Audio Science Review Discussion

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I founded a company called Madrona Digital about 15 years ago. Our core business was custom integration (full house automation, security, lighting, etc.) but we thought we could also do some retail business. This was a mistake and after a few years, we closed that part, moved out of the retail location and are 100% focused on CI business and work out of office space. Bulk of our business are very wealthy individuals who want the services I mentioned. They have no interest, need or desire for hi-fi gear. To serve that business, we are dealers for Harman as we use a lot of their crown amplifiers for whole house sound (and for some commercial jobs), and some of their in-wall speakers. We have also done a few high-end home theaters.

As part of above, we can sell Revel speakers but since we have no showroom, inventory or customers, that is just an ability we have. Occasionally an ASR member reaches out to me to buy some Revel speakers. I give them a price and sometimes they buy it, sometimes they go and buy it elsewhere.

Unless I forget, I am very up front with the potential conflict of interest and stated it right in the review:

" NOTE : our company, Madrona Digital is a dealer for Harman products (and hence JBL) for custom integration business. So while there is no benefit to us one way or the other how this review goes, feel free to read whatever bias you want into my subjective remarks."

Keep in mind that since bulk of my review involves measurements that are standardized, I have little ability to skew the results in favor of any product. This kind of concern would be a huge issue for a subjectivist reviewer who can say anything and you have no ability to fact check. Not so with me. Measurements speak especially since there are other published measurements of Revel speakers.

To that end, I have to speak the truth when a Harman product doesn’t do well such as above:

*JBL AC25 Listening Tests and Equalization
As I mentioned, I went into this testing without realizing the need for filters. The result was boomy sound with strange emphasis of some frequencies in mid-range. At first I did not want to attempt to develop a filter but took a shot at it anyway:"

I have also posted negative reviews of other Harman products, much to anger of friends I have in the company. Again, measurements speak loudly and my ethics are not for sale in this manner.

Also note how in every review the second sentence is always where a speaker came from. Good luck finding that in other reviews even though it is part of US laws to provide such disclosure.

Keep in mind that Revel speakers tend to do well in testing because they are developed based on all the research we know about as they themselves publish such findings! They conduct double blind testing of speakers prior to release and measure and optimize them meticulously. So it should be no wonder that if you follow science when you evaluate speakers, that many Revel speakers wind up with positive reviews.

Harman has many competitors and I don’t hesitate to give them high marks when they do well. Genelec and Neumann for example compete head and head with JBL in studio monitors and have gotten some of the highest ratings I can give them, better than JBL in many cases.

On home front, KEF does as well. Read this review of KEF R11 Meta I just posted:

Conclusions
We expect excellence, objectively optimized response from KEF speakers and we have that in R11 Meta. My experience with budget coaxial designs is that they give up power handling which to me is a poor trade off. Not here. The R11 Meta has excellent bass handling with very low distortion allowing me to EQ it with no degradation as far as distortion of playback ability. There is a bit of room left here in there for enthusiasts who want the optimal performance to get there with EQ. Result was that even in our living room with many hard surfaces and large space to boot, a single R11 Meta roared to action, delivering optimal and super enjoyable response on every reference track I threw at it. Science and excellent engineering works!

I am happy to recommend the KEF R11 Meta speaker. Not only does it perform well, it is well priced as well.

Bottom line, I “sell nothing.” To wit, there are no ads, promotions or links to any Revel speakers on ASR to go and buy things from Madrona. It is an independent venture with highest standards of ethical conduct and transparency. Objective data is provided that cannot be gamed as can a subjectivist review elsewhere. All of this is known to membership at ASR and anyone who spends a bit of time reading the site without a specific agenda.

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Thing is, I was auditioning used speakers due to budget constraints, and only had a handful I was interested in to choose from. In the end I did end up with what I considered the most neutral and easiest to listen to off-axis (Audio Physics Compact Classics) - having to be nailed to a ‘sweet spot’ wasn’t in the cards (my listening spaces have been anything but ‘controlled conditions’). I just don’t think, esp with speakers, it’s wise to purchase anything without actually listening, and listening to in your own space. I would not plop down $5k for anything based on either measurements or other listeners subjective experience and/or being already familiar with the brand (in sound synergy but also in reliability, after service etc).

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Indeed, but I actually think we can see the acceleration of cultural change in certain areas where exchanges like this take place, areas where there is collective mythology like religion and here in audiophile-land. These kinds of exchanges can serve as feedback “pumps” that are, for all their messiness, ways of refining our thinking through discourse. I don’t even mind the trolls all that much and occasionally jump on Audiogon to try new discourse approaches with cable fanatics…er, dealers.

In any case, ASR is a great addition to all the other resources in sorting out facts, fancies, opinions, preferences, value systems, and great audio reproduction equipment!

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I hear you. It makes total intuitive sense. And matches what many audiophiles still think. The catch? It is the wrong position and dismisses decades of research into what makes a good sounding speaker.

It started with Dr. Toole joining National Research Council in Canada in late 1970s. He was curious if there were any similarity between speakers when it came to listener preference for them. He was surprised that not only there were similarity but that there were measurements that highly correlated with listener preference for speakers. No longer did we have to live in the wild west of anything goes when talking about sound reproduction.

Decades have gone by and many, many other studies have been conducted, confirming the same. That a specific set of measurements called “spinorama” or CEA-2034 standard, can predict with high degree of reliability whether a speaker will be liked by someone. And it doesn’t matter who they are. Most will prefer the same thing. See this research from Dr. Sean Olive and crew:

These are four speakers designated as P I B and M. The horizontal axis is the group of listeners and vertical axis is how much they liked the speaker. While rankings of how good a speaker sounds varies, ranked preference order of the four speakers remains essentially the same no matter what the listener group is. Audio Reviewers ranked them the same as college students.

One group was highly critical though: trained listeners. These are people who have gone through formal training to detect speaker colorations. As such, they voted speakers much more critically than say, audio reviewers and college students. What this says is that even though every audiophile seems to think they have God’s gift to heave when it comes to hearing, are really not trained in properly evaluating speakers. Indeed further research showed that reviewers are not even consistent in determining fidelity of a speaker when repeated in a test! Trained listeners were some 10 times more reliable.

The measurements that predict the listener preference look like this:

The comments on the graph tell you what to look for in that measurement which is flat on-axis response and smooth off-axis – the very thing you said you value in your other post. If you get these two things right, then from tonality point of view, the chances of you not liking the speaker is extremely small.

But let’s say you fall in that exception. Well, you are here which means you have Roon player. You can use its EQ to tailor the tonality to your liking. If directivity is correct, then EQ is highly effective in customizing the sound to any taste.

Note that you don’t have to go all the way here. You can use the measurements to rule out speakers that are clearly colored and have low chance of being preferred. You then arrive at a short list from which you can then audition. This is a massive help as it seems everybody in the world has gotten into speaker making.

I have a tutorial video on understanding speaker measurements if you want to learn more:

Finally, there are countless audiophiles buying speaker completely based on my reviews and measurements and success rate is extremely high. So as a practical matter, the value is there as well.

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What’s absurd is this comparison. Countries are many many orders of magnitude more complex than the very simple and well-understood practice of digital music reproduction.

Consider that there are only three functional parts to the digital music chain: the DAC, to turn the digital representation into analog, the amplifier to provide enough power to drive the speakers, and the speakers themselves. We know how to measure the fidelity and noise of the DAC; we know how to measure the distortion and power of an amplifier, and we know how to measure the anechoic spinorama of speakers. Forget all this other crap which salesmen want to sell you, and concentrate on this three, with relatively simple measurements, and you will have an excellent system. The desired characteristics have been tested over and over again in well-designed studies, studies conducted with real people’s ears, and reading Toole and Olive’s papers is a good start to understanding that.

There’s no mystery here, no hidden secrets waiting to be found out, just simple physics already well understood. To think otherwise is to wallow in ignorance, like an adult who believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

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No need to have a tantrum.

Understand what was written - speaker measurements help you create a shortlist of what are well engineered speakers (based on proper science) - then audition and pick whats best for you and your setup.

Then with Roon you can further tune with DSP, and if you so desire can go much further with software.

By the way, are there measurements for the Larsen 3 that you only liked with some genre’s?
Might be something there that could explain what you heard.

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I don’t want to speak for Amir, but it seems to me he did listen to you and took quite some time to demonstrate his position, with some data to back it up. If your answer to that is “whatever”, I guess it’s you who is not interested in his point of view.

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What point of view? You were dismissive of all measurements altogether with no justification, no proof points, no research. I have invested in $100,000 speaker measurement system that I explained. I have reviewed 250+ speakers using it to very good effect. Here comes you saying it is all useless and you wanted me to roll over and agree with you?

I am one of those listeners. Per above, I have listened critically to 250 speakers in the exact same situation and environment. Exactly what is your scope of experience in this “listening” domain?

What on earth you are talking about? I listen to music when testing speakers, not test tones. Unlike you though, I have specific tracks I consistently use that are revealing of different performance characteristics of speakers. Your random, ad-hoc listening is of little value in comparison.

How do you know you know how to listen? Did you take a test or just gave that medal to yourself and call it done?

A few years back Harman invited some of the top acousticians in US to visit their HQ to learn about their ARCOS room EQ system. I went there and attended a session where Dr. Sean Olive ran a blind test of tonality errors in a piece of music and asked the attendees to vote. Here is a picture I took:

All these experienced people failed to get past level 2 or 3. I managed to get to level 6. Dr. Olive sail past me even more. If these experienced acousticians can’t do well in such a test, what hope is there for you and fellow audiophiles you speak of?

This is why we measure. Because you are not a reliable instrument.

I can’t find any measurements of Larson 3 but stereophile did measure Larson which is a few generations later:

It was a horror show with all those drivers firing every which way. JA’s measurements are not as accurate and extensive as mine but we can still get an idea:

That peak around 600 Hz followed by sharp dip is going to cause serious colorations, impacting the all important vocals. Company commented that this measurement was no good and JA should have done in-room measurements. Well, JA had done that too:

This is stunningly poor. Yes, there are drivers firing every which way so there is likely some kind of spatial, phasey sound going on there. But as far as all important tonality, this is a broken design.

It takes a ton of mistakes for JA to say the measurements indicate a bad design. Usually he is politically correct and waves over bad stuff. Not so here:

“In my considered opinion, however, the Larsen 8’s measured performance reveals its audio engineering to be flawed.”

See how powerful measurements are in figuring out if a speaker is performant? It is only so if one applies himself to learn instead of trusting ears that they have never tested.

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You have the ability to skew results in posting your opinions or conclusions because people pay attention. Every single measurement apart from the very bad and very good can be judged differently. That is science too.

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That “ability” is incredibly limited. People who read ASR quickly learn what the measurements are about. I see people commenting here as well who are familiar with them.

Remember, the measurement basis is research and in the case of speakers based on national ANSI standards. Others have read them and know how to interpret them.

We also have large number of technology experts including top designers and CTOs of companies on ASR. This is on top of the researchers of very science we are talking about. If I am saying slightly the wrong thing, I get called on it.

Sure, some people value my judgements and conclusions. That opinion is not for sale as it is in other places. I state it just like an experienced mechanic would if you took him to check out a used car. You are welcome to learn the science and engineering and be free from my interpretations.

I don’t know that you are talking about “science” there. But sure, I get to interpret them and bring my knowledge of science, engineering and testing of so many products. Some people value that. Others just ignore them and read the measurements. You are not force fed to believe my opinion as is the case with purely opinion based subjectivist reviews. Seeing how those reviews are almost always positive, you can be sure that the spin that you worry about is ever present there.

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Another misunderstanding that I often see in the scientific or medical field is attributing authority to the person and not to the facts certified through the scientific method.

We have seen many examples of this during Covid-19. Doctors, sometimes Nobel Prize winners, disseminate views and opinions without any scientific evidence to support but only “Hey, I have a Nobel Prize in medicine! Believe me!!”

This isn’t about trusting what Amir says because Amir says it. Amir is a spokesperson for the science behind it and provides data that he detects and does not invent.
Precisely because we are talking about science, anyone who has the tools and knowledge can replicate these data (or refute them provided they provide a detailed analysis. And in this case we will try to understand the reason for the difference).

On the other side of the fence, there is the brain. The brain that is influenced by marketing words, by friends, by forums, by “Gurus”, by the eyes that see the object, by the psycho-physical state at the moment of listening, or by a thousand other variables that should not influence the process of judgment and choice.
“…Hey, I have €20,000 that I want to spend on a product that according to science is defective and non-performing, but it’s my money and I do what I want.”

Great!!!

But this only applies to you and has nothing to do with audio or whether a product is actually good or not.

I know many people (me first and foremost) who years ago wanted to approach the world of hi-fi and immediately turned back after being bombarded with “folkloristic” terms and adjectives and when they realized that they had to spend absurd amounts of money on a hi-fi system.
The ASR should help prevent this

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@Amir_Majidimehr

I am sure you understood my words and the context very well. There are many different types of science and non all of them are measureable.

Nevertheless I am happy like many other people worldwide that there is ASR. It is a great value. We can clearly see that the audio community demanded transparency after decades of only bad advertising and meaningless tests in (online or paper) magazines.

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Perhaps it doesn’t always have to be so one sided? My point wasn’t listened to at all, so why should I bother with his (or yours)? Perhaps that’s the crux of the problem - on both sides. Anyway, I don’t want to participate in a back and forth and why I deleted my reply shortly after I wrote (because it was too harsh in the moment, I agree) though for some reason it didn’t actually delete. Sorry about that. I’ll leave it up since it was quoted. Taking the need to always be right, no matter what, down a notch would go a long ways around here (and just about everywhere else on the internet) and I’ll be the first to admit I can be just as guilty.

Anyway, It’s okay that measurements are the end all be all for you and ASR, and that it works out for so many people. It doesn’t for me, though I can see the utility in it for narrowing down the scope. And like I said, with just only listening, I didn’t like the flawed Larsen speakers, despite knowing nothing about the measurements. So I guess I do know how to listen after all. I don’t need to attend a room full of old dudes competing with each other on who’s better to tell me that.

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Of course, to get speaker spinorama measurements right, you need an anechoic chamber, don’t you?

One of my guilty pleasures is the “Tech Ingredients” YouTube channel, where a retired doctor and his son engage in very thoroughly explained mad tech experiments. At about 11:25 in the following, you get to see his home-built anechoic chamber.

And this one is where he figures out his acoustic panel:

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This is explained in the Genelec review Amir linked. I’ll quote him here for your convenience:

Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner. This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn’t matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance (“near-field”) which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

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Nothing like that describes ASR. We are not slaves to measurements like the few of you keep trying to position us at. We use a three pronged approach to audio:

  1. What does research and science of audio and perception say about fidelity.

  2. What does engineering knowledge says about design of a product and company claims/specs.

  3. How do measurements inform us about #1 and #2.

All of this has been on display in my answers in this thread. If you claim a power cord filters noise, we explain how a power supply in your audio product does that a million times better. And that the cables don’t do this as otherwise, the manufacturer would show such noise reductions. We measure, proving our understanding of this being correct with the output of audio device not changing when you swap out the power cord to something much more expensive. If you claim there is some unmeasurable, we even show null tests demonstrating with music that there is no difference. Here is a great example with GR Research power cord:

Plenty of people measured audio gear before I/ASR came into the picture. They didn’t remotely have the same effect because they lacked these other factors of teaching people the underlying science and engineering. We teach you how to fish as the saying goes.

The science part is hugely based on listening tests as you have seen from me quoting a fraction of it here.

I also listen to more gear than any other reviewer.

So please don’t throw these darts at us in passing. It doesn’t make your position more compelling. Just shows you don’t even read or pay attention to my posts here let alone what is on ASR.

Back to grading your own exam. :frowning: No, it doesn’t mean you had good ears or you would have complained about specific colorations in that Larson speaker, not whatever vague thing was that you wrote. You also don’t know if the speaker you did buy is performant. Or whether it was necessary to buy a used speaker instead of a new one that is similar in cost and is backed by research and measurements to be good.

No one said you did. I said you need specific training to learn to determine what is a good speaker, and do it in unbiased way. Failing that, measurements need to be your friend just like GPS is when you want to go somewhere you don’t know.

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Good engineers in speaker development know that advantages in design cost always disadvantages and vice verca. There is no perfect speaker like there is no perpetuum mobile. It is all about compromise. Thatswhy you can always discuss measurements.

I sa the last test of the KEF R11 on ASR. I know this speaker very well and it sounds dull and muffled to me. What does it say about the measurements? I have to buy a speaker for EQing?

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Ad hominem attacks or deliberate misrepresentations of what has been stated, in particular by Amir, are uncalled for. Amir has conducted himself with a measure of restraint and dignity. It’s clear he doesn’t brook foolishness or mis-statement of fact. Don’t shoot the messenger, if you don’t care about measurements fine.
Some of us are interested in the science as revealed by the metrics. I’m interested in my audio sounding as faithful to the original mastered recording as it can – within my budget. ASR provides valuable information that informs my buying decisions.

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Just a short story:
In 2008 the midrange surrounds rotted in my Bose satellite speaker system, so I used that as an excuse to look for a new amp and speakers. I went to see John at Audio Connection in Seattle because he carried the NAD line of amps. While there, he had me listen to the Epos M12.2 standmount speakers in his livingroom-style listening room. They sounded fine to me, so I bought them.

Over the next year, or three, from a couple of reviews, my own listening, and later REW measurements I discovered that they had a large dip at the crossover point, poor baffle step compensation, and were very directional. If I moved my head forward the response changed dramatically. Plus the upper bass/lower midrange seemed mostly absent. But they still sounded OK. BTW, Creek put out a redesigned version soon after, and started getting complaints about excessive treble. They advised customers to put a resistor on the tweeter binding posts, and soon incorporated the resistor into the design.

So in 2014 I was looking to upgrade and vowed not to buy speakers from a company that used customers as Guinea pigs. I was drawn to Revel speakers because they seemed to be science and test oriented. I didn’t want to repeat my mistake with the Epos. I found a dealer that carried the Revel F208, and arranged for a listen. Turned out to be Amir’s store, who I had only heard about when he was involved with the What’s Best forum I think. I even brought my wife back for a second listen.

Still very happy with the F208s, especially after using REW, and Roon’s DSP to mitigate a couple of room modes. Glad to see the Revel measures well. It’s hard to imagine the Epos M12.2’s were measured by the manufacturer at all.

So for me, it’s measurements and listening. Especially with speakers. I appreciate ASR for the measurements, but that’s not all that goes on there.

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You must EQ to have proper sound in the room even with a perfect speaker. Room modes create boominess that ruins the sound otherwise. If you are not doing that in low frequencies already, that should be your immediate priority for better sound.

That aside, assuming you have normal hearing and not currently using a bright speaker, yes, there is an EQ fix for slight dip around 1.2 kHz as I showed in the review:

That filter will give the speaker a bit more brilliance. As I noted though, on some content with some people, that may be too much but then if you also add the bass frequency boost, it will balance out.

Both of those were supported and created using the measurements of the speaker.

To get perfect response not requiring any EQ, you will likely need to get a powered studio monitor from likes of Neumann or Genelec. Here is the former:

But again, you must measure and correct the response in bass. No speaker will fix that as it is a function of the room. Use REW for measurements and then correct using Roon PEQ.

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