This is what we English call damning with faint praise.
If you’d asked Harbeth, or most owners, they’d tell you:
(1) The Harbeth mid-bass driver is designed and built in-house and is expensive, many times the cost of a typical drop in unit of the same size. They use an in-house designed polymer cone, their own magic recipe, and it’s very expensive to make.
(2) Thin wall speaker cabinets are a lot more expensive to make because they are not veneered boxes that are easy to make. It is a 4-sided unit, the drivers are mounted in the front baffle, the electronics on the real panel, and it has to be carefully screwed together at low torque and pairs accurately matched.
This comes across as criticism, whereas you unknowingly described the design objective. The key features of this and most other Harbeth are:
(1) Tonally accurate and generally glorious midrange
(2) Rolled off top end to avoid any listening fatigue
(3) Slightly enhanced bass so that they will perform well with modest amplifiers under 100w.
These features are because the speakers are designed to provide extremely tonally accurate sound and long-term listening pleasure in a “typical” English living room from a speaker that is easy to drive.
As @Michal_Jurewicz1 said, this is just a classic example of a bad review because it was rushed out before listening, but far worse, you clearly had no idea what the product was about and what the design was intended to achieve.
My wife has magical powers and chose an accurate, detailed and domestically pleasing speaker. God bless her and her secret talents.
She chose Wilson Sabrina. Tonally very similar to Harbeth with more extension at both ends, but not fatuiging. They go down to about 32Hz and don’t rattle the room, which is how I like it. I used my regular list of test tracks, took about 45 minutes, job done. Never looked back.
When I chose my DAC I paid attention to Cameron Oakley (Goldensound). He does extremely considered reviews, he does loads of measurements, but relates them to his listening experience and explains the correlation. So you don’t need to know sound engineering to get a lot from his videos.
He gets loaned equipment, but often he buys things he wants to test with crowdfund money and then sells them.
I bought a Holo May, after a home demo and a couple of very difficult test tracks.
Sure, there’s a difference in objectives between your ideal review and ASR. The consensus of most (but not all) audio aficionados is that DACs should reproduce the encoded music accurately and without coloration. For amps, that value system also includes other dimensions associated with power, headroom, and even heat generation, but fidelity remains a primary good. For speakers, the consensus has been captured in target curves like Harman. Thus, “BBC sound” and so on, while appealing to many, will fall short as a result. Finally, engineering failures like the filter response in the Mytek product figure as well.
I think ASR reviews are worth reading even when I would like to better understand software functionality and value industrial design in ways that differ from others. More insights are always helpful.
Expensive yes. Again proves cost does not guarantee performance/accuracy.
I do like the finish, but the interior pics of the cabinetry look kind of cheap. Not doubting its expensive to make in the UK.
Lol, i must be looking at different measurements. Its not tonally accurate at all, and inevitable room reflections will make it worse. No doubt for you the midrange is glorious, but wont necessarily apply to others.
Thats not a roll-off, there is a 10dB drop from upper bass to treble. If you need that to tame/prevent fatigue there is something very wrong with the speaker. I can dial a similar curve using Roon EQ and music loses a lot of detail, sounds very “mushy” to me. It is also not faithful to the source material - using my own. A 3dB downward slope from 1k-20kHz is preferred by most listeners.
Are you referring to efficiency? The bass is enhanced because of the ridiculously steep downward curve. But deep bass is totally missing. Will need subwoofer/s for complete frequency response, modest amplifier wont be enough.
Now Iam sure you and others enjoy it, and thats great. If you grew up listening to 70s/80s British rock and still do - they are probably perfect for recreating that sound. Can achieve the same with Roon and a cheaper but higher performing speaker. Its an odd curve, but very easy to replicate as your shredding upper midrange and treble energy - much easier than boosting.
But you cant “spin” these measurements. They are not high fidelity.
You know this is an exampke of the great value of Amir/ASR/EAC and others reviews.
Previously you just had random people claiming speaker A is acourate and glorious. Now you actually have objective standardised data based on proper science!
Is this not a fantastic tool for discerning buyers?
Cameron makes measurements, but then throws them all out and makes up subjective impressions in sighted listening which is completely unreliable. He has no technical or engineering background in audio. He very much matches Mytek’s accusation of “a guy with an Audio Precision analyzer.”
He contracts for headphones.com. His gear was purchased with a ton of sponsorships. He advertises and monetizes his content. None of this says proper, objective reviewing. He also tests a fraction of what I do and massively lacks the breadth of products I test.
To the extent you can ignore his subjective comments, and be mindful of his clearly commercial bias, then you can get some information out of his measurements. Go beyond this and you might as well not care what he measures.
There is nothing remotely accurate about the Sabrina. From Stereophile review:
You call that wonky frequency response accurate? JA had this to say in his measurement comments: "I suspect that the Sabrina has a relatively strong internal acoustic resonance at 242Hz. This resonance is of high Q (Quality factor), which means that it needs to be excited by continuous energy at that exact frequency to become fully developed. "
You want resonances in musical instruments, not speakers.
This is accurate:
So is this:
These are the types of studio monitors used to create the music you listen to. The Sabrina will color them all without discrimination. I highly suggest you use the measurement data to dial in corresponding correction in Roon. Perform AB tests and I am confident you can make the sound a lot better. As is, the response is broken.
@Amir_Majidimehr Herein lies the problem. One little quip about Genelec in jest and a blizzard of charts and videos rains down. Don’t you have a machine that can detect humour? Some of which charts are of speakers so ugly I’d have to poke my eyes out with a sharp stick if they ever entered my house. As @Michal_Jurewicz1 suggested, you are just determined always to be right.
I’ve heard a lot of live acoustic music over the years, often over 200 performances in a year (New York City Ballet tonight, Shalosh at Ronnie Scott’s and the Royal Ballet earlier this week), and I’ve heard enough audio systems to know what I like and don’t like and what to me sounds like music in my home. It’s what @Michal_Jurewicz1 calls experience. I’m sure many people here have their own wealth of experience.
Sitting here listening to some Bach, my DAC is the only device that I actually listened to a review before buying, and it was the home demo that really made the decision. It was quite specific. I’d heard a performance of Martinu’s Nonet No. 2 at Snape Maltings, was listening to a recording and was not satisfied with the image separation. After some enquires and research the DAC was in my house and I was quite blown away with how well it performed, doing an A/B with my own DAC. I then played some vocal music (Josquin’s Mass: Missa Hercules Dux Ferrarie) and the deal was done. At that point I’d forgotten about sine waves.
It’s not really strange that you can read reviews until you’re blue in the face, but sit down and listen to some music and other people’s opinions just evaporate. And you can’t measure aesthetics.
Humor can be difficult to detect in text. But if everyone here could err on the side of humor over angst, I think we’ll all feel much better in our discussions about the music and sound we’re all so passionate about.
How do you explain that I heard no magic in midrange? Do you or the company have proof of any such magic in controlled listening tests? Have you listened to it and heard this magical quality? If so, why did you buy a different speaker?
I want to hear everything the talent and producers intended for me to hear. If I want to roll off the highs for whatever reason, I will use Roon EQ. I certainly don’t want the speaker manufacturer to permanent color the recordings this way.
Again, I can use EQ in Roon if I wanted more bass. Bass response is heavily modified by the room. If there is a mode in the same region, that hump will make things more boomy.
Over 1000 measurements were performed to find out what the speaker is really doing. Full 3-D scan of the speaker was performed, generating complete response of it for the first time. The measurements fully comply with open standards (ANSI/CEA/CTA-2034). You yourself acknowledge what I found with bass and treble response to be correct. Just because I don’t buy into “magic” marketing claims of companies doesn’t make it rushed.
But say it is right: have the company prove those points. Show controlled listening tests that demonstrate it has that non-fatiguing response you claim it has. Until then, my review data is authoritative and stating anything else is believing companies at the expense of fellow audiophile’s interest in fidelity.
I didn’t read any such quip. Mention accuracy and I will show performance of Genelec and Neumann as I did.
I have decades of experience being a patient. It doesn’t mean I know more than my doctor when I get sick. By the same token, it doesn’t matter how many concerts you have been to in topics that we are discussing. We are talking about measurements and science behind them. Nothing about going to concerts teaches you this topic.
The reference is odd anyway as stereo and home sound reproduction has no prayer of capturing live events. When I sit at my teacher’s acoustic piano and practice (I have an electronic one at home), the fidelity of what I hear has never, ever been produced in any recording on any system I have heard. We do not have any ability to teleport someone to that experience.
What we do have is skilled recording engineers, talent and producers that are able to create content for us that we can imagine being real and great. Such content can be so great that even on poorly engineered audio products, we enjoy what we hear. But at the end of the day, it is a painting, not a photograph of the event.
So let’s not keep bringing unrelated “experience” to the topic. It means nothing. It certainly doesn’t make you more qualified than some of your peers here without such. Ditto for Michal saying he has designed audio interfaces for a long time. We are here and now, examining performance of audio products. This is what matters to us as consumers, and me as a reviewer.
We are not discussing aesthetics. But if we were, Wilson speakers rank as the bottom of a list of any such survey of high-end speakers. Please forgive me but I don’t know many people who want to have your speaker in their living room:
Or this $320,000 Chronosonic XVX from them:
But yes, looks are personal and while I opine on them in my reviews, I don’t ask anyone to agree with them. What I do ask them to pay attention to is the response of said $300K speaker in stereophile measurements:
Look at the larger variations and coloration it will impose on everything you play. This is what happens when you ignore audio science and just go by random ideas that appeal to certain buyers.
And oh, stereophile measurements are heavily filtered and smoothed. Mine are not and would show far worse response. You can’t stick drivers in all those boxes and have braces and such without causing diffraction all over the place.
Buy it because you like the brand, the status, etc. but please, please don’t run off saying objective analysis of such products is no good. Measurements show the truth. Accept them and be happy despite them. Don’t advocate people to ignore them.
I’ll tell my wife she made the wrong aesthetic speaker choice because some guy in Seattle USA doesn’t know anyone who likes them.
This common refrain illustrates why the measurement types can’t get it into their heads that people can choose hi-fi on any other justifiable basis, so it can only be attributed to the malign influence of marketing or dissatisfaction with ones genitalia.
My hi-fi is not in my living room, my wife had never heard of Wilson, and I could probably count the number of visitors who have heard it playing on one hand. The room has a separate Sound system in the ceiling for ambient music when we have friends around. The room is dedicated to listening to music, reading and drinking copious amounts of gin, and excuse me if I now indulge in all three activities.
Incidentally, the separate sound system in my music room, is the Roon Ready Zuma system, I use it for ambient music when we have friends round, but it is very high-quality and I listen to it most of the time. I wrote a blog for Roon about it.
I am not a “measurement type” guy. I am a science and engineering type. I have repeatedly asked for listening tests to prove claims, not just measurements. Or explanation of science and engineering to justify design decision.
You say things like accuracy and midrange magic to defend the performance of a speaker. When there is no foundation and evidence actually points to the contrary, then I call them marketing claims, folklore, myths.
Be sure to tell her that you brought her into the discussion.
