his biases and misconceptions a hurricane would hardly budge him.Please note that neither Jon Risch nor I said measurements were worthless. However, if that's what you rely on for qualitative judgment of a speaker system, you are more often than not misinformed and mislead by such measurements. My former friends at DGX did so and produced a speaker no one could listen to, but which was cutting-edge in the anechoic measurement department.
What measurements do help? Not the kind you see published, I'm afraid. To me the most revealing test is ultranearfield on the raw driver. After measuring and listening to it I can tell how successful a prototype is, and if I want to pursue a design with it.
There's a lot more I could say, but why wear out my welcome more than I already have?
"One must blow pretty hard to make any kind of impression on Mr. Nut, who is so set in his biases and misconceptions a hurricane would hardly budge him."This is surely one of the greatest sentences ever written here....
Watching the reel as it comes to a close,
Brutally taking it's time,
People who change for no reason at all,
It's happening all of the time.
YOU BELLOWED AT ME LIKE A BIG BUTT BERTHA:
"One must blow pretty hard to make any kind of impression on Mr. Nut, who is so set in his biases and misconceptions a hurricane would hardly budge him."RG:
I would like to know whether this near-perfect insult is copyrighted before I use it on someone else without retribution, and get sued? When I called you a blowhard in a prior post I had no idea you had such good writing skills. You sir, deserve a promotion ...
to Major Blowhard.
No matter what you say about published measurements, and certainly you must be biased because you are a speaker designer who wants people to listen to his designs, not judge them by published measurements (I feel the same way about subwoofers I build):
... I HAVE found two measurements that help me identify speakers I will later enjoy in a near field position at home.A good looking step response chart, as measured and published by Atkinson, and weaker than usual treble output at 2000Hz.+, when measured on axis (anechoic with one-third octave smoothing) helps me find speakers that I can tolerate when they are placed roughly four feet from my ears, and more than 5 feet from any walls.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
So Brian, based on "your" subjective opinion, you denied the chance of others to hear what an anechoically objectively correct speaker sounds like.You have effectively foisted your subjective opinion onto everyone else, without giving others a chance to judge for themselves.
Does that seem fair? ;-))
Before I took the system down I played it for several people, including a well known reviewer.Most said nothing, the reviewer thought the speakers sounded thin, harsh and grainy.
I suppose I could have kept playing it and explaining to everyone that the speaker was right, it was their hearing that was wrong, but I really just didn't want my name associated with such poor sound.
Still, it was based on only a couple of "opinions" (be they respected opinions or not) that they sounded yucky..... and the whole tenet of the subjective arguement is that one man's cheese is another man's mould !!Sounds to me like a case of not getting the lower mids and bass balanced properly. your descriptions sound like the classical description of when BSC hasn't been properly applied. And we all "know" that even in a chamber, low end can be hard to measure properly. ie someone goofed !!!
Did they do distortion measurements do you know ?
Anyway, I will still consider that "major" variations from accurate response are not likely to yield a listenable speaker.
But hey, millions of "B... Life....." listeners can't be wrong, can they ;-))
You seem to be rattlin' the gorilla cage after I already did that ... and soon some Cheney "hand grenades" will come flying at you!
If Cheney and others thought the speakers sounded bad in that room, then they sounded bad no matter how they measured. For example: I've always thought some Bose speakers were designed solely to measure well in the Consumer Report's measurements yet everyone agrees the Acoustimess Shreikers sound awful..Even when I was an objective audiophile last year, I would never claim speakers needed a double-blind test to determine whether they sounded different. I know a poor room can make otherwise good speakers sound bad ... but if other speakers sound good in the same room, then most likely the speakers that sounded bad were simply bad speakers.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
... appears to be your tagline :-)Unless the irony is just top subtle for me.
And I've seen 2 speakers with essentially identical response and the same drivers an box design but they sound different. The crossovers add up the same but the individual transfer functions of driver/crossover are not the same and the sound is almost shockingly different.
It is what reaches ours ears that really matters. If the sound reaching our ears is not "reasonably flat" and accurate to the original then imbalances are created between fundementals and overtones making up the sound of an instrument, thus altering the timbre and general nature of the sound.Speaker measurements can only give you an idea as to if you may have a fighting chance of getting "reasonably flat" at your ears. Once you start thinking of the speaker system as including the room the speaker is in, and realise the massive effects a room can have, then all bets can be taken.
I can give you arguement that flat response is way less essential than you'd believe(in spite of the fact that I believe in it). If you change seats at a live performance the sound(response) changes and yet both positions are obviously real sound. There's way more to making reproduced sound seem real than flat response and flat response may not even be neede for the affect(though surely desireable).
which is precisely why I put the "reasonably flat" in quotes. What exactly "reasonably flat" means is up to questioning.
...measurements are very important to the speaker manufacturer. So is subjective listening to fine-tune the final product.Subjective listening is essentially the only way the consumer can tell how a speaker sounds.
Measurements may help the consumer eliminate some speakers from his audition list.
But no measurements can tell the consumer exactly how that speaker sounds reproducing music or whether he will like it.
nt
so the measurements are not always important.For example there is the idea that speakers are 'voltage driven' which is quite simply untrue. Yet many of the measurements associated with speakers and amplifiers assume that this is the case. The resulting measurements are thus based on something that is not real.
No surprise then that the things that are audibly important are not measured and there are measurement results that are not audible.
No wonder there is confusion! Audibility and measurement ought to *support* each other!
but not this time. Not at all. If such were the case, it would be even more reason to forget about tubed gear, which is typically current limited, and to go with SS gear, which typically isn't.Speakers are voltage driven. So long as there is enough current to support the required EMF to control and drive the motor structure as the impedance changes dynamically, that's all that is needed. This is one advantage that tubed gear has i.e. there's less potential for clipping as the tubed gear typically has a higher rail voltage with adequate current capacity for most loads.
When you start getting into very low impedance loads, the tubed gear runs out of current causing the rail voltages to sag and induce clipping / loss of control. That "loss of control" is what gives tubed gear "mushy" bass. Having said that, it is the lack of voltage swing capacity i.e. lower operating rail voltages in SS gear that causes it to clip much harder and more noticeably i.e. smeared treble and sibilance.
Ideally, an amp would operate with very high rail voltages and near unlimited current capacity. This would give us the best of both worlds, so long as the other pertinent criteria were easily met too. Sean
>
When the accepted story falls apart, I look for explanations.Speakers are driven by power, not voltage. All speakers I can think of have a finite impedance which results in a substantial amount of current in the load. Voltage is a component of power.
Now there is the story about speakers being voltage driven, but what we find is that story is part of a larger story called the 'Voltage Paradigm'. In it, we see that all measurements relate only to voltage and rarely to anything else. This paradigm of design and measurement also contains the story that the ideal amplifier can make constant voltage into any load. An example of this is a transistor amplifier that makes 100 watts into 8 ohms and 200 watts into 4 ohms- doubling power as load is cut in half.
What is important to get is that the Voltage Paradigm is only a story and is not universally supported as fact. Here are some examples:
Horns, ESLs and magnetic planars have impedance curves that have nothing to do with box resonance. In fact for such speakers they are expecting the power to be constant regardless of the impedance that they have. In the case of ESLs, which have high impedance in the bass region and low impedance in the highs (often varying by more than 5:1), 'constant voltage' amplifiers will play too much highs and not enough bass. Try a 'constant power' amplifier (tubes- Power Paradigm) on there and suddenly the speaker is making flat frequency response.
In the 45 years since they were introduced to audiophiles, transistors failed to supplant the prior art, the 'obsolete' technology. Why? The first thing to look at is the language, or story, surrounding transistors. Perhaps the idea of constant voltage is incorrect? Indeed, anyone successfully running tube amps knows that you don't need that characteristic to make things work and in fact you are better off without it; that just because a tube amp is not designed with intention to drive loads less than 4 ohms is not a bad thing at all. Conversely transistors do not drive high impedances, and what we see from history is that speaker designers and manufacturers have always gone where the money is. In the 50s there were 32 ohm speakers and 16 ohms was common.
Back in the 1960s, transistors were becoming possible, but (due to being non-linear) needed (and still need) a lot of feedback to make them work. Realizing this, the industry made up the 'constant voltage' story and pitched it to the market, since transistors cost about 1/10th that of tubes to make the same power, but you get to charge just as much. There was a lot of money to be made! The public bought the story, and now there is 40 years of 'drift' away from what is real (BTW we are seeing the same thing happen now with class D, which costs 1/10 the money to make power as transistors cost...).
Some evidence for this is that there are more manufacturers of tube amplifiers in the US now then there was in 1956! Unlike the demise of the flathead engine to dual overhead cams in the same period, tubes have not been supplanted for the simple reason that they work.
So if the story about constant voltage is made up for dollar's sake, then of course the measurements we have for speakers and amplifiers today is not going to carry a lot of weight with our ears: we are measuring the wrong things! We have created a situation where we have made our measurements virtually irrelevant.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, Ralph.Recently, I replaced my Krell integrated (transistor) amp (KAV-300i) with another integrated (mostly transistor) amp (BAT-VK-300se). These amps are of equal nominal rated power. And, although I haven't seen the measured response curve for the BAT product (the Krell integrated was tested and measured by Stereophile some years ago, I assume that, into a purely resistive load, both products have essentially ruler-flat amplitude response through the entire audible range and beyond.
Yet, in comparison to the BAT amp, the Krell amp has a slight upper treble emphasis (or "hardness"), driving the same speakers and with the same sources. It's very slight, and I would not have said it was even there, until I connected the BAT amp and notice that "the sound" was missing. So, you have two different amps which sound different driving the same speaker, even though their amplitude response measures the same.
I did notice, driving a pair of much less expensive speakers (Paradigm mini-monitors) that the Krell amp produced a really nasty upper treble peak, that was not evident when those speakers were driven by the vastly cheaper and less powerful NAD receiver. Again, I assume the NAD product's amplitude response into a nominal 8 ohm resistive load is, for practical purposes, ruler-flat in the audible range.
Yet, those two amps also sound different, driving the same speaker.
So, there's something "funny" going on here.
Every different amp design has a different noise characteristic. By this I mean its production of RF noise from its power supplies, its response to RF noise on the AC, input, and speaker cables, and its production of noise and distortion in the audio output. Any and all of these things can cause the kinds of differences you heard.Damping of the load is another area of major differences among amplifiers. The 'damping factor' is quoted based on low frequency measurements, based on the assumption that damping is only important for the woofers. However, all active elements in speakers interact with the amplifier in some way that affects the damping. Amps with slow feedback loops may not maintain a quoted high damping factor at higher audio frequencies.
Reponse to reactive power is another area where amps differ. Electrostats require large reactive currents to flow at higher frequencies. Amps that contain negative current feedback will limit these currents and suppress the treble. This might be a blessing in cases where RF noise is causing spurious treble tones.
Sounds like 7th harmonic to me.
Granted I have respect for those who use idealized recordings in their attempt to reproduce a live event but I'm not so sure that such pursuit benefits ones ability to appreciate the musical intent of the vast majority of recorded works. Not only that I also believe at some point colorations actually can begin to play a part in making such idealized recording sound more like live. Unless one practices great care the "coloration" knife cuts both ways.Given the imperfections in rooms, recordings and systems it's really impossible to know how much measurements should deviate from ideal. As ultimately our enjoyment of the widest range of recordings is dependent on all system parameters. As an example a speakers frequency response could possible compensate for a room effect or abnormalites that exist on a majority of recordings.
Of course if one wants to define a systems performance around a fixed set of recordings that's a personal decision. But it should be clear to all that doing so almost always leads to alienation of recordings manufactured to differing standards and purposes.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
He is right when faithfulness to the source is the requirement to be met.A speaker is a reproducer which means that if it's meant to reproduce faithfully (in the sense of hifi) it should not add or subtract anything.
People say that what is measured does not tell what you hear. That is true but what is measured does actually relate to what we hear, and very much so. The amplitude response of a faithfully reproducing speakers has to be flat. Period. Any deviation from flat is bad. People may like it but that's another story. So you have a reference curve with which you can compare the measured curve.
I've seen measurements of the same speaker (and I mean the very same, a Spendor 120/1A) in different locations, done by different people using different gear. Of course the graphs were not identical but they were very similar, the global trends were the same.
Off-axis response: different people, different opinions. My opinion is that the response has to be linearly decreasing with frequency, without sharp changes. The respective curves at different angles
should be as parallel as possible.You don't want distortion or resonance, so the lower the better. Waterfall plots will tell you a lot.
Time alignment: ideal behaviour is a straight vertical line in impulse response. I've experienced that deviations from the ideal as not as nasty as many tend to think.
I think that Stereophile provides an excellent service to the readers by adding measurements to the subjective impressions. When I was looking for new speakers some time ago these measurements told me that I'd better spend my money elsewhere, but not in High-End.
And yes, when bad measurements go with a positive or even rave review, then IMO the reviewer doesn't know what to listen for!
Klaus
And speakers that sound bad (below average) almost always have bad measurements.The main exception is a speaker with "bad measurements" whose problems happen to offset "mirror-image" room acoustics problems in a specific room. Speaker-Listening room synergy.
The only problem is determining what measurements correlate with a sound quality YOU like in YOUR room. The correlation can be fair, or good, but never perfect.
Finding what measurements work for you can take years ... and if person that does the measurements change the measurement that used to work for you ...may stop working!
What makes a speaker sound good to you includes many factors that may change over time ... meaning that any measurements that correlate with what you hear may change over time too:
Other Inputs:
What genre music do you prefer?
How loud do you prefer your music?
What sound quality (frequency response) preferences do you have?
How close do you like to sit to the speakers?
How close will the speakers be from the front wall?
How close will the speakers be to the side walls?
Do you have a room with good acoustics?
How large is the room?A room with bad acoustics can ruin the sound of any speaker.
But a speaker could have an offsetting problem.
A room with loud bass resonances and no bass traps, for one example, may sound best with speakers that have weak bass output.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
...to mystify one of the few areas of audio that are fairly well understood. Floyd Toole's 2-part series in the mid-80s covered this pretty thoroughly. Progress has been made since then, but, as he notes in those articles, much of the work that matters most was old even in the '80s (Toole's main contribtion was to do careful subjective tests and correlate them with careful measurements). His conclusions:"Given the proper circumstances, experienced listeners with normal hearing prefer loudspeakers with wide bandwidth, flat and smooth amplitude response, and uniformly wide dispersion." He goes on to define "amplitude response" precisely, telling how it ought to be measured:
"...looking for flat, wide-bandwidth on-axis response, and for consistently repeated patterns in the family of progressively off-axis measurements."
He then points out that, though time-domain effects matter, one need only measure in the frequency domain because time-domain effects are visible there, too.
Toole presents a clear set of priorities: smooth amplitude response (spatially, not spectrally, averaged), directivity, with time-and-phase effects following somwhat distantly. ("The advocates of accurate waveform reproduction...are in a particularly awkward situation. In spite of the considerable engineering appeal of this concept, practical tests have yielded little evidence of listener sensitivity to this factor."
Conclusions? "At present it would seem that almost any form of amplitude-response measurements can identify really poor loudspeakers. More specific measures and perhaps some processing is necessary in order to reliably identify good loudspeakers. But only very specific and possibly special measurements in a combination of domains identify truly excellent products as reliably as thorough controlled subjective measurements. Conventional listening evaluations are essentially uncalibrated measurements; they are likely very often to be in error."
Still, Toole's work is aimed at manufacturers who want their speakers to appeal to as many people as possible. What one individual prefers cannot be determined by any statistical test, no matter how carefully done. Another way of saying this is that there are objective standards for good loudspeaker design, but some special designs may sound good to certain people even if they fail to meet those standards--and some people are just going to like lousy speakers.
Cheers,
Jim
it is much more useful to listen to as many different types of speakers as practical, than to worry over published graphs of careful test results.The single most important factor in home reproduction is to match the speaker to the room. Speaker dispersion determines the degree and delay times of reflected versus direct sound, and it is much easier to get the best dispersion pattern, which is characteristic of the speaker type, than to treat the room to ameliorate unpleasant dispersion properties.
Different people have different tolerances for size of the 'sweet spot.' Some folks like the efficiency benefits (dynamic contrasts for loud music) of narrow sweet spots, such as obtain with planar electrostats, while others would willingly sacrifice dynamics for a wider sweet spot that allows freedom of head motion without destroying the stereophonic illusion.
The second most important factor, in my opinion, is the impedance match between the speaker and amplifier. Published measurements do not reveal the damping characteristics required of the amplifier (nor could they, given that the room modes as well as the speaker drivers affect the damping).
If you have a setup that you like, and want to upgrade speaker performance within the same type and impedance range, then the published results of measurements could be a guide to auditions.
I don't think any decent speaker designer can eschew measurements in the designing and development of a speaker. It does not necessarily end there though. Although I see more and more support for the notion that we actually like to hear some forms of distortion in our music reproduction, I think that a rather strange view. I am becoming more convinced though that we can and do get used to some stuff that measures worst than other. Often enough the badge of the product is enough to influence the listener into thinking that what he listens to is the best reproduction of music. I think that with better and better ways of measuring speakers and other components in the lab and in proper listening tests by human ears, the products are improving. That some choices have to be made in the design stage that worsens some measured aspect of performance as a price for better overall sound is quite conceivable.
i agree that speaker measurements are only a starting point in telling about what a particular speaker might do in a real world listening environment.my last 2 sets of speakers have had considerable adjustability for adapting the speakers to specific room conditions and personal listening biases. i have yet to measure my second set of speakers. however; i did measure my first set at the listening position with a very basic tool (PAA3) for frequency response and it was quite flat. eventually; i ended up adding a bump in the mid-bass by raising the crossover point. this added body and smoothed out the treble. i was then able to add gain to the treble for more high frequency energy. i ended up with a less flat curve but a considerably more coherent, involving natural sound.
i am about to measure and play around with my second set of speakers. i have so far only adjusted them by ear.
it should be interesting whether my 'end point' is less or more linear than my current settings.....and how the frequency response of this speaker compares to the last speaker when optimzed to my tastes in the same room.
i know there are substaintial limitations to my measuring tool and methodology; yet it seems likely that even in room measurements have not much to do with how the speaker actually makes music.
personally; i enjoy the measurements that Stereophile provides; but mostly for the efficiency issues and amp compatibility. the data does allow you to know areas where there could be issues.
in the larger versions of John Dunlavy's designs (Duntech and DAL). While the standard for measuring frequency response seems to involve placing a microphone one meter from the front baffle board, Dunlavy quotes frequency response for his larger speakers when measured from three meters. This is done to allow for convergence from the spacing of several drivers. So, you and I can each measure but our results may be very different depending on our assumptions and the many variables we choose from. There is a clue here as to how John expected listeners to use his speakersThen there is the issue of designing a speaker for best response in an anechoic chamber, then placing it in a variety of listening rooms and expecting to anticipate the results.
Good luck to all designers!
I find it odd that someone who calls for that list of measurement parameters to be good, none of them even measure the definition of distortion - the nonlinear response to the input signal. All of those were linear responses, or deviations from the ideal linear responses. Only the Audio Critic seems to measure actual harmonic distortion of a speaker, and not that many are happy with them as a great review magazine.Kurt
because they are as blind as many audiophiles to waht makes good reproduction. They just point their blinders in different directions than other audiophiles. Naybe if we combinded many different approaches we'd do better in our search.
... 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
All measurements show where a speaker deviates from theoretical perfection, although someone else's measurements can't include the effects of your own listening room, or account for your unique sound quality preferences.Large deviations are not something an audiophile should ignore when deciding which speakers to audition.
The real issue is to decide which speakers you want to consider for purchase -- there are FAR too many brands and models for one audiophile to choose from.
Measurements won't tell you how any speakers will sound at home in your room -- but even an audition in a store won't tell you that.
Measurements will guide you toward speakers that are MORE LIKELY to sound above average when you hear them at home.
I'm assuming a listener over many years has compared speakers whose sound quality he has experienced at home, with their published measurements, and HAS found some measurement(s) that generally correlates with speakers he likes and/or dislikes at home.
For one example: I have found over many years that step-response, as measured by John Atkinson at Stereophile, correlates well with my own subjective speaker opinions of speakers I have borrowed for an audition at home, at least for the near field speaker positions I use at home.
On axis anechoic frequency response shows the ability of a speaker to accurately reproduce the input signal.
Room reflections in a real room will make the frequency response at the listeners ears worse, compared with on-axis anechoic measurements ... but there is no reason to design speakers with a poor on-axis frequency response and hope the room reflections will make the sound more accurate by the time it reaches the listener's ears!
There may be debates over what amount of high freuency roll-off over 2kHz sounds natural, and over the need for bass ramp-up under 80Hz. (because a "flat" frequency response at frequency extremes doesn't sound flat to most listeners) ... but there is little debate over the desire for a flat frequency response in the 80-2000Hz, range.
Step response shows the ability of a speaker to accurately reproduce a transient sound. It correlates with sound quality better than flipping a coin.
While flat on-axis anechoic frequency response in the mid-range frequencies, and an excellent step response, don't guarantee you will like a speaker's sound quality in your room, the measurements do roughly correlate with speaker preferences for most listeners in most rooms.
Most important: Measurements may help an audiophile separate above-average speakers from below-average speakers, and that can really help an audiophile decide what speakers he will audition before his next purchase.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
What is amazing is how ready you are to twist things around to seem more controversial.The other interesting thing is your use of 'incremental logic', where you start making statements that start out logical, but each one gets a little further from the facts of the matter at hand, until we end up where your convoluted train of logic deliver's us: YOUR opinion turned into some sort of psuedo-logical fact.
For instance, take this gem:
"Measurements will guide you toward speakers that are MORE LIKELY to sound above average when you hear them at home."Sounds eminently logical, but in reality, it sucks.
I stand by my post, those unfamilair with acoustic measurements are more likely to be confused or mislead tham aided by the typical batch of loudspeaker measurements.
You are, in essence, saying that the measurements can only help, that somehow, folks without the background and experience with acoustic measurements are going to be able to make useful judgements from simply looking at a frequency response curve, at a dispersion plot, at an impedance curve, etc.,
While this might be true to a limited extent if all we were going to study was whether or not a transistor radio speaker measured AND sounded worse than a Polk, that is a somewhat trivial pairing as an example. But once we get down to the very much more subtle measured differences between mid-fi speaker systems, even the professionals are going to be hard-pressed to make any solid sense out of the measurement data, and CERTAINLY, no professional I know would be so foolish as to try and judge a speaker, or try to determine whether or not any given speaker SOUNDED better than another, simply by looking at measurements taken by someone else.
And THAT is what you are saying, that folks can dismiss a given speaker strictly due to their inexperienced judgement based on a FR curve or a polar plot taken via who-knows-what-method.
Once we get above the level of a trivial pairing, NO WAY!
Yet this is exactly what you say:
" Most important: Measurements may help an audiophile separate above-average speakers from below-average speakers, and that can really help an audiophile decide what speakers he will audition before his next purchase. "I say again, NO WAY!
Richard stated:
" For one example: I have found over many years that step-response, as measured by John Atkinson at Stereophile, correlates well with my own subjective speaker opinions of speakers I have borrowed for an audition at home, at least for the near field speaker positions I use at home. "Good for you Richard, but what about the rest of the world, with THEIR particular system and components? How many people listen near-field? How has your subjective opinion been shown to correlate with anyone else's?
Richard stated:
" On axis anechoic frequency response shows the ability of a speaker to accurately reproduce the input signal. "Sez who? This is so laughably inaccurate a statement, that I can't even begin to explain. On axis FR may tell us something, it can even tell us more than one thing if done a certain way, but a FR plot BY ITSELF actually can fool us into thinking that a speaker is doing more/better than it really is.
All kinds of things can 'hide' in a typical 1/3 octave averaged FR plot, including speaker component resonances, cabinet or vent resonances, distortion, cone or diaphragm break-up, poor transient response, baffle diffraction, etc., etc.
So much for "accurately reproducing the input signal".Richard stated:
" Room reflections in a real room will make the frequency response at the listeners ears worse, compared with on-axis anechoic measurements ... but there is no reason to design speakers with a poor on-axis frequency response and hope the room reflections will make the sound more accurate by the time it reaches the listener's ears! 'A red herring. A so-called poor FR just might be a real and honest FR curve, showing better than average phase behavior, transient response and low distortion, all the while looking much worse than a smoothed, homgenized FR curve, one with poor phase behavior, lousy transient response, and high levels of higher order distortions.
Richard stated:
" There may be debates over what amount of high freuency roll-off over 2kHz sounds natural, and over the need for bass ramp-up under 80Hz. (because a "flat" frequency response at frequency extremes doesn't sound flat to most listeners) ... but there is little debate over the desire for a flat frequency response in the 80-2000Hz, range. "Actually, you have this one wrong too, as a FR that measured flat from 80 Hz to 2 kHz in an anechoic chamber would sound pretty thin, boomy and all around terrible. But then, everyone knows this, right Richard? They would also know that one should not be designing in a FR roll-off above 2 kHz, as this means that they are seriously confused about the difference between flat on-axis direct sound and the power response of a loudspeaker in a room.
Richard stated:
" Step response shows the ability of a speaker to accurately reproduce a transient sound. It correlates with sound quality better than flipping a coin. "This one is also wrong. Technically, one would use an impulse, not a step function, to check transient response. In fact, most people do not know how to properly interpret a band-limited step fucntion, INCLUDING a great many loudspeaker designer's!
As for your cute little comment:
" It correlates with sound quality better than flipping a coin. "
I doubt that you, or a great many folks, would know what to look for in a step function, how to interpret one, and whether or not one particular step function was 'better' than another. In that case, flipping a coin would be a more sensible thing to do.You can portray my experience and knowledge as being condecending, but I am merely talking about reality, not some ideal dream world where _everyone_ has been educated and trained about acoustics and filter theory, and has had the sheer bench time looking at loudspeaker measurements and data just like someone who does it year after year for a living, 5 days a week.
Jon Risch
Ok Jon, all that being said, which measurements do YOU consider to be of great importance to a speaker design? Is power response a more reasonable measurement than on-axis FR response. Cone and cabinet resonances? The onset of thermal and/or dynamic compression, phase shift, harmonic distortion? Having designed several pairs of speakers on an amateur level, I have some idea what these measurements mean and how they interact. As a professional what should we be looking for in measurements and which ones are not being shown that would be important?One of my biggest disappointments with box speakers (and why I have exclusively planar speakers now) is the colorations from the drivers and especially cabinets. IMO, these outweigh FR (unless it is simply a horrid response) because they are not constants so the brain has no chance to filter these things out. Its there, then its not, depending on whether the resonance is excited. At least FR is pretty constant (with in a reasonable volume level).
Another one that gets me is high order filters with multiple drivers all of different materials. Talk about hearing each driver!! The worst case of this for me was the B&W N802. You have Carbon fiber woofers, Kevlar mid, and aluminum tweeter. All have breakup modes that are audible and very sharp filters so transitions of instruments between drivers are painfully obvious.
I get to work with some very advanced technology, and so, have the luxury of being able to 'bend the rules' as far as conventional wisdom is concerned for home playback loudspeaker systems.
To respond to your questions:As for what I think is the most important, I will answwer that one last, so look down below.
I am of the 'direct frequency response' school, as opposed to flat power response. I also am not very enamored of omni type systems, they are too much at the mercy of the room, even one that is well treated acoustically. I also have found that speakers that control the radiation pattern (not necesarily horns/waveguides) seem to do better in the vast majority of home environments than ones with extra wide dispersion.
In that sense, dipolar speakers, such as your planars, have a form of controlled dispersion, which extends down into the bass, which places them in a completely different category as the vast majority of omni bass speaker systems. However, being one who values deep bass response (as long as it is tight and accurate), I have found that an enclosed woofer can be made to be fairly transparent and accurate, as long as heroic efforts are undertaken to minimize the box talk, internal box reflections, and driver resonances.
As for power compression and dynamic changes, by using Pro grade drivers, I avoid a great many of the worst of those issues and problems, as normal home playback levels do not even begin to tax a 95 dB sensitivity speaker system whose components can normally handle nearly a thousand watts in a typical pro sound loudspeaker system configuration.
I have developed a special topology that allows such Pro sound drivers to be used in a very simple and pure mode, for a taste of what I am talking about, see:
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/LBIseries.htm
and subsequent pages, actually, the last page at:
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/LBIseries4.htmThe distortion for this sytem at nominal home playback levels is in the tenths of a percent of distortion range.
Now, all of that aside, what measurements do I consider important?
The most important 'measurement' I can make, is to listen to a speaker using familar components in a familiar environment using program material I am familiar with and enjoy or like.
I know, I know, you want the so-called objective measurement side of things. OK. The thing I prize the most, and strive for in my designs, is to achieve good clarity of sound playback. Unfortunately, there are no single dimension measurements for this factor. What do I mean by clarity? Some call it articulation, others definition or detail, and yet others may call it presence or call it 'low distortion'. What I want to achieve most of all, is to provide the clarity and cleanliness that is irretrievable via any processor I am aware of. You can't EQ clarity back into a fuzzy ill-defined speaker system, nor can you DSP it back in, it has to be preserved, via superior drivers, superior execution of the system as a whole, superior filter networks, a whole host of intangibles that are not as in your face as the all-mightly and one-dimensional FR plot.Yes, the FR does need to be reasonably flat, but whose idea of 'flat' is always the main sticking point. Flat as a ruler, ah yes, but what is the scale and range of the FR graph? Was 1/3 octave averaging (or even greater averaging) used or not? What is the inherent resolution of the measurement at any given frequency? And so on, and so forth.
Then there is allowing one's self to get hung up on a specific number or frequency, say, requiring that the FR be flat down to 50 Hz or some such criteria. Hey, that's what subwoofers are for, eh? Anyway, what matters more than reaching 50 Hz dead flat is, what is the roll-off rate below that, and how consistent is it with drive level? What is the distortion level at 50 Hz? 40 Hz?, and on and on.
When evaluating drivers or designing systems, I tend to use a holistic approach, and try not to get hung up on any single metric, and I certainly do not let the microphone rule my goals and define my milestones. What it listens like is the single most important thing.
Jon Risch
Come on Jon -- I'm retired now but still don't have enough time to read such a long post. More concise please.This is about deciding which speakers to audition.
There are way too many brands and models to hear them all.
So how do you narrow down the candidates for auditions?
I say measurements work better than reviews (text).
The reviews are so often positive that I'm not sure you could eliminate any speakers just from the text!
Even when the review finds many faults, the review conclusion often says you should audition them anyway!
The measurements are usually average, or don't reveal much to the layman, but sometimes there are unusually bad or unusually good measurements.
Avoiding speakers with unusually bad measurements, and seeking speakers with unusually good measurements, makes sense.
More sense than flipping a coin.
Example 1:
A BassNut who strongly prefers full range sound will be able to glance at an on-axis anechoic frequency response curve and get a good idea whether the speakers will have enough bass output under 50Hz. to satisfy him.Reading the text of a speaker review will too often reveal an overexcited positive opinion by a reviewer who can live with bass roll-off under 50Hz., because he likes so much else about the speakers, or doesn't notice the weak bass so much because he places the speakers in the room corners of his walk-in-closet-sized room!
Over time an audiophile may find that a certain measurement(s) done by a certain reviewer, or by Atkinson, works fairly well to identify speakers worthy of an audition. You could miss good sounding speakers that happen to measure poorly, but you are more likely to find good speakers that measure well ... no matter what you say.
Please point out one speaker model whose anechoic on-axis frequency response is poor in the 80-2000Hz. "midrange" (let's say worse than +/-3dB with one-third octave smoothing)... but most listeners still think it's a great sounding speaker? You'd have us believe poor on-axis response has no correlation with subjective auditions at all.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
I'm getting scared though. When i agree with Richard over Jon, it makes me wonder what's going on. Sean
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I think Jon's point was that the final result needs to actually sound good even if it measures well. Jon's first point was that it is difficult to trust somebody else's measurements. One subtle point that I got out of it was that there can be very subtle changes which can make all the difference yet still have the graphs, etc, look rather similar. Translation; You need to listen. That's what the customers do.I think Richard is correct in that measurements DO matter, but they are not the only thing. I have been building speakers for 29 years but couldn't really match what I considered decent high end speakers until I got my own measuring and test equipment. Richard is correct when he talks about room treatments and speaker setup too. It makes a huge difference... bigger than component choices and almost as big as the speaker choice.
I think we have two rather intelligent folks here yet one is a very cautious even-keeled personality where the other is gregarious and over the top and may sometimes forget to take his medication. You can guess which one cracks me up sometimes. ;)
They both give good advice but Jon's is confidently understated while Richard jams his down your throat like giving a dog a pill. He did that to me once and I went off and experimented and found that Richard was right. I do have to wonder if Richard took Jon's post as if Jon was saying that measurements don't matter. My take was that although they do matter, one must listen too. It's funny that most of the folks who state this are the ones whose bread-and-butter is a function of how good their speakers are. Follow the money...
Bill
Next time I'll wrap the pill in bacon.To use the word "Jon" (Risch) and "understated" in the same sentence seems unusual because he claims to have such incredible hearing ability that he can hear differences among one dozen different wire insulation materials under double-blind conditions with high scores and can rank-order those materials by sound quality.
I, on the other hand, tried to replicate his alleged wire experiment but could never find speaker cables that were identical except for their insulation materials.
I did get to compare a $1000 Tara Labs speaker cable with $10 of 14AWG Radio Shack speaker wire and heard no difference, along with almost one-dozen other audio club members.
I didn't write a white paper about the test, get it peer-reviewed and published in an audio journal ... but only because a pitcher of beer was spilled on the data sheets.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
NT
If I've got enough watts (and I currently do), for the job. Then all I care about is what my heart is doing. Nothing more. Certainly any gross abherrations are audible, but I don't think anyone is claiming they are also musical? My (more than a few years now) journey through fullrange drivers/speaks, has entirely redirected my view about what is actually required in/for music reproduction. And what is possible, what can be achieved. With next to nothing.For me it has become merely doing as litle damage to the music as possible. Setting it free. Letting it soar. Neither measuring it, quantifying it, comparing it, flattening it, or damping it to death. Music has become the only issue, and my heart the only arbiter.
Sing it with me now, sing it loud, here we go .... y'alls mileage may vary :-)
I have a couple friends who do the same as you and state the same as you. I know they know what they are doing and agree with them and you on this. When I mentioned what you just stated to some fellow DIY folks, they all went ballistic.
I started doing this when I was 8. That was 29 years ago. I didn't have good tools available to assist me in DIY endeavors until the late 90's. Having good measurement tools is invaluable, but going without them for so long can be enlightening if one can get past the frustration. I am not a slave to the tool but they sure do speed up the design process before the final tweaking by ear phase. :)
I just found a real nice one. Their marking is poor but I got a chance to use a beta version of WooferTester Pro and their associated Interactive Speaker Designer and it was fantastic. I brought a set that I was stuck on and had the problem solved within an hour. I had almost given up on that set but my wife pressured me to keep going because of the high WAF.
Bill
Do you work for a manufacturer we'd recognize?
He's presented papers on speaker measurement to AES conventions.
Jon:Who came up with the bright idea to make Titanium upgrade kits (22XT) for the veritable 22A 1" throat compression driver?
I bought a pair of those WAAAAY back when and MAN was I impressed.
The 22A was known as the "best bang for the buck" compression driver for the longest time - and when the 22XT came out, I bet a lot of people on a budget opted out of the JBL 1" driver of the day (2425H/J).
I use mine on a TOA HCD Lense with electrovoice 10" force mids and a DL15X woofer. Pretty sweet sounding DJ boxes with lots of slam and nice crisp and clean high end.
Yeah... The Peavey 22 series 1" compression driver. Great product.
Cheers,
Presto
nt
But it has to be a combination of different characteristics.Harmonic distortion should be measured up to tall orders across the bandwidth. It is very telling, as well as waterfall. IMD at multiple frequency points, too. Wide off-axis response and constant directivity are good predictors of imaging.
How the drivers are constructed is also very predictive of their quality. Field coils are better than Alnico magnets, and Alnico is better than ferrite. Faraday rings are better than no rings. Light and rigid cones are better than heavy and soft. Low moving mass is better than high. Flexible suspension is better than rigid. And so on and so forth. Same about cabinet construction and crossover.
For me, an ideal speaker review would sound like this:
Coaxial 6.5' midbass/1'dome tweeter. Midbass: 5 pound 20 W field coil assembly, OFC Faraday rings, curvilinear Kevlar cone, high damping variable thickness surround, progressive spider, cast aerodynamic frame. Znom 8 Ohm, VC diameter 30 mm, rectangular Al wire on Kapton former. Le .2 mH, Mms 6 g, Fs 25 Hz Xmax 12 mm, 95 dB/1W/1m, 3 dB 50-8,000 Hz, 60 W continuous sine power. Tweeter: Neo magnets, non-resonant rear chamber, wide dispersion, Le .03 mH, Mms .2 g, Fs 500 Hz, Xmax 1 mm, 95 dB/1W/1m, 3dB 1,000-30,000 Hz, 20 W continuous sine power. No crossover, biampimg. Cabinet: volume, shape, material, bracing, acoustic treatment, stuff. Frequency response, harmonic and IMD istortion graphs, waterfall, on-axis and off-axis response.
With such a review, I will know how it sounds without subjective audiophile blabber. And I will also know what I am paying my money for.
Whay is that good?
It makes wider optimal spot for stereo. Good imaging can be achieved in smaller space.
So, you like a wide sweet spot, and a lot of wall reflection? It dose have some sound efect that is good for party situations (that is, to listen at many locations in the room), as I see it.
No. Party situations do not require any stereo imaging, especially if alcohol is involved.Yes, I like wider sweet spot. It allows some freedom of movement during listening, which is good to avoid stiff neck. I agree with you that wall reflection is a problem, but don't think that beaming helps solving it in any way.
While measurements are a good baseline to get a "grasp" on the speakers electrical performance and how it will interact with the partnering amplifier, that does not always translate into what one hears.Take for example the recent interest/resurgence in AlNiCo magnets being utilized in speaker drivers. While we can't "measure" the difference between say a Neodymium and an AlNiCo as it pertains to acoustical properties, the ear can certainly hear that the 2 different magnets impart different sonic flavorings/characteristics!
IMHO, one just needs to listen to a speakers that suits ones needs and choose which one meets the requirements of the end user....bottom line.
There R some speakers out there that don't adhere to strict scientific disciplines that sound "musical" as hell and that should be all that matters.....IMHO of course.
Cheers,
~kenster
Alnico is conductive. I'm fairly certain Neodymium is not. In otherwise identical speakers, the Alnico one should have lower inductance and therefore higher frequency response. The Alnico is acting much like a shorting or Faraday ring. According to Adire, this lower inductance leads to what is generally called a "fast" driver.
"Alnico is conductive."Umm as a magnet material I'm certain it is but the only interaction it has with the driver is the opposing force to the electrical/magnetic field generated by the voice coil when current is passed thru it.
The link did not work so I can't comment on Adire's philosophy.
Cheers,
~kenster
Alnico magnets are conductive, like aluminum and copper, as in they pass electricity. Neodymium and ferrite magnets are not conductive. Alnico being conductive will help alleviate some of the eddy currents which, I believe, stabilizes flux. The end result of using Alnico over another magnet material in the same driver is that inductance is lowered which gives a flatter impedance curve and also higher frequency response.Here's the Wayback Machine version. The original link worked when I posted it. You might try it again in a day or so. If that still doesn't work you can get it here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*sa_/http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/TechPapers/WooferSpeed.pdf
- http://web.archive.org/web/20060520204325/http://www.adireaudio.com/Files/TechPapers/WooferSpeed.pdf (Open in New Window)
define 'musical' in a way that is meaningful to a significant percentage of audiophiles. It's a word that has no meaning except to the person using it.
"Musical" is a term that can be thought of as PRaT and this term certainly raises the hackles of some BUT it is very real.U know it when U hear it :-)
Cheers,
~kenster
These days all speaker reviews become exercises in creative writing to say in 5000 words or more nothing really beyond "I like this speaker. It makes this or that recording sound great." Quite a departure from the Holt/Pearson school of component reviewing. It is good, therefore, to have some measurements as a guidepost. At least, as in Stereophile, it forces JA to respond to terrible measurements with the usual "That aspect didn't bother my listening too much." or something like that. Look at the review of the Wilson Maxx 2 that measures so poorly, for example. Without measurements the TAS review hardly gives any information or insight, of any kind, at all.If someone told me that they admired a speaker that measured poorly in this or that respect, upon audition I would listen for the audible consequences of the poor measured result.
But I might stay away from a speaker that had measurement problems for fear that, however it might sound in the short term, I might be bothered by the evident problem in the long run. There are enough speakers that measure well AND sound good IMO. Bad measurements are usually audible.
When large, successful, companies, that have the capability to know better, release a product that measures poorly, it seems to me that they are tailoring the sound, using the speaker as a musical instrument rather than as a conveyor of the sound of real musical instruments. Perhaps they are trying to make up for something they think is missing in the average recording.
Mel
they don't tell the whole story. The designer needs them as a starting point for design and I wouldn't buy a speaker from a company that only listened and didn't measure their speakers. On the other hand I wouldn't buy a speaker based on its measurements only. There is a balanced to be struck between the objective (measurements) and the subjective (listening) that is critical.As an example, I have invariably disliked speakers with flat power response in real rooms, they are always IMO, too bright. Speakers with a declining response in the treble don't have this problem, they tend to sound more natural with this balance.
I think it is something that most audiophiles would agree with that there are things that we can measure but not make correlations with sound quality in any meaningful way.
I think what Stereophile does is the better approach than using just one evaluation tool. Measurements certainly have there place but the information they do provide is only valid for the test conditions used. For them to be useful you need to know what the conditions are as well as an understanding of how the stated conditions influence the measurements. Ideally a set of measurements under the same conditions in the same environment can be a useful tool to see what differences there are between 2 speakers as an example. Unfortunately there is lot's they simply can't tell you. You can have two speakers measure virtually the same as far as frequency response on axis and sound different. This can be due to differences in power response and other issues as well. One example is the difference in materials used such as Beryllium vs. Titanium used in tweeter and compression driver diaphragms. Others are transient response, dynamic linearity and scale.
be careful with a measured, logical approach to this kind of subject like yours. Notice how it almost never gets any reply.
Of all the measurements in audio, I find the FR of speakers most-relevant to what I personally hear. And there are not a lot of speakers out there I like that do *not* have relatively flat FR and decent power response.
"How much attention should we pay to speaker measurements when they're provided in reviews such as Stereophile?"I would pay more to speaker measurements in magazines just like Stereophile than from those from manufacturers. Why? They do their testing the SAME WAY for EVERY SPEAKER and use the SAME TEST GEAR. This is, quite simply, the only conceivable way to make any kind of "paper comparisons" between something as subjective as how a loudpeaker sounds or "voices". Only an experience speaker designer can cut through through the marketing haze and see a lot of these measurements for what they really are. There are many different ways to present measurements so that they show the speakers strengths while concealing potential weaknesses.
I noticed that on of the criterion for the "ideal speakers" was that they need to be "time coherent". This is interesting. Does this mean that the music, when played back, will occur at the exact same time as it was recorded? No. I believe this is a "buzzword" mixture of two OTHER criterion: a)time aligned and b)phase coherent.
Physical alignment is easy. Align the drivers so that the "time of flight" from each of the drivers acoustic center to the listening (or test) position is identical. Time alignment is another story. In addition to compensating for driver physical locations, you may also need to have additional physical offsets for time delays associated with crossover topologies that are not transient perfect. A speaker that has all speakers with zero-offset with respect to the listening position (and no additional time alignment) MUST have a transient perfect crossover to be considered "time aligned". (Basically, lining up the acoustic centers of drivers does NOT guarantee time alignment.)
Now, phase coherence on the other hand is a subject of much debate as to the audibility of a non-constant group delay. The "group delay" (rate of change of phase with respect to frequency) is only constant for a 1st order Buttworth crossover (and will remain so only if the ACOUSTIC response is not a higher order). With a constant group delay, a single physical offset is capable of compensating for crossover delay. With a non-constant group delay, physical alignment delay compensation for is only valid at the crossover point, and becomes "less valid" as you go further away from Fc into the remainder of the crossover overlap region. (This is my understanding of it anyways).
If indeed your requirement for phase coherency was an absolute, we would probably be looking at about 1% of all speakers ever made. Don't forget that we can't just eliminate all crossover orders higher than 1st order electric... we also need to get rid of speakers that do not have a 1st order ACOUSTIC response. (Even speakers with 1st order electric crossovers cannot change the fact that drivers have 2nd order rolloffs at their frequency extremes. This is why a 1st order electric filter can result in as high as a third order acoustic rolloff).
So. What does all this mean? It means that if Stereophile says a speaker has a strange anomaly in the frequency domain, you might want to wonder why. But what happens if Stereophile reviews a speaker with a higher order crossover that is NOT phase coherent but has excellent transient response due to good design and they think it sounds incredible? Should you write that speaker off of your list and consider the boys at Sterephile to be liars? Or should you listen for yourself and decide how important crossover topology is?
Let's face it. If you are going to buy speakers based on design philosophy, you either know enough to be designing and building your OWN speakers, or you are simply caught up in the highly subjective realm of conflicting design ideals. There are no "Ideal" loudspeakers anyways (despite marketing claims to this effect). Different configurations and sizes of drivers and crossover topologies each have their own set of pros and cons. 1st order acoustic designs are novel indeed, but are by no means a panacea of production based on this single design criterion alone. In fact, quite a few "concessions" need to be made to MEET this incredibly difficult ideal.
To be honest, if you are designing and building your own loudspeakers, measurements are critical to stay on the path of the chosen design philosophy. But if you can't design speakers from scratch yourself, gettting hung up on measurements will likely only result in you making "snap judgments" that may be based on a misinterpretation of the data. The fact that manufacturers do not conform to a standardized test regimen for their products adds a whole other dimension of complexity to this.
I say stick with a/b comparisons of speakers that you like. Make note of what happens when the switch is made. Did something change for the better? Did something bad show up? Did something good become "less good"?
So. How much stock should we place in reviews? Although measurements are a good indicator, so are the subjective analysis of the reviewers in a lot of cases. Sometimes what the reviewers report is bang on - all these guys DO is listen to speakers, and they are often very good at using subjective terminology to describe what they are hearing. If 5/6 reviewers say that a speaker has a "bloomy" or "bloated" bottom end, maybe this is true. In any case, listen FIRST before you READ. If you read reviews FIRST you might influence your own perception by "projecting" what the reviewers said with what you are hearing. Your brain will be looking for similarities and differences between what you are hearing and "stored data" about what someone ELSE had to say. This is counter productive. You should be only listening to what YOU are hearing and not referring back to what was said by others. This extra "processing" will only serve to cloud your perception further. That is just my opinion. If my friend tells me to go listen to "awesome" sounding speakers I am walking in EXPECTING awesome sounding speakers, and expectation bias can be more of a factor than a lot of people around these parts will readily admit.
Just some food for thought...
One problem with a/b comparisons is that some guys go through great lengths in demos to ensure the speakers have the same setup position, and even move the speakers for each iteration. This makes sense from a testing philosophy (implement as many controls are you can to validate the comparison) with one rather large caveat emptor: who is to say the both speakers operate BEST in the that particular position? :o)
Kinda complicated isn't it? It really doesn't have to be...
Show your dealer you are serious. Tell him if he spends the time showing you a number of different speakers and compares your final "two best" for you, you'll make a purchase at that point. Ignore measurements and just find that speaker that does most justice to the music you are most familiar with. Tell him your budget constraints going in so he does not throw something into the mix that you can't or won't afford.
Falling in love with a $100,00 speaker you can't buy is just a wee bit masochistic, now isn't it?
Hope this helped.
Cheers,
Presto
In my opinion, the goal is to recreate (as close as possible) the same auditory perception that the listener would have experienced at a live performance of the music. This does not necessarily require recreating the same waveform at the listener's ears (which would be nice but is well beyond our current technology). Instead, it requires recreating those characteristics of the live performance that subjectively matter most to the ear/brain system.Those measurements that do not correlate well with subjective preference are not very useful.
Those that do are very useful.
Unfortunately, most of the easy-to-make measurements turn out to not be very useful for predicting subjective preference. The on-axis frequency response curve is an example of this.
On the other hand, a complete polar map is very useful because it correlates well with subjective preference, but it is difficult to measure and process. I only know of two manufacturers that publish polar maps, and no reviewers that do.
Duke
........…….. “Would you choose a speaker on measurements alone without actually hearing it? I know I would NEVER do that. BUT, “I” would have no hesitation in choosing a speaker I liked after auditioning it (hearing it) and not ever seeing how it measured.Though I have no qualms about buying a speaking based only on my subjectively listening to it I do suspect many here will claim they couldn’t possibly do that. (there is no right or wrong – individuals are simply different)
It is my understanding that the measurements of a speaker alone CANNOT tell an individual if they will like the sound of the speaker in their listening room.
Lastly, I get enormous enjoyment from listening to my system and the “specs” I find pretty boring. However, I know some who salivate over seeing and knowing all about their systems specs.
Smile
Sox
Is this being set up in too absolute a way? (a) almost no speaker can really "accurately reproduce the waveform from the input recording," especially if you want all the bass information, and (b) "recreate a live acoustic event" is something of a canard, especially for recordings that are not of live acoustic events. We end up in an unsatisfying split between humorless objectivists on one side and people who like to add "coloration" on the other.I read the Stereophile measurements essays because they're interesting. One thing they help me think about is how a speaker makes low bass -- does it simply not bother and start rolling off at 100 hz, does it rely on a tuned backward-firing port, a transmission-line design, or a dedicated woofer? Knowing this helps me think about how easy or hard it would be to get the best out of a speaker in my own circumstances. The standard stereophile measurements also pay attention to characteristics that affect how a speaker mates with an amp. These things matter if you want to keep your amp but switch speakers.
So it's easy to rattle off ways that measurements are interesting and tell you stuff that has direct and obvious bearing on how these things sound in the real world. Affirming this does not mean that we let Consumer Reports pick our speakers, or that measurements are everything, or that two similarly-measuring speakers may sound different, or that I may not buy a speaker that measures more "poorly" than another. Much depends on what we listen to and how we've trained our ears.
But I really, really would like to drop this idea that the opposite of total (unobtainable) objectivity is "colored" sound. I have heard a very few systems, built around certain (but far from all) "class A" solid state amps and certain (but far from all) tube amps, that did to my ear add something -- extra harmonics and/or extra smoothness. But for the most part the differences I hear are much more subtle questions of presentation and shaping and emphasis.
I'd also like to get away from this notion of "suspect." Everything should be suspect in the sense that you must use your own judgment to interpret it. John Atkinson, for example, has a very clear idea of what matters and what does not matter in a speaker and that affects what he reports and how he presents it (and this is essential because otherwise it would be just boring numbers). Once you read a few dozen of his reports you pick up on that. A good verbal review can also tell you a lot. Or it can just be a windy yarn about how the reviewer played a lot of records.
At this point in time though, speakers are BY FAR the biggest contributor of "distortions" in a home audio reproduction chain. With most designs, one trades higher distortion byproducts in one area in order to achieve lower distortion readings in other areas.Obviously, trying to reduce the majority of distortions seems the most logical path, which is what a select group of engineers / designers attempt to do. Since each designer / engineer has their own idea as to what is acceptable in any given area, they still end up with very different measuring and sounding products. A perfect example of this would be Vandersteen's VS Thiel's. Very similar ideologies, yet very different end results.
The bottom line is that most speaker systems are HIGHLY distorted. As such, it becomes more or less a matter of personal preferences / room interaction. Add the fact that many amplifiers aren't stable into various loads and that most manufacturers / consumers are clueless as to what constitutes "proper" speaker cabling and you might understand how we end up in the mess that we do.
None the less, i agree with many of the ideologies that Mr Hardesty espouses, but the bottom line is, these are just our opinions. People have their own opinions and preferences, so they buy and use what THEY like. After all, the idea of "high fidelity" reproduction went out the door many years ago.
"High End" audio is more a less about catering to personal preference and making money more than anything else nowadays. If you doubt it, look at the phenomenally wide variation in measurable performance & sonics amongst Stereophile "Class A" componentry. Then look at the price tags on most of that stuff. Obviously, people are willing to pay BIG money in order to suit their personal preferences, both aurally and cosmetically.
This is yet another reason that most people consider "audiophiles" to be an odd lot. Their $250 receiver measures "better" than that $25,000 tubed amp. On top of that, we all know that there's no real difference in cables, right??? ; ) Sean
>
NT
My wife's statistics lecturer once told her class "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is interesting, what they conceal is vital." Test results are like that. They tell you a lot about the parameters that were tested and they tell you nothing about what wasn't tested. Anyone who believes we now can test for everything is a fool. Anyone who believes that any test report includes every test we can currently make is overly optimistic. All test reports, regardless of whether they be for speakers or for any other component, are incomplete.That doesn't mean that test reports are useless. If something comes up well on the test report and the array of tests conducted is well chosen, that's encouraging. If it comes up badly, that's reason for caution,
But in the end we listen to music for enjoyment. We want a system that lets us enjoy the music we play. I have yet to see an objective test for a component's enjoyability and there won't be one because different people enjoy different things.
Don't buy anything you don't enjoy listening to, but use the test reports to help you sort out which components are better designed/built and or more suitable to your needs.
David Aiken
I am at heart an objectivist but understand in the real world,measurements done well have significant value but they have limitations so other tools such as ears and a brain are needed to finish the job.
The again I have a friend who has designed speakers both for himself and as a hired consultant, I've watched him design a speaker on a computer using the specs on the drivers(usually checked by his own measurements on the drivers - sometimes necessary)to design the boxes for the drivers and the crossovers. And the speakers for a couple of years now have been 95% done before any listening was done. And the revisions for the final 5% were for subtle balance tuning and checked again on the computer. Now there were mainy years of experience that also went into the computer manipulation. But that's a lot of objective approach in the design of a transducer.
I've got no problem with that approach to design. One of the things that science is really good at/for is doing something better and there's nothing wrong with using whatever knowledge and technology you have for a design. In fact there's something wrong with not using what's available to you.Using knowledge/technology doesn't guarantee that a given design will work in the flesh, but it increases the odds immensely and, as you comment, it is quite capable of reducing the amount of "fine tuning" required.
The problem with tests in particular, however, is that not only are there gaps in what gets tested but also people tend to interpret results in the light of their particular preferences and favourite design styles. Some people like sealed boxes, some like bass reflex designs, some like horns, some like panels. Give 2 people with different preferences the same set of measurents and you're pretty well guaranteed different interpretations. We don't all agree on what is a good speaker and there's an awful lot of options around. There's an awful lot of ways to interpret the same data and they're all valid from their own point of view.
More problematic is the fact that there's no 'law of physics' which says that we have to like whatever measures well, and dislike what doesn't. Measurements tell us a lot about what a speaker can and can't do, but there's no measurement which says that we'll like a particular speaker. We can, of course, often guess that we won't like a speaker which measures badly on some things but we don't always like speakers which measure well.
At the end of the day, as I said, this hobby is about enjoyment and it doesn't matter how well something measures or what other people think of it, it's not a good choice for you if it simply doesn't float your own personal boat. We can't dispense with listening.
David Aiken
You're correct about having fun and liking what you hear. But to have a discussion about the hobby you have to first agree what the hobby is to you since there is at least one or two other approaches, fidelity to live sound(hard to really define in any objective way I know) or fidelity to the software which is my definition.
There's probably a few more approaches than just those 2 you mention, but they are all just personal preferences and personal prefernce plays a huge part in what we like and enjoy.The bottom line is still going to be the fact that if you don't enjoy listening to a particular speaker or component, then you simply shouldn't buy it, no matter how well it measures. Enjoyment is both personal and subjective and there's nothing wrong with passing up something you don't like in favour of something you do. Even within either of those 2 approaches you mention, you will find different items vying for your money and some of them will appeal to you while others don't, even though each may be equally well regarded overall. It's just that we tend to like something that performs well on the parameters that are important to us, and 'hides' its compromises in the parameters that are least important to us. Listen to something else that overall measures as well, but has some of its strengths in the areas that are less important to you and a weakness in something that is important to you and you'll certainly prefer something else.
David Aiken
I'm not sure audio product reviewers make it clear when something doesn't test well or give plausible explanations as to why they still rate the product highly? If a given speaker's measurements reveal it does not have a relatively flat frequency response or other problems, will that speaker be capable of providing a rewarding listening experience over the long term?
s
the appropriate question may be "how do they correlate with what we hear in any given listening environment?"--with "environment" defined as (a) everything in the playback chain that leads to the speakers and (b) the space into which they work. As I see it, published measurements, whether from a manufacturer or reviewer, are arrived at in what amounts to a vacuum with respect to any given home listening situation. Because of the wide variance in individual environments, a speaker that measures well on the test bench may sound stellar in one situation and so-so in another. And vice versa isn't out of the question, either. That's why you have to subject measurements to your ears to approach anything meaningful when you make a purchase...and why the increasingly rare in-home demo remains the best way to evaluate what's right for you.As for "recreating the live acoustic event", the event we purchase in the form of a black or silver disc or download is essentially the creation of the recording producer/engineer/artist, and its approximation to "live" is, in many instances, anyone's guess. What we're really attempting to recreate as faithfully as possible is what they've packaged for us. And in most instances, if not all, we're not really privy to what they heard, or the conditions under which they heard it, when they finalized the mix we get as the finished product.
Jim
http://www.geocities.com/jimtranr/index.html
if the measurements of the speaker indicate that it's not capable of repicating the recorded waveform - good or bad, doesn't it follow that's taking us even further away from reality?It appears to me Hardesty is only saying measurements are a starting point. If measurements show a given speaker doesn't have a relatively flat frequency response or other problems, isn't that an indicator that subjective listening would be based on a flawed design and likely that speaker would not provide a rewarding listening experience over time?
a poorly replicated waveform or squirrelly frequency response are deviations from accuracy, which is why I don't dismiss measurements out of hand. My point is simply that listening context (including assumptions we make about the recordings we hear) is the final determinant of whether a speaker or any other component makes the cut. (I'd add that I've yet to hear the perfect speaker.)"Rewarding", long-term or otherwise, however, is in the ear of the beholder, so that's not a judgment call I feel qualified to make for anyone else.
Jim
http://www.geocities.com/jimtranr/index.html
The problem is there's no accepted agreement on what it is that a speaker should actually do and even if there was agreement they wouldn't agree on how to do it. Sometimes a design that improves one performence aspect will degrade another, compromises are inevitable.So one guy designs along the lines that appeal to him and another guy goes in a different direction because that sounds best to him. Both guys can make sensible arguments for their choices.
So what do you do? Why you go with what sounds good to you, why not?
What are we measuring? What a saxophone sounds like in an acoustically dead and neutral environment?And when does it ever get heard live in a place like that?
And when do any two venues even sound the same? Or conductors? Or even the time of year and the weather variables (humidity, air pressure etc...)
Does anyone take equipment with them to concerts and measure the performance as well? (after all, THAT is the live sound we are supposed to be after, why aren't we measuring that?) I'm sure that would go over well too - "Um, excuse me Mr. Bernstein, sounds great and all tonight but I'm registering a dip here in the lower mid band I'm not happy with at all......"
The only meter we need is already installed in our head. If it doesn't work right, the other exercises are pointless anyway. Measuring can be useful to help identify a flaw we hear, in other words "this didn't sound right, sure enough, there it is" and the manufacturer can then go about redressing the issue.
But to use it as the absolute? How many more books must be written about us giving ourselves over to the machines before we wise up?
It's all about the music...
agf
a
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