A post was merged into an existing topic: What we are listening to [2024-05]
Let me explain why I refuse to be âmore specificâ or âgive links to papersâ on this thread (or elsewhere on this forum):
Imagine you are a tonmeister/sound engineer with 25+ years of experience, who has had the privilege of working with some of the worldâs finest jazz and classical musicians â for record labels such as Blue Note, Verve, ECM, ACT, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Chandos and many others. In addition to that, you teach Sound Engineering at university and have published extensively on the role (benefits and limits) of subjective listening tests in sound quality assessment (including loudspeaker evaluation). You maintain close contact with several dozens of colleagues (from all around the world) who specialize in similar fields of research. You have repeatedly worked as a PhD supervisor for doctoral students writing dissertations on the subject matter under discussion.
In other words, you know for a fact there is an almost unmanageable amount of publications on the pros and cons of subjective SQ assessment and on how to conduct reliable listening tests for this specific purpose. You also know there is widespread consensus in the relevant literature to the effect that reliable loudspeaker assessment requires a combination of various types of testing methods (i.e. not only mono listening). Now - despite all this - some members of this forum continue to claim such literature doesnât exist or is at best very rare.
Against this background, if you were in my shoes, wouldnât you expect those forum members to fact-check their own claims? I can only speak for myself. I do expect exactly that. Iâm not interested in doing other peopleâs homework for them. Asking me to prove the existence of PUBLISHED research is absurdâŚ
FYI, I was made aware of this thread by two Roon users who know me from my work as a sound engineer and who have both read some of my publications. I have to admit it wasnât a particularly clever decision for me to join this discussion in the first place. However, for someone with my background some of the untenable claims made on this thread are really hard to bear. Hence my replies.
I know. The whole problem is easy to solve. Thatâs what the âmuteâ option is forâŚ
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What you say makes perfect sense. However, when it comes to published research, I would think itâs not that easy to figure out exactly what you are referring to and how to search for it, even if itâs out there and accessible. Asking for a link to one such example is thus reasonable, and providing one would probably take you less time than writing the above reply.
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⌠so basically, you got nothing.
Seriously, your rants about this with NO sources to cite? Pretty lame.
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Providing some links is the easiest way to refute this assertion. Moreover, those who participate in this thread do not always post, and havenât necessarily arrived at a conclusion, so itâs a good idea to corroborate what you say.
As I said earlier, please provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation. Otherwise, we end up returning to the same point again and again.
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Thank you. The use of the term science and the expectations that the research shared so far here is definitive proof of general laws that explain how the âbest qualityâ sound is achieved felt wrong. Even though the problems have been continuously pointed out to the ASR folks, they respond without any humility and only the expression of wanting to be right. Like senseless contrarianism, groupthink based on unsound knowledge will keep us from learning.
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Do you really think (hope) this kind of language helps the discussion here? In a public forum, sensible exchange of opinions which may lead to conclusions is simply not possible. Try to be polite.
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I really donât get these endless ASR threads. If you want a transparent audio setup reproducing the music as closely as possible as the artist intended, youâll find some useful information for free over there. If you want a colored sound, be it as vague as âwarmâ or, I donât know, resembling the best seats of Carnegie Hall, then just know that it will measure poorly.
Painting ASR members as ignorant is also not fair if you spend some time reading articles over there. Itâs just that they want you to provide some data if you make subjective claims, be it results of proper A/B testing or some peer reviewed citations.
There is enough angry us-vs-them rhetoric on cable news and social media and most of us (citation needed) are tired of reading similar threads here.
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It is indeed a great shame that the quality of the thread is not better.
I have no training, academic or otherwise in sound engineering so I asked chatGPT:
You
What journals publish research on subjective loudspeaker assessment?
ChatGPT
Research on subjective loudspeaker assessment is typically published in journals that focus on acoustics, audio engineering, and related fields. Here are some key academic journals where such research might be found:
- Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (JAES) - This is one of the most prominent journals in the field of audio engineering, covering a wide range of topics including loudspeaker design and subjective audio evaluation.
- Journal of Sound and Vibration (JSV) - While this journal primarily focuses on the physical aspects of sound and vibration, it also includes research on how these factors affect human perception, which can be relevant to loudspeaker assessment.
- Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) - This journal publishes a broad range of research in acoustics, including studies on the subjective and objective assessment of audio and loudspeaker performance.
- Applied Acoustics - This journal covers applications of acoustics in various fields, including audio and electroacoustics, where research on loudspeakers might be featured.
- IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing - Although focusing more on signal processing, this journal occasionally publishes articles on audio systems and their perceptual evaluation.
These journals offer peer-reviewed articles that provide in-depth studies on how listeners perceive different loudspeaker systems, often involving comparative studies, listener tests, and evaluation methodologies. If you are looking into publishing in this field or seeking to read up-to-date research, these journals would be good places to start.
The Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (JAES) seemed promising so I went there and searched on âsubjective loudspeaker assessmentâ. I got 1,412 hits.
Now many of those hits may be duplicates in articles and many probably donât have much to do with âsubjective loudspeaker assessmentâ or are at best tangential. Maybe I should have used a different search term. Please correct me. But this journal was established in 1929, 95 years a go so the topic would indeed appear to be somewhat niche in academic terms but that may well bear little relationship to the topics impact in terms of engineering and productization.
What is clear on even the briefest scan of this material is that it is immensely complex and specialist and even subject to ITU international standardization which kept coming up.
I was surprised at just how rigorous the ITU recommendations for subjective testing are. The conclusion I draw is that the objective and subjective side of the argument are being presented by either side in quite a simplistic way. Its clearly a highly complex field with merits on both sides and its a shame that those that are experts cannot lead the rest of us more constructively.
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This argument could be used against both sides of the debate. Furthermore, it contributes nothing to the discussion and is contrary to the forum guidelines. I would rather not remind anyone of this again.
Whatâs more, I would like to see this discussion continue, but if the endless contrarianism and attempts at outmanoeuvring continues, it will be closed down.
On this occasion, I am trying to guide everyone in the right direction instead of using strict moderation, such as removing or partially removing responses. This should allow everyone to engage in the dialogue and gain valuable insights. Please do not feel singled out @sonic_fanatic and @HWZ.
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This sounds like a fascinating read on many of the subjects discussed here, although the cover price is pretty steep!
I think endless discussions about ASR might originate from the fact that some people disagree to that claim, and not without good reason.
Thatâs in my understanding especially sad as I support the ´mission´ of ASR in theory, would most probably agree to everything they have to say about science and physics in hi-fi while finding their measurements to be mostly accurate and pretty useful for those who really understand how to translate them to an evaluation of sound quality.
On the other hand, there are verdicts either praising or condemning certain products which are based on measurements either clearly showing that the difference between the two extremes is inaudible, or - even worse - evolving verdicts like ´perfect´ or ´excellent´ on measurements which show pretty significant flaws of a product when it comes to home use.
The irony of the whole loudspeaker measurement is that if you follow Amirâs advices, you can be pretty sure to have exactly that ´warm´, or vague, colored sound, being far from neutral or linear in a room.
Amir claimed himself that he prefers listening tests under 0deg angle towards the listener, also doing evaluation of tonal balance and alike, while these speakers will almost certainly be used at a completely different angle, e.g. Âą30deg in a stereo setup. That is from tonal balance point of view a significant difference due to human HRTF, so a proven deviation from neutral tonal balance is preferred.
The other example is not only accepting a continuously, significantly increasing directivity index of a speaker, but insisting that the resulting coloration of indirect sound is ´just right´ or ´preferred by listeners´. In my eyes this is an utmost contradiction leading to the ironic fact that speakers measured on ASR showing such behavior will inevitably lead to ´warm´, ´vague´, ´dull´ sound in a typical listening room but are nevertheless praised as ´perfect´ or ´as good as it gets´.
I have not called anyone ignorant but I found it quite revealing that you never get an answer to the question why leading members of ASR claim to be base all their verdicts on science and strive for transparency and neutrality while they actually do the opposite.
I agree but we have to take into account that a discussion is only possible if both sides refrain from absolute claims like ´I know everything so I cannot learn anything from anyone and everyone else than me is wrong´.
I am completely open to a discussion how to evaluate good sound quality, how to achieve it and how to define it. Actually it is quite surprising how many loudspeaker manufacturers and people who plan, set up and tune listening rooms are out there choosing pretty different methods of which a surprisingly high number leads to everything from good to excellent sound quality. I am absolutely open to something unorthodox that is expected not to work in theory but has a convincing practical outcome.
That is including Amirâs method of listening to speakers in mono which is simply wrong according to everything I have learned and experienced in decades as well as his positive verdicts on an important factor like directivity index showing significant flaws which I had expected to show a bad performance in a living environment. I have tried it in my own home and was pretty disappointed as the outcome was even worse than what had to be expected based solely on the directivity measurements.
A very long post, with little information density?
And appeal to (self) authority?
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I expect you to respect the readers here and provide references and quotes from literature so people learn something. I have had a good career as well but you donât see me linking to that and say that is that. No one learns anything from that.
We have large number of Pro industry members on ASR in both technology side and sound engineering, mastering, etc. We discuss many topics related to audio fidelity. I will tell you what I have told them: that people in the pro side have done far, far less research into topic of audio fidelity and verification of their methods than we have in consumer side. They seemingly follow what has been the tradition without questioning it in any formal way.
Letâs look at an example: the practice of using these âcubeâ speakers for âtranslationâ of their mixes for music production:
Here is its frequency response:
What possible use is there for using this speaker to monitor your mix? Yet folks swear up and down that it is useful that way and so and so Grammy winner uses it so it must be right. Ask for any research to back it and there is none. Only pleading to be believed based on the fact that well, they are âProsâ so must be believed.
In an uninformed discussion, maybe you get away with that. But not in this thread and not in ASR.
Here is another beloved studio monitor, the clone of Yamaha NS-10M:
How the heck would listening to such a broken speaker tell you anything useful about how it would sound on a proper speaker we have? Just as with the cube, you would make wrong decisions.
Again, you can counter all of this with proper research. Perform mix jobs on these speakers and well designed ones and show that the former is superior. But no. What we get told again is what Grammy records are mixed with these monitors.
I am asking if you have done your own homework. Clearly you have not or we would have seen a bunch of references. As to me, I absolutely have. I have spent 15 years searching, reading and analyzing countless research papers. Here is the folder stats for my research library:
This is why I am able to quickly reference and post papers to back what I am saying.
Bottom line is what I said is absolutely true. That if you take away Dr. Toole and teamâs research into listener preference for speakers, you are left with very little. And that little that is left will not in any way attempt to justify stereo listening being as good or better than mono listening.
So far, I have tested some 250 speakers this way. So not only do I have confidence in the research, I am speaking from vantage point of someone who has extensively practiced it. So I will say it again: Preference for speakers is by far determined by tonality. This is best determined using single speaker listening tests. And developing equalization.
What âAmirâ is doing is what one of the largest speaker companies in both Pro and Consumer side uses: Harman when developing JBL and Revel speakers. Every Revel speaker goes through mono double blind testing prior to release. This is a picture I took at their facility while taking the same listening test:
See? They are testing one speaker at a time.
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I have never seen any pro using an NS-10 or Avantone or a couple of other tiny ´single fullrange driver cube speakers´ for the purpose of creating or balancing their mix.
They nevertheless serve a purpose in a studio (despite from intercom or announcements): they represent a pivoted extreme of typical flaws found in compromised low-fi speakers such as smartphone/laptop speakers, tiny bluetooth speakers, low-fi in-car-audio or anything portable. What sounds more or less full-bodied, dynamic and non-annoying on these ones can be listened to on literally everything. This type of ´anti-mastering´ is the anecdotal belief of many recording pros. In the old days they liked to take the rough mix on a compact cassette to the in-car system for a low-fi compatibility test.
One remark on your Avantone reviews: While I found the ASR measurements to be accurate and would most certainly agree with your estimation of sound quality, I noticed some misinterpretation in your texts and particularly in the bulletpoint verdicts within the graphs (which I find misleading):
- ´valid for farfield´ nothing could be more wrong than this recommendation given the fact we are talking about low directivity index in several frequency band with the NS-10 clones towards higher frequencies
- what you have mistaken for edge diffraction effects with the Cube speakers is most probably originating solely from the behavior of the diaphragm, I would rather see some partial resonances in that causing some parts of the diaphragm resonating out-of-phase to others so creating a comb-filter effect and very narrow-banded cancellation effects outside the listening window.
The latter is a very common effect found with almost all non-overdamped, huge (>4") fullrange cones with a light and non-stiff diaphragm. Many other similar designs use either a dedicated partial damping for the outer ring of the diaphragm to milden this effect, or put an additional, smaller cone on top of the main one to create a wider directivity pattern for everything higher than 6K (Lowther is a typical example).
Do you notice the inherent contradiction in your statement?
If tonality is most of the bill for speaker quality, and you can develop equalization for the on-axis response almost to perfection - what is the point in testing speakers subjectively in a listening test for tonality or doing frequency response measurements? You could anyways EQ every curve you desire which would make these tests senseless.
That is a pretty revealing statement and is underlining the claim that little to nothing has been published at all on the estimation of speaker quality or speaker and room combinations by independent researchers. That does not mean that such research is not taking place, it is simply not published as it is serving internal purposes of either manufacturers or large-scale buyers in the pro audio industry such as broadcasters, studio installers or alike. If you take a look at what has been published by AES, ITU, EBU, IRT and alike, they usually keep things on a very general yet methodically detailed level and let others do the judgements.
Toole and Olive, on the other hand, are with all their knowledge and expertise no independent researchers by any means. If I am not mistaken, most of things they have been publishing on that topic was more or less related to their position as employees of or using the facilities of the big multi-brand loudspeaker manufacturer you have named. So even if it is correct by methodology it is still serving the purpose of that company.
That is particularly true to loudspeaker comparisons and alike. I stopped reading their surveys on that topic when it occurred to me that they seem to have chosen significantly flawed competitor´s product, hardly veiling their origin by calling them ´M´ or ´B´, subsequently demonstrating how superior their own methods and products are.
I would not even call this just biased, but rather very sophisticated marketing being formally clothed as research. I do not have any problems with that as other manufacturers are choosing similar methods in a more private environment, inviting journalists, installers and procurement managers to their R&D departments to proof that their methods are right and Toole/Olive are wrong. But relying a whole philosophy of what is claiming to be an independent platform like ASR on one side looks a bit problematic to me.
It gets a little weird as I have noticed that funnily the speaker products being advertised as ´most advanced´ coming from the same provenience as Toole´s and Oliveâs surveys seem to never being used in published comparison tests although I regard them to be significantly flawed from reproduction quality perspective. I am talking about two particular models which I have listened to for quite some time showing the utmost contradiction between perfect measurements and highly sophisticated technology inside while having shown significant flaws in my own listening tests. Actually they both could serve as textbook examples why perfect measurements do not ensure good sound quality.
I offer to name the 2 products in a private message so you can include them in your list of speakers to be reviewed. I am sincerely interested in what your results will be.
Exactly. You are reproducing the methods of a single manufacturer and their R&D team leading to similar results. I recommend to consult with competitors who publicly disagree with both Harmanâs methods and products. I have named a few, but there is several dozens of others being taken seriously in the pro audio community. If you are not sure whom to believe, I recommend a comparison test under field conditions.
That is exactly what I did numerous times, btw with some exact same models you are reviewing on your site. The result was exactly opposed to the surveys you are quoting and the design ideals the aforementioned products have been following. I would rather say the competitor´s theories have been confirmed when it comes to ideal speaker directivity for home use.
As i said: comparing their own products with significantly flawed competitor´s products plus unrealistic test parameters like monaural-0deg-listening will lead to wrong results of preference. The scientific value of that is similar to the Pepsi challenge.
The response of that Cube in no way or shape approximates any low-fi speakers in phones, laptops or tiny bluetooth speakers. It is just a random transducer with poor frequency response and copious resonances. That aside, the point I was making was that you all adopt practices such as this without a single controlled test to check for efficacy. A famous producer uses it and folks like lemmings follow the same. Then fight tooth and nail to defend the practice as you are doing here. In sharp contrast, we have a ton of publish literature on what makes a good speaker.
You misunderstood that comment, likely due to not understanding what Predicted In-Room Response is. That graph is created based on average modeling of a number of rooms for far field listening. That model doesnât fit near-field usage and hence my notion that people donât run with the data. Not that such speakers are good for far field. They are horrible for both near and far field listening!
You canât develop proper EQ without measurements so your comment is nonsensical. If you mean that we can correct for response errors with EQ, absolutely. Electronic equalization is extremely precise and accurate and for those of using Roon, free. So within reason, we can transform less than ideal response to something far better.
The challenge is that you may not be able to EQ in all cases. For me, I of course use EQ in Roon. But if I listen to youtube on the browser, I am without EQ. Same when I use my Reel to Reel tape deck and its analog path. So it is better to have a speaker that has proper response.
You donât say. Maybe they test their speakers by adding wings to them to see if they can fly! For all you know, they could be testing in mono as well. No data means no data. For all the protesting, none of you have managed to cite a single reference that contradicts the extensive research I have presented by top luminaries in this field.
You are very much mistaken. For heavenâs sake, please do some research before making comments like this. Dr. Tooleâs bio is available on many sites. Here is an example: https://floydtoole.academia.edu/
BIOGRAPHY
Floyd E. Toole studied electrical engineering at the University of New Brunswick and at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London where he received a Ph.D. In 1965 he joined the National Research Council of Canada in the Division of Applied Physics where he reached the position of Senior Research Officer in the Acoustics and Signal Processing Group. In 1991 he joined Harman International Industries Inc. as Corporate Vice President â Acoustical Engineering. In this position he worked with all Harman International companies and created and directed the Harman Research Group, a central resource for acoustical research and technology development relating to the consumer and professional audio industries. He retired in 2007.
See? He worked at Canadian government funded NRC from 1965 to 1991. Much of the research we are talking about was conducted there including the discovery of mono testing being superior to stereo. He built an incredible team there which included Dr. Sean Olive. See these paper titles:
Once he left NRC, Dr. Olive followed him to Harman. Others left and worked for Paradigm and PSB. Those companies practice similar research although with less commitment than Harman.
Countless companies now follow their research quietly. If they publish papers, references are always made to works of these researchers.
You can call it what you want. It doesnât amount to anything. These are the qualifications of Dr. Toole from above bio:
⢠Two Audio Engineering Society (AES) Publications awards (1988, 1990).
⢠The AES Silver Medal award (1996).
⢠The AES Board of Governors Award for service to the society (2003).
⢠CEDIA Lifetime Achievement award (2008).
⢠Beryllium Driver Lifetime Achievement award from ALMA (Association of Loudspeaker Manufacturing & Acoustics International) (2011).
⢠The AES Gold Medal award (2013).
⢠Inducted into the Consumer Technology Association Hall of Fame (2015).
⢠The Peter Barnett Award from the Institute of Acoustics (UK) (2017).
He is a Fellow and Past President of the AES, a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and a Fellow of CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association).
You donât get such award for publishing marketing material. You get them for putting aside commercial interest and sharing with the world and your competitors what makes for good sound.
Their competitors such as Genelec and Neumann not only send me speakers for review but their CTOs are members of ASR. On consumer side, we have KEF who has sent me speakers and likewise, their CTO and engineers are on ASR engaging with membership. Clearly they are not bothered by my testing methodology.
Really, you personify why I created ASR. Every person has an opinion about audio. But as is evident in your posts and that of your compatriot, they have no data or research to back it. ASR forum fixes this. I and others bring in solid, research based measurements to the table. And then we dig deep into what science says about them. We go by what we can prove and demonstrate. This is why ASR has grown to be the top audio site in the world and is changing the landscape of how products are developed and evaluated.
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See, that ´you-all-are-wrong-and-all-the-same´ insult is exactly the type of thinking which leads to dogmatism and some kind of religious zealotry. How do you know fellow pro audio experts and me are not doing controlled tests? We simply do not publish the results for various reasons.
If my assumption about that particular product is correct, I would conclude that every serious recording engineer would dismiss such a loudspeaker for obvious acoustical flaws after 10 sec of listening time. I have never seen one in any control room, mastering suite or mobile recording facility and I do happen to see a lot of them from the inside. Same is true to NS-10 for the last 20 years if the gear in the studio is not vintage.
There is no independent, up-to-date literature on which factors define a good speaker. There might be some completely outdated surveys and some by manufacturers themselves and some very well-founded theoretical papers, but there is no common agreement based on scientific research but a lot of different views.
The thing which you might not understand as you seem to strictly stick to your either-friend-or-foe-thinking: I understand everything there is to understand about your measurements and the ideas behind defining from technical point of view what makes a good speaker. As well as how to do controlled listening tests and which factors most probably lead to which result. I do not doubt the relevance of measurements and technical specs for certain aspect of reproduction quality.
And, yes, coming straight from university I might have had similar ideas about complicated things being sufficiently describable by measurements and everything being easily determinable by simple models. Working with practical aspects of loudspeakers, room acoustics and reproduction quality for many years has taught me quite the opposite. Does not mean I have adopted any esoteric or subjectivistic thinking. Everything is based on physics, there is no room for esoteric beliefs, but some aspects are too complicated to be described or determined by very simplified methods like measurements, may it be frequency response or THD.
On one hand, I can - I have done complete EQ correction curves without ever doing a measurement. This is an exception, however, as measurements in a room make it much easier to identify narrow frequency bands which had caused problems in the listening test. On the other hand, this has nothing to do with the contradiction in your statements.
So why should we do a controlled mono listening test to identify the audibility of narrow-banded peaks and dips which you anyways say are going to be identified by measurements and corrected to perfection? Does not make sense to base verdicts on such measurements.
The Youtube or tape machine example is also not really valid as you can use either an EQ plugin or an external DSP/DAC or analogue EQ.
No speaker has a proper frequency response out of the box in a living environment. You have already mentioned yourself that without DSP no adequate reproduction quality is possible at home (I might want to add that speaker placement, room acoustics and directivity are as important). So this is applicable to Youtube and analogue as well, is it not?
If I apply your statements on room response and EQ, I would conclude that the frequency response of a speaker under (simulated) free-field conditions is rather unimportant except from drastic, non-correctable flaws as anyways the room will add or mess up some part of that and you anyways need EQ - strictly according to your own logic!
There is a lot of data on how to choose parameters for such listening tests and which specs should a product and room be within to be valid for a comparison. If I am not mistaken, an ITU or EBU paper has been linked in this thread previously. And these listening tests are taking place, there is simply no point in publishing results as the outcome is for internal purpose like procurement or QM.
I think Dr. Toole does not need any admirer to put virtual medals of honor on his chest.
Fact is he worked for Harman from 1991 on and almost all surveys you are basing your ideology on were done with participation of Harman staff in their facility. Or am I missing anything here?
Do not get me wrong: This is totally legitimate, and I have not heard any comments by Dr. Toole himself that only his methods and theories are right. In contrary, he seems to be pretty cautious when it comes to applying his results or drawing conclusions from this.
I doubt that, as a lot of competitors and potential customers have a different understanding what makes good sound and how to evaluate speakers. That is totally legitimate and a part of that particular market, but the methods and results are still Toole´s and Hermanâs view as one competitor in that business even if they have decided to publish things which others keep by themselves.
As mentioned, I am also not bothered by your testing methodology when it comes to the measurements. I had the chance to compare them with results from an anechoic chamber on a professional level and found them to be surprisingly accurate.
And i do not doubt that pro and hi-fi CTOs are taking part in your discussions, it is also pretty clear they would not disagree with neither accurate measurements nor with flattering judgements in their favor (which I find partly misleading and inaccurate, as mentioned).
What I know for sure from face-to-face conversation with one of the aforementioned is they do not share Harmanâs view on listening tests nor follow your philosophy of how things should be when it comes to DSP, ideal speaker´s specs and alike. The same is true to one of the 4 aforementioned ´cardioid pioneers´ who seems to be pretty hostile in presentations towards all of Harman´s R&D. Impolitely hostile, I would say.
I think you are overestimating the importance of the whole thing. I do not know a single CTO who would care for verdicts published on what is regarded to be a resource for measurements mainly. Not many people rely on measurements when making their decisions what to buy.
It is nevertheless revealing to read that statement which reminded me of the self-proclaimed ´kingmakers´ among the high end audio journalists some decades ago. They also thought they are moving the market with a few reviews and control buyers remotely shifting the whole market to high end audio and the brands of their liking.
The sad thing in my understanding is that it seems to be laden with dogma and ideology just as much as it was the case 30 years ago with opposite divinities. Yes, back then it was all about flawed high end products, expensive snake oil gear, esoteric beliefs and outright voodoo. If you would have published your site back then to fight all this nonsense, I would have signed every word of it. Science, measurements, controlled listening tests and common sense would have helped a lot back then.
Today the audio world is different. Nearly everyone can bring a speaker to proper behavior in the lab by the help of Klippel, Clio, REW and alike plus latest DSP technology. A majority of digital gear and even amps are on a level of quality with which you can set up a pretty nice-sounding system. There is no need to hunt for e.g. flattening the last dip of +0.5dB @2,734Hz or improving SNR from -115 to -125dB or basing condemning verdicts on such specs. It is simply not audible, so let everybody be happy with their gear.
It is sad that this clinging on problems of the past seems to suppress the important questions of reproduction quality today. E.g. what you can and cannot correct by DSP, how to improve sound quality that people are really happy with their systems, which aspects define an extraordinary listening experience and, most importantly, how loudspeakers sound in different rooms as well as how to optimize them for different rooms.
I feel honored by that statement as it is making clear that behind your mission is no intension to improve sound quality or educate people but to lead some kind of campaign against everything that does not fit to your own ideology plus giving some individuals tools to devalue the ideas of others by the help of irrelevant specs.
If you would be really interested in generating knowledge and giving people tools to decide for themselves, you would take at least my claims about room acoustics and speaker directivity seriously, as they are not my personal views but the technical foundation for a few of the most-recognized manufacturers among your own circles and shared by their developers. I have named four companies who do things fundamentally opposed to everything your research and your verdicts are saying.
If you do not believe me or the aforementioned developers, maybe you consider the late Siegfried Linkwitz to be a trustworthy witness. He has written quite some papers on exactly that matter as invited speaker of the AES and he made these ideas popular AFAIK. Unfortunately there has never been any controlled listening test before he passed away, if I am not mistaken.
The technical, acoustical or psychoacoustical explanations in my postings you repeatingly ignore, or throw a bunch of papers to justify why you ignore the conclusions.
So, my suggestion would be you compare a speaker which I consider to be suitable in directivity for home listening while you and your community have approved its sonic qualities with another model which you see on a similar level of reproduction quality by your own methods while I identify it as problematic for the given room and placement.
If the verdicts on ASR are accurate and meeting your claims about target curves, there should not be any audible difference or the speaker which I have chosen should loose miserably. If I am right in my assumption, people will notice the same effect I was noticing when doing that comparison.
Do you agree that this would make sense?
What exactly is it you want to say?
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I donât understand how some see no useful knowledge or references, and i see pure gold. And a challenge to see what is true! What more could we ask for to advance our understanding of how to achieve the best quality sound?
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That the fundamental theory of ´smooth, continuously increasing´ directivity index and target curve tilted downwards which Amir´s reviews are claiming to be optimal are not leading to balanced sound and optimal sound quality.
I have found a selection of papers by Siegfried Linkwitz online and although they had been published before it was possible to design speakers that would prove his thoughts, they are surprisingly close to what later has been confirmed:
Siegfried Linkwitz on room and speakers
The typical box speaker ⌠is omni-directional at low frequencies and becomes increasingly forward-directional towards higher frequencies. Even when flat on-axis, the total acoustic power radiated into the room drops typically 10 dB (10x) or more between low and high frequencies. The uneven power response and the associated strong excitation of low frequency room modes contributes to the familiar ⌠generic box loudspeaker sound. This cannot be the avenue to sound reproduction that is true to the original.
Siegfried Linkwitz on imaging created by stereo loudspeakers in a room
Loudspeakers should be designed to illuminate the listening room with equal timbre for all horizontal and vertical angles