Controlled listening tests are not surveys. These tests are double blind, level matched and have very high level of rigor which include statistical analysis to rule out chance. Research into superiority of single-speaker/mono testing and what is considered a good speaker response dates way back to when Dr. Toole and his team were at NRC.
LISTENING TESTS - TURNING OPINION INTO FACT
by
Floyd E. Toole
National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada, K1A OR6.
Note this bit in the abstract:
"Listening tests of many kinds take place regularly in the audio industry. Most of them lack the necessary psychological and acoustical controls to produce results that are of real significance, yet the course of audio is regularly influenced by opinions of this sort."
He goes on to say: "Experimental psychologists have long been aware of the vagaries of humans confronted with judgement tasks. People like to please and will satisfy an experimenter by producing reams of responses. The problem is that without complex experimental procedures and controls the responses can be quite variable. In fact humans, in most real-world situations, are notoriously unreliable judges."
The bolded section is why we can’t just believe what you say. Your personal anecdotal experience is just that.
Now getting to stereo vs mono testing:
"Stereo or mono? It is acknowledged that the stereo imaging and the sensations of space and depth, that are a part of two-channel reproduction, are essential to good audio. It is also widely acknowledged that these qualities are especially dependent upon recording technique and the placement of loudspeakers and listeners in the room. The uncertain nature of these phenomena is a further complication in an already complicated situation."
He goes to say what I have mentioned. That subjective assessment of stereo effect is incredibly hard and nearly impossible:
"Stereophonic tests involve the presumption that the listener knows what to expect wlth respect to the spatial aspects of the reproduction. Stereophony is presently an art form in itself. Even in the domain of classical music there is little consistency. For example, it is commonplace for soloists to appear larger than life against a distant orchestral backdrop… Groups of musicians can appear to be on a distant stage or in the listening room. The listener, in such cases, can express a judgement based on his expectations, but not on what was intended or is inevitable for technical reasons. The relationships that are presumed to exist between such opinions and the performance of audio components must be treated with the utmost caution."
"One could go on cataloging aspects of stereo that cause it to be variable, unpredictable and the object of continuing controversy, The principle point of the current argument is that unless the purpose of the listening test is to study aspects of stereo itself or to audition a particular recording in a particular situation, to use stereo is to include a host of unknown and possibly incidental factors into the test."
I will end it with this quote: "In the meantime, stereo remains a pleasurable adjunct to high fidelity, but in listening tests of certain kinds it would appear to be an unnecessary complication. This would appear to be the case with listening tests aimed at assessing the accuracy of loudspeakers as transducers [20,21)."
All of this was written and listening tests performed long, long before Dr. Toole and team set foot at Harman. We have incredible body of authoritative research here. Cheap shots of calling them “surveys” and mispositioning them as marketing material or “theoretical,” is totally improper and beneath the level of discussion we are having.
Btw absolute none of your long post seemingly about “why I refuse to” actually explains why you cannot share specific references for anything you wrote
It was all a big information (low) density appeal to (self) authority, which nobody should believe or trust
I think “cheap shots” is a bit harsh. They are opinions and ones I find interesting based on what sounds like clear experience. I agree that everyone finds value from the work of Toole and Harman, but to argue against the bias of humans and companies is odd. There is a constant blurring of marketing and science in commerce. We would be fools to not see this.
@Arindal may have already posted this and it’s fascinating. I feel it adds more perspective to the challenge in homes: Whatever_happened
The abstract:
“Sound quality is judged by the realism of the auditory illusion, which is created in the listener’s mind, created from the sounds coming directly from the loudspeakers and by reflections and reverberations from the room, arriving from various directions and with different timings. The original sound streams from the musicians - performing in their acoustical environment - to the listener in his home have undergone significant changes in processing over the last 50 years, leading to dramatic improvements in dynamic range and bandwidth due to digital technology, but also to new forms of distortion. Electro-acoustic transducers have kept up with the developments. But loudspeakers built with those transducers have only marginally improved, especially when tasked to create a convincing aural scene, which takes the listener to the recording venue space in a typical size living room. The interactions between loudspeaker, room and hearing processes have not been sufficiently studied and premature conclusions have been drawn about loudspeaker design parameters. The typical loudspeaker comes with fundamental flaws, which critical listeners try to correct by room treatment. The solution would be a loudspeaker with spectrally neutral radiation in all directions. Such loudspeakers are extremely rare. In general, the quality of reproduced sound in the home has reached a plateau that is uninspiring to the Apple and Google generation.”
But this question he asks I find most interesting! “Can loudspeakers and listening room disappear from auditory perception?”
Finally, I’d love to hear more from @HWZ if they felt so inclined.
@ Amir it is kind of revealing you seem to pick unimportant aspects like Dr. Toole´s publication record to give long, detailed answers instead of answering technical or practical questions which touch the inherent contradictions of ASR´s review philosophy or suggest an experiment to finally decide whether your ideas on directivity and target curves would stand listening tests or not.
Maybe you want to come back to one of these aspects.
As I said, independent from commercial interests and well-funded but in this case outdated and irrelevant. Dr. Toole himself explained why they 40 years ago used mono arrangements to test certain aspects of loudspeaker quality such as tonality but have deliberately chosen to ignore others like spatial imaging, localization and other aspects of stereophonic reproduction and room/loudspeaker interaction. Not only ignore but to reduce complexity of the experiment by removing the inherent possibility of test subjects to judge stereo imaging. When it comes to untrained listeners comparing recordings unknown to them with their imagination of a live event being unaware of how it was recorded, he has a point. That is not the case with recording engineers who tend to bring in their own material for loudspeaker testing.
I absolutely do not disagree with him but I have to remark that subjective aspects which they have not included in controlled listening tests back then are nowadays the main reason we need subjective testing (like imaging, localization, depth of image, tonal balance of indirect sound or interaction between room and speaker in the bass region). Aspects he was testing back then such as linear on-axis response or clarity i.e. distortion below audibility can today easily be manipulated or excluded by using modern technology.
If you read Toole´s comments on room target curves, ideal response and directivity, you understand his views seem to be much closer to Linkwitz´s (and mine) than Amir and others try to make us believe. Example:
The simple fact is that a steady-state room curve is not accurately descriptive of sound quality … The Harman curve is not a “target” in the sense that any flawed loudspeaker can be equalized to match it and superb sound will be the reward. The most common flaws in loudspeakers are resonances (which frequently are not visible in room curves) and irregular directivity (which cannot be corrected by equalization).
the Harman curve relates to conventional forward-firing loudspeaker designs. Legitimate reasons for differences are different loudspeaker directivities - omni, dipoles, etc. - or rooms that are elaborately acoustically treated, or both.
So I do not see any major contradiction between Toole´s opinion and Linkwitz´/mine except for the fact Toole seemingly has never tested any advanced non-dipole full range constant directivity concept in his controlled tests (which is understandable as he was retired already for years when the first ones appeared on the market). The ´Harman curve´ appears to be more of a descriptive in-room measurement of a certain type of loudspeaker being preferred in his own experiments. He describes it as a 15" + CD horn which DI-wise is much closer to what I would suggest but not ideal for most of rooms.
I have not remotely said that is what leads to optimal sound. Beyond power capability and distortion, there are two important aspect to speaker performance as I described in my video.
Direct or on-axis sound. This is sound that arrives directly from the speaker to your ears. All other sounds have to first hit one or more surfaces before they arrive and hence have longer arrival time. Due to a psychoacoustics principle called Precedent or Haas effect, the brain puts far more importance on the on-axis sound than later arriving off-axis sounds. Research shows that speakers that do well in controlled testing have flat on axis response. This is the first order analysis you want to do on any speaker (or headphone for that matter).
This is evident in your everyday life. The voices of your loved ones don’t change tonality as they move around the house. There, the on-axis sound of their voice remains the same but reflections vary wildly. The brain filters those early reflections and delivers invarying [sp?] on-axis sound.
Off-axis sound or directivity. As I explained above, this sound is reflected from other surfaces and goes out of the speaker at different angles. There are many speakers which have good on-axis response but their off-axis response has dips in it due to mismatch of driver radiations. This causes room dependency and to some degree, colorations of direct sound. Research shows that speakers that do well in controlled listening, don’t have this issue. For this reason, we want off-axis response to be smooth which indicates speaker is free of this issue.
Here is an example of excellently designed DIY open-source speaker showing these good characteristics:
Notice the line I have drawn showing the relationship of the on-axis response to flat line. We see that this speaker meets that.
We then look at the dashed blue line at the bottom. This is the early-window directivity index. Early window is the sum of most powerful reflections in the room (floor, ceilign, sidewalls, etc.). We see this speaker having a very smooth response.
What Arindal has a beef about is that he is demanding that line to be flat. The line is not flat because the response of the speaker from bass all the way to tweeter off-axis changes. Research shows that we want this sloping down as that is how we perceive real life. Directivity of your mouth is the same as its off-axis response has lower treble than midrange.
Dr. Sean Olive developed a preference score in a controlled listening test, correlating measurements to listening test results. There, he found out that you need to have fair bit of slope in that curve. There is no study at all that says having that being flat is desirable.
We can’t achieve what Arindal wants anyway. Let’s look at the Dutch and Dutch 8c speaker which retails for $12,500 by the way:
First we see that it meets the important criteria of flat on-axis response. As such, it gets our strong blessing in that regard. If you look at the dashed blue line, we see that it too rises meaning there is high frequency loss relative to low frequency. While there are small small kinks in that line, it is good enough again to get our praise at ASR.
We can look at the early window reflections themselves:
Notice how the sum total in green clearly slopes down so it does NOT at all match what Arindal wants or imagines it to do.
We have further evidence there form of in-room vs simulated in-room response:
We see the smooth predicted (ideal) in-room response which again, slopes down. The actual response in green of course has large variations below transition frequency where room is dominant. No way are you getting neutral sound there without deploying EQ. Nor can you ever be so skilled as to guess all those variations without measurements.
If member Arindal had made measurements of the rooms he is talking about, he would have seen all of this and dispensed with the idea that cardioid bass solves your room problems. Or that it gives you constant directivity in room.
At high level though as others mentioned, we are a fan of such speaker anyway so using it to say we at ASR is wrong is non-sequitur. The issue is that such speakers are expensive and it is not likely to be what you all want to buy or have. And that there are plenty of other excellent speakers out there which cannot be dismissed as Arindal doing because they don’t have imaginary flat, controlled directivity.
Finally, note that the controlled directivity comes at a cost. Usually the beam width will be narrower than speakers that don’t do that. As a result, the image they portray will be more narrow, albeit more focused. While some like this, controlled testing shows that listeners prefer speakers that have strong side reflections as that increases the feeling of spaciousness. And better matches real life concert hall performance.
There is no disagreement about that. I might want to remark that there is a bit more to perceived tonal balance of direct sound than just flat response of a test signal in a mic under free-field/anechoic conditions, but to keep things simple let us agree on this approximation.
Correct. And btw we do not need to discuss things that go without saying. I know how to read the graphs.
Not necessarily flat but balanced within the relevant frequency window, i.e. 300 to 8K approximately, for home environment. Relevant means relevant for the human ear to distinguish direct from indirect sound and perceiving tonal balance of the reverb or indirect sound pattern. This is not the case under 300Hz. In that region you can EQ to your liking if there are no significant problems with long-sustaining resonances or cancellations.
I have to disagree with exactly that assertion. There is no reason why indirect sound response should be tilted downwards towards higher frequencies. It is trivial to understand that a balanced off-axis response in the aforementioned frequency bands will lead to (with the help of more or less balanced RT60) balanced indirect sound and that is exactly what our ear is used to in real life.
If there is a specific frequency-depended directivity pattern of a natural instrument such as the human voice, the recorded indirect sound or reverb pattern from the concert hall or studio will be bearing that coloration alike so it is a part of the recording (in case we are talking about acoustic recordings in a room like classical/jazz).
There is not only no need for an additional coloration similar to the directivity human voice, this would be utterly coloring and unnatural as it would be applied to indirect sound a second time (note: the reverb contained in the recording is colored already). It is easy to understand that the human mouth is not a good reference, as it would make it impossible to listen to instruments with a significantly differing directivity pattern on such a speaker. Imagine the polar pattern of horns (negative direcitity index), violin (DI close to zero) or trumpet (very high DI compared to human mouth) - you would need a completely different speaker to reproduce every single one of these instrument and it is easily understandable that this idea does not make sense.
I dispute that theory, no matter who has done the research. AFAIK there has not been any study published by Mr. Olive or anyone comparing speakers with identical on-axis response plus either balanced off-axis behavior or increasing DI finding the latter to be superior or more natural.
You do not need a study to understand that the indirect sound field should be as balanced as possible as this is the case in the concert hall and the recording of the acoustical live event as well.
I have been taking part in numerous listening comparisons with exactly that main difference, and so have many recording engineers. The balanced indirect sound field was always superior, the decreasing one towards higher frequencies had a dull, muffling character or similar.
Funny sidenote: Many experts highlighting the necessity of constant directivity in midrange and treble equally had the initial understanding of that theory while listening to pretty compromised speakers offering such properties, particularly dipoles. Siegfried Linkwitz named Quad ESL63 as an early inspiration, I had similar experience with more modern full range electrostatic dipoles. The midrange was just exceptionally transparent and the dull ambience I was used to simply disappeared.
Yes, it is absolutely doable. Note that a balanced off-axis response is only needed between 300 and 8000 Hz and it does not have to be precisely flat.
No, it is pretty flat between 300 and 15,000Hz. I see a deviation of less than 2dB (ignore the peak @400Hz as it exists in the on-axis FR accordingly) in the simulation which is nonexistent in the real measurement if you smoothen the narrow dips.
Believe it or not, but I can do that, including setting notch correction filters for room modes which have to be precisely dialed in to ±2Hz tolerance and can have a Q>10. That’s exactly why I prefer a PEQ with an ´analogue front end´ and no gaps after changing frequency or Q. Usually I do a measurement as this is much faster.
And yes, this is something that people learn at university.
I have taken numerous measurements of full-range cardioids and cardioid subwoofers in rooms. Sometimes there is additional EQing necessary, sometimes not. It depends on the room and the speaker placement. I have always found cardioid bass transducers to show a significantly more balanced bass response which is much easier to EQ in case the FR is affected by room modes.
Please note the Dutch&Dutch´s bass section has a conventional unipolar directivity pattern. You would not expect a smooth bass response in a mode-laden room as it is the case with a real full-range cardiod. Such alternatives are existing on the market.
Yes they are more expensive than models showing unipolar behavior in bass and lower midrange, but they also sound significantly better in a living room. It is everyone’s decision.
The only thing I wanted to point out is that increasing DI is neither ideal nor natural nor to be desired. It is a major flaw of a loudspeaker. Under usual living room conditions a much more audible and annoying one than most other acoustic properties leading to defeating criticism on ASR.
I am not saying that all speakers with increasing directivity index towards higher frequencies are bad. They are certainly good for their purpose, and under nearfield conditions or in a studio-grade room or overdamped homecinema with low RT60 being constant from 200Hz upwards you would not find the typical aforementioned tonal coloration annoying.
I disagree strongly with you calling such directivity ´perfect´ or ´as good as it gets´ or recommending such speaker as if it was for everyone. Same is true to constant directivity yet low directivity index. The latter is perfect for studio-grade rooms, nearfield setup or home cinema, but likely to cause significant problems in a living room.
And of course things are not black or white but there are gradually disadvantageous directivity patterns for home use. The Dutch&Dutch is pretty close to perfect if you do not need bass cardioid. There are some speakers showing only a slightly increasing DI in the aforementioned window or their main step up stays well under 1K. Not ideal but problems might be partly correctable by EQ coming at an acceptable cost of reducing the on-axis level by up to -1dB under 800Hz/Q>1.5 or alike.
What I have found in numerous experiments to be undesirable is either a continuously increasing DI with a significant delta from let us say 2dB @300Hz to 10dB@8K like in your “Mechano” example. It gets annoying if this delta is even higher or you find a sharp step up in directivity within the 1-5K band which is the window our ear is most sensitive to both tonal balance and direct/indirect sound comparison.
As mentioned, I have read your reviews by chance of speakers which I had available to test them in my own room saying from your side they showed perfect directivity while the actual result of the listening test was even worse than I expected.
I disagree with that statement as well. Constant directivity and high directivity index are two completely separate parameters. Usually the band of highest directivity index is set by the tweeter and it is a matter of engineering to keep the other drivers in line with that. Which admittingly comes at a cost of being more complex and costing money if you want the whole midrange to be showing a similar pattern.
I dispute these findings as well and so should everyone who has ever listened to classical recordings on a system delivering good imaging, decent depth and stable localization alike.
Supressing or diffusing discrete side reflexions in most of cases does not make the imaging narrower or more compact but helps stability and definition of localization events, i.e. phantom sources. The picture gets sharper and more stable, not smaller. Strong side reflexions cause ´blurred image´, jumping or broadened phantom sources and ´phasy´, overly diffuse impression of ambience, in many cases frequency-depending. This has nothing to do with the impression in a concert hall.
If controlled tests (which?) would show that people like that, it means they are liking significant flaws.
I have the feeling you lack basic knowledge about stereophonic recordings, phantom source, stereophonic imaging, localization and alike. Maybe Siegfried Linkwitz can help you:
Maybe you will afterwards understand why judging such aspects of a loudspeaker require a stereo setup and why constant directivity is much more important than a straight line of increasing DI.
You dispute a lot of things. Problem is, you have shown no ability to prove any of it. You claim and expect to be believed, damn the research that says otherwise.
Since you now have found a new friend in the form of the late Linkwitz, may he rest in peace, let’s see what he has to say about benefits of wide horizontal dispersion/directivity. From his AES paper,
Room Reflections Misunderstood?
Siegfried Linkwitz,
Published in 2007
"Furthermore, it had been found that loudspeakers with wide horizontal dispersion were preferred in listening tests [4]. What is known scientifically about loudspeakers and rooms for sound reproduction has been reviewed by F. E. Toole [11]."
Clearly he is a fan. As you see, he defers to Dr. Toole for research in this area. Research that was conducted when Dr. Toole was at NRC:
[11]Floyd E. Toole, “Loudspeakers and Rooms for
Sound Reproduction – A Scientific Review”, J.
Audio Eng. Soc., vol. 54, pp. 451-476 (2006 June)
That is a peer reviewed, journal of Audio Engineering Science paper. Let’s see what it has to say:
"So when an investigation reveals that a reflection at a certain level relative to the direct sound is just audible, as in a threshold experiment, this is not necessarily an indication that problems have begun. More likely, it could indicate the beginning of something perceptually interesting and beautiful. As we get into the details,it will be seen that reflections from certain directions, at certain amplitudes and delays, are more or less advantageous than others, and that collections of reflections may be perceived differently from isolated reflections. We humans like reflections, but there are limits (too much of a good thing is a bad thing) and ways to optimize desirable illusions."
Later summary states this: "Rationally, professional circumstances need to be more severely regulated than those used for entertainment. However, evidence from recording industry standards and publications by acoustical practitioners over the years indicates that the professionals are as arbitrary in some of their decisions as are consumer-audio enthusiasts."
Remember how I said a few days ago how you all make random decisions in audio just like audiophiles do? Same thing Dr. Toole observes above.
He goes to say: "Early lateral reflections increase our preference for the sound of music and speech."
Back to Linkwitz, this is what he has to say about in-room measurements in support of having an in-room target that slopes down and doesn’t stay constant as you want:
"In-room measurements are used by some as the basis for
*equalizing a loudspeaker to a flat response at the * listening position. This works to some extent for very low frequencies, but it leads to an unnaturally bright top end."
By the way, have you even seen or heard Linkwitz speakers? I suspect not. Here is an example:
As you see, they are open baffle designs. While they have their fans, and the effect can be quite nice on some recordings, I am not a fan of that overlay being present in all music I listen to. I would think that none of your customers would remotely find them appropriate for studio use. So maybe move on from thinking his work and knowledge backs what you say.
Absolutely not, I have been delivering clear reasons for my claims, even referring to papers backing my thoughts. And I have been showing why certain ´research´ you are claiming to back yours, is either not applicable or not sufficient to judge questions like the one if indirect sound field in a room should be balanced or colored.
There is a strong impression you do not read my arguments or the papers I have linked in order to understand but to simply cherry-pick some random sentences about who is quoting whom making it look like they have something to do with your position. That will not be successful. I did not see any substantial answer to anything technical or acoustical I have explained. Instead of that you are even trying to twist claims made by someone who is no more. And: I have to disappoint you, but Siegfried Linkwitz is not a ´new friend´ as I have met him several times and found his ideas to be pretty straightforward and plausible, he was widely accepted in the recording community.
For example Linkwitz is referring to Toole and others when discussing which reflexions of certain pattern are masked under which conditions by several different effects as his goal was to not have reflexions deteriorating the localization or coloring the perceived indirect sound field. Therefore he developed the idea to delay discrete reflexions by at least 6ms to the initial sound event.
You, on the other hand, have clearly argued against higher directivity speakers (for a nonsensical reason btw) as you claim to find it advantageous to deteriorate the localization event:
That translates to: less focus, more width of image are preferred. A scenario that can be caused by very early discrete reflexions as Linkwitz is explaining:
If the interval between the arrival of the two sounds is 1 ms or less, the precedence effect does not operate; some average or compromise location is heard. This is called summing localization.
That is the explanation for the preference of direct sound events plus lateral early reflexions. And I have to agree that this is perceived as ´more natural´ under one condition: In a mono setup. In a stereo setup, in deteriorates the localization of phantom sources, blurring the image and confusing the listener.
That does not mean there should be no indirect sound at all. It means the sound field in the room should be so that reflexions either arrive late enough / attenuated enough to be masked or be sufficiently decorrelated.
In-room measurements are used by some as the basis for
*equalizing a loudspeaker to a flat response at the * listening position. This works to some extent for very low frequencies, but it leads to an unnaturally bright top end.
There is no contradiction, and this is not basing your claim indirect sound field should be colored (maybe you want to answer to my statement about different instrument´s directivity pattern?). Please read again: In this case it is about measurement as solely a base for equalization, i.e. leading to an increasing on-axis frequency response towards higher frequencies. There is no dispute that this sounds too bright.
Linkwitz´ goal on the other hand was clearly to achieve an indirect sound pattern which is similar to the direct sound while offering constant directivity over a huge fraction of the audible frequency band. He suggested a full range dipole showing in his experiments the pattern of early reflections is not as important as long as they are sufficiently delayed and uncolored in terms of frequency response. Exactly what I am saying.
Have to disappoint you again. I have not only heard them but worked with one of Linkwitz´ licensee holders using that principle in a differently shaped design.
Linkwitz has shown that there is no such audible ´overlay´ if parameters are set to a certain standards and I can agree to that. You are again contradicting yourself as you claim not to like the ´overlay´ of a well-controlled, sufficiently delayed front of reflections from a dipole and the wall behind it but on the other hand want earlier, colored reflections from the side walls as a result of increasing directivity and very early reflections.
As you have noticed, I would not recommend dipole speakers as it is not determinable under which conditions they work properly or not. If you are free in choosing or altering conditions such as speaker placement or wall treatment, they can sound great.
Please note that back then when dipoles have been suggested to achieve constant directivity, there was no technical possibility to design fullrange cardioids. We have this possibility now.
As we have clarified things, maybe you want to answer to other aspects of my previous posting such as:
why directivity of the mouth or any other instrument is not an ideal for loudspeakers
why a flat in-room response is desirable as a result of balanced direct and indirect response at the same time
that you have accidentally proven D&D deliver a linear indirect sound field
why increasing DI is disadvantageous
why constant directivity has nothing to do with narrow pattern or higher DI
(about the clone Yamaha NS10)
For that job Yamaha had the NS1000 monitor.
This one intentionally has the bump in the higher mids, caused by the resonance they put in the x-over. The speaker is a tool for studio engineers. If it sounds bearable on the NS10, it will likely sound ok on a bad speaker.
You can change the x-over and make the response flat for home listening because the drivers aren’t that bad, but it was not designed for that purpose.
I do like the fact that you measure speakers, because too many magazines don’t. The most interesting part for me is always (as in the old Stereophiles) the part where measured “flawes” correspond with the listening tests, or don’t correspond with the listening.
I have no acces to the latest loudspeaker sales numbers. On ASR most speakers come out bad, but I don’t know which of them are popular in 2024. And I don’t think engineers find all of them that bad.
Maybe you should ask the studio engineers from those days what bad speakers they had in mind. Radio-cassette players, all-in-one stuff, Radio-shack, Jamo, Realistic… too much to mention.
On the back of lp’s or on Discogs you can find names of engineers. But I don’t know why this is so important to you. I think it is easier to just picture-google for “recording studio’s 80-s 90-s” et voila, white cones!
Nothing like changing the goalpost when data shows that what you think and what is there are two different things. Of course you state that range with no references. So let me give you one from Linkwitz: Constant directivity loudspeaker designs
"“When designing a speaker system for home use the objectives of any particular design will depend on the specifics of the application and acceptable trade offs. As such it is difficult to state categorically any specific set of design objectives for a CD speaker. With regard to constant directivity, my current interpretation would be that a CD speaker, intended for use in home environment, should have the ultimate goal of maintaining uniform polar response above the Schroeder frequency. As a rule of thumb, this translates to maintaining uniform polar response form about 100 Hz and above. Specific design objectives for my designs may be found at my website.”
Pretty much invalidates your claim. Not only that, conventional non-cardioid speakers meet your criteria anyway:
Speakers like that Genelec not only do it in horizontal axis, but also vertical:
Here is the vertical dispersion of D&D 8c:
And if you want to go by reputation of what Pros use, there is no question that is hugely in favor of Genelec.
So you say. If we want to go by personal experience, I have tested and listened to 250 speakers with opposite outcome. Whatever you tested is dwarfed by that. I am also showing measurements and specific research that contradicts your claims. You don’t have any of that but still demand to be believed?
Is that right? People should buy what doesn’t sound as good to them? Because you claim that they should to justify your mistaken notions about audio fidelity?
No, we go by science and that science is proven over and over again. Here is Dr. Olive showing correlation between listening tests results and what slope in-room frequency response measurement should have:
A Multiple Regression Model for Predicting
Loudspeaker Preference Using Objective
Measurements: Part II - Development of the
Model
Sean E. Olive, AES Fellow
"Target slopes were determined separately for Test One and for our larger test sample (70 loudspeakers) used for the generalized model described in section 5. The target values are based on the mean slope values of speakers that fall into the top 90 percentile based on preference ratings. Target slopes are defined for each of the 7 frequency curves (see table 2). The ideal target slope for the on-axis and listening window curves (0 and –0.2) is identical for both test samples, which indicates that the on-axis curve should be flat, while the off-axis curves should tilt gently downwards."
That is precisely what I have been saying. And it comes from large scale testing of speakers and it completely invalidates your claims.
So whether it is the volume of my personal experience or the research, the opinions you have put forward have no credibility. Heck, you can’t even share one measurement of a speaker or a room you have performed.
Why not include the link? Is it because this shows that this is from 2004 and Harman affiliated research? Why not answer direct questions asked or the challenge by @Arindal ?
you are absolutely right. Now I read that the first ns10 in 1978 was a home-speaker, but the engineers took the speaker to the studio’s. Could that be the reason that old recordings can sound a bit too warm?
I am glad not all speakers sound this way. I personally don’t like this at all. I don’t like the sound of Kef’s nowadays that have this response, I still like my old Yamaha ns1000 better because of their wider dispersion and pretty flat response at 3 0degrees. They sound fresh and clear and clean to me.That is personal, but to me I just don’t like that dull Kef-sound.
1 Like
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
921
Well while this was “entertaining” and interesting in places, it has long since ceased to be so.
All we are doing is repeating and going around in ever decreasing circles.
And getting personal yet again despite numerous warnings.
Time to say goodnight good folks.
you are absolutely right. Now I read that the first ns10 in 1978 was a home-speaker, but the engineers took the speaker to the studio’s. Could that be the reason that old recordings can sound a bit too warm?