It’s All a Preference

All? No. And there is nothing about what people "buy." People buy for many reasons beside audio quality. And that is part of the problem they have tried to solve. By putting the speakers behind curtains, they eliminate anything but the notion of the comparative sound quality as judged by listeners. I have sat through that test twice with a group of others. In every case, majority votes for the speakers that have the best measurements and the same as what you see in the chart (even though the speakers do change). Clearly there is a common thread there as far as what we prefer as good sound. Think about it. That is what you do when you go to buy a speaker. You listen and decide on fidelity. The only difference here is that they don't let you see the brand, price, and look of the product. And they show you alternatives in the exact same spot. These are things that you cannot do when you go t a stereo store.

They use the word preference. That causes people to automatically decide that they are measuring taste. It is not so. If it were taste, then the results would not converge as highly as it does. Importantly, the measurements highly correlate with listening tests. What we think should be good, flat frequency response (combined direct and indirect) is what wins most of the time. We know we all hear frequency response variations. So the fact that this becomes a requirement for good sound, makes all the sense in the world.

When I sat through the test, and I listened, at first you are taken back that the task is hard in there is no true reference. You do have flavor A against flavor B. But the speaker that is designed by science, sounds more natural. It sounds more real. So you vote for that.

Speaker "B" is the B&W 702N. It has a dip in its overall sound in the 2K to 3K range. This is because there is too big of gap between its woofer size and tweeter. What makes it a marketing hit with that distinct look, does have a price. As the frequencies go up, the woofer gets too directional. Yet the frequency is too low for the tweeter to pick up. Eventually the tweeter does pick up the load and then all of a sudden the speaker becomes less directional so its response off axis goes up/gets better. But the damage is done in the most critical region of our hearing, the 2K to 3K range. So vocals, when compared to a speaker that doesn't have that dip, don't sound as good.

To me, when we have listening tests with science and measurements, then we have a very compelling case as our baseline. Put another way, you have to start believing something about the science. And that is a great starting position. There may be better religion, but it has the responsibility to prove that by changing the rules, it can still succeed. This is what I love about Dr. Toole's work. He creates and entire end-to-end story that hangs together. It may not be perfectly right. But it is a hell of a lot better position to start with than randomly assigning goodness to speakers.

The work that Dr. Toole did was a good intellectual exercise. If I herd a bunch of people into a room and get to select 4 speakers for them to listen to and grade, unless they are deaf, I should be able to have the people reach some type of consensus on which speaker sounds *best* if the other three I have chosen have obvious problems like the example you cited.

But what happens now if I choose 4 speakers that were all intelligently designed, have super high quality parts, and all measure extremely well? Are we now going to have consensus from the gathered masses on one out of the four speakers sounding the best? I doubt it. Because four different speakers from four different manufacturers are never going to sound the same and it will come down to a preference.
 
The work that Dr. Toole did was a good intellectual exercise. If I herd a bunch of people into a room and get to select 4 speakers for them to listen to and grade, unless they are deaf, I should be able to have the people reach some type of consensus on which speaker sounds *best* if the other three I have chosen have obvious problems like the example you cited.
Problem is, many speakers have that problem yet people praise them heavily and they get "A" status from reviewers. The B speaker is the B&W 802. I think it retails for $12,000. I know people who swear by them. I think we have some in this forum :). The M is Martin Logan as I mentioned. And many more are tested as I post earlier.

But what happens now if I choose 4 speakers that were all intelligently designed, have super high quality parts, and all measure extremely well?
Let's put them to the test! Contact your speaker manufacturer see if they are open to having their units tested and measured that way. I bet they won't go through with it. Most don't even have the measurement data to know if they have designed the speaker "intelligently." Small companies can't afford the cost and lack the tools. The measurements you see are 70 point in $1M+ anechoic chamber. We suffered through one of these brands. The speaker sounded perfect on paper. But not when put to extensive listening tests. We are talking $200K speaker/amp set for a surround system. Then I asked if they had done any anechoic chamber measurements and the answer is no! Speakers were designed by ear and shipped.

BTW, a cheaper version of that is done by Soundstage network. We just had a thread on it by Jeff. Both Jeff and I commented on the performance of the Wilson. Here is the measurement again:

frequency_456075.gif


Is there agreement that there is at least some amount of badness here?

Are we now going to have consensus from the gathered masses on one out of the four speakers sounding the best? I doubt it. Because four different speakers from four different manufacturers are never going to sound the same and it will come down to a preference.
We are screwed if this is about one-off tastes. We better give up on having a forum too if this is like me liking one kind of fish and you another. There will be no hope of ever developing a better foundation for sound reproduction if we are all that different.

Luckily, such is not the case. We have solid data that most of us share in what is "good sound." Sure, some may prefer something else. But we better not design for them or we would disappoint many.

As I said, there is room for variation. The story being told is not 100% applicable to all. But it sure is applicable to many yet we ignore it.

Here is a powerful thing about speakers designed with such science: they never disappoint. As I sat through the evaluation blind, poorly performing speakers had scores that were all over the place. On one song they would sound much better than others. Not so with well designed ones. Their performance was *consistent*. Maybe this is why we upgrade our gear so much. Equipment performance does not have stable performance. Play a song that has notes in the dip, and you don't like the sound all of a sudden. The speaker with best measurements in this manner may not be the best at everything, but it is consistently good. I think this is a huge attribute that is not considered when equipment is purchased.
 
I thought I was a neutral type of audiophile, but after reading some of the posts above now I am sure that I am a radical subjectivist after all! Thanks guys! :)
 
Problem is, many speakers have that problem yet people praise them heavily and they get "A" status from reviewers. The B speaker is the B&W 802. I think it retails for $12,000. I know people who swear by them. I think we have some in this forum :). The M is Martin Logan as I mentioned. And many more are tested as I post earlier.



BTW, a cheaper version of that is done by Soundstage network. We just had a thread on it by Jeff. Both Jeff and I commented on the performance of the Wilson. Here is the measurement again:

frequency_456075.gif


Is there agreement that there is at least some amount of badness here?

I think so. Looks like the response nosedives below 50 Hz, it has a peak in the bass from around 60 Hz to almost 100 Hz, and the response starts getting ragged at around 300 Hz. There is a big suckout between 1 kHz and 2 kHz, and then the output starts dropping like a rock after 10 kHz. Which Wilson speaker is this?

I want to come back to my earlier point. We have four speakers from four different manufacturers and they were all designed and built using the latest and greatest design tools and they all have very good measurements that show no obvious peaks or dips in their FR. All four speakers measure very well. Are they going to sound the same and people would be unable to pick one from another because they all sound so much alike?
 
The speaker with best measurements in this manner may not be the best at everything, but it is consistently good. I think this is a huge attribute that is not considered when equipment is purchased.
Good morning, Amir. Allow me to make a comment on this, if you will. I think what you wrote here is an extremely important part of choosing a speaker. This is actually what got me to purchase mine. I really have no way of seeing what the actual measurements are [small manufacturer, Tyler Acoustics] but I choose them because they perform well on all types of music, not just one or two. Sure, there are other speakers that shine a little better on some aspects or genres of music and I'll be the first to admit it. That said, I didn't pick my speakers because they shined well on limited selections or genres, I picked them because they do consistently well on all types of music.
 
I think so. Looks like the response nosedives below 50 Hz, it has a peak in the bass from around 60 Hz to almost 100 Hz, and the response starts getting ragged at around 300 Hz. There is a big suckout between 1 kHz and 2 kHz, and then the output starts dropping like a rock after 10 kHz. Which Wilson speaker is this?
WATT Puppy 8.

I want to come back to my earlier point. We have four speakers from four different manufacturers and they were all designed and built using the latest and greatest design tools and they all have very good measurements that show no obvious peaks or dips in their FR. All four speakers measure very well. Are they going to sound the same and people would be unable to pick one from another because they all sound so much alike?
Since speakers are going to have variations in response no matter what, their scores won't be the same but similar. If you look at the Harman subjective listening test results, you see a little line on top of each bar. That is showing the variance. Speakers I and R are equally good withing that degree of variation even though they were designed differently.
 
Because something measures well doesn’t mean that it is neutral if neutral is defined as being *perfect.* I think neutral is a relative term given the state of the art. Any piece of gear may or may not be more neutral than another piece of gear. I think we can find examples of all types of gear with very similar measurements that don’t sound the same. In a perfect world, if we were going to define neutrality as the Zen of audio, all pieces of gear that are deemed to be neutral would sound the same and of course they don’t.

And my earlier point was that even if we all could agree that a particular system was dead neutral and we all wanted to buy the exact same gear, it still wouldn’t come close to replicating a live musical event. We simply can’t reproduce that type of energy with our recordings and playback gear regardless of how neutral your measurements tell you your gear is. So what is it that our beloved measurements are missing that keeps us from understanding what it would take to capture more fidelity at the microphones? We left lots of neutrality on the floor of the recording venue and all of your great measurements that tell you how neutral your gear is can’t compensate for that.

I'm sorry, Mark, I'm not sure I get what you're driving at here. Low noise, low distortion, linear response. The signal coming out is relatively unchanged from the one going in That's neutral. Not perfect reproduction of the performance event, but transparent processing of the input signal by a component or a system. As I've said a couple of times before, you have to believe in good measurements and believe that they are pretty indicative of sound or you'll never buy the concept (a concept, by the way, that has driven the work of the best audio engineers for decades). And that's fine with me. But when someone says "how do you know it's neutral?" that's the answer. That has always been the answer. Neutrality has never been defined by personal taste. That belongs to terms like musical.

Tim
 
So the question begs to be asked: Do the Wilson Watt Puppy 8s sound as bad as the measurements indicate? If so, why/how did Wilson sell so many of them? Do people like bad sound? Are people so enamored with the Wilson brand and the quality of the boxes that they look past the very ragged FR response the measurements tell us the speakers have? Or do somehow these speakers not sound like their measurements indicate when placed in a listening room at someone’s home? I have never heard a pair of these speakers so I don’t have any idea how they sound.
 
So the question begs to be asked: Do the Wilson Watt Puppy 8s sound as bad as the measurements indicate?
I would love to hear from people who have heard it.

If so, why/how did Wilson sell so many of them? Do people like bad sound?
Well, we need another data point: if we put the Wilson behind the curtain and it loses to the speakers that do measure well, then what do we say? Do we agree then that people are making the choice not based on audio quality but the looks, impression of the speaker, the specific place/material that was shown with it? We have data that clearly shows preferences to change in blind vs sighted tests of speakers:

BlindVsSightedMeanLoudspeakerRatings.png


If I put your speakers behind the curtain and it lost, together with its measurements saying the same, would you still have the same faith in them as you do now? Just asking hypothetically :).

Are people so enamored with the Wilson brand and the quality of the boxes that they look past the very ragged FR response the measurements tell us the speakers have? Or do somehow these speakers not sound like their measurements indicate when placed in a listening room at someone’s home? I have never heard a pair of these speakers so I don’t have any idea how they sound.
Well, as I said, I was in that boat. I had never heard Martin Logans to sound bad. But boy, did they sound so bad behind a curtain. So speaking for myself, I know for sure I was performing distorted evaluations.
 
Let's keep this in mind too. If I take a perfectly measured (in this regard) bookshelf speaker and compared it to one that didn't have such smooth response but was 8 foot tall with bass extension that went way beyond the bookshelf and had dynamics that did the same due to its power handling, surely the big speaker would win in many contests. So this may be the reason we buy such speakers. But we need not make such compromises. Big speakers can be and are built that do both.
 
Excuse me if I missed this Amir, but Revel, Infinity, B&W and Martin Logan?

Tim
 
I'm sorry, Mark, I'm not sure I get what you're driving at here. Low noise, low distortion, linear response. The signal coming out is relatively unchanged from the one going in That's neutral.

And “relatively unchanged” is the key descriptor here because everything is changed as it passes through the signal chain with the worst changes occurring at the speakers. Good measurements are good measurements. I think we could agree that all competently designed and built electronics would all have measurements that would make any objectivist smile.

Does anyone think that a $899 NAD integrated amplifier would measure much differently than a pair of Mark Levinson No. 53 amps that sell for $50K outside of power output? Oh wait, what if the NAD actually measures better than the No. 53 amp which is possible since the S/N ratio of the No. 53 was quoted as 85dB with just one watt of power into 8 ohms. I assume that has to be unweighted. John Atkinson said the NAD C372 amp measured very well. So once we are past good measurements, what are we left with? Let me take a WAG: uh, preferences?

Why is Frantz so enamored with the sound of Burmester gear? Is it because Burmester measures better than similarly priced gear? I doubt it because I don’t think they do measure any better than their contemporary competition. I think that just might be another preference.

When you constantly say that objectivists use measurements and their ears to decide what gear to buy, what that tells me is that you are looking for a good baseline set of measurements that tells you the gear was competently engineered and then you trust your ears to decide what gear sounds the best to you within your budget. And I can’t help but touch on a subject I brought up some time ago that you really have damn few measurements to go by and the majority of the time you are merely looking at the manufacturers' stated specifications. If the manufacturers' stated specs could be taken for gospel, there would be no need for JA (or any other mag) to take any measurements. Every SP has a Specification page and Measurement pages. There is a true difference between the two. Specifications are like religion in that you have believe in them based on faith. Measurements are the truth as we know how to measure it today.

So once you cross over that line of happiness with the measurements and you switch to your ears in order to tell you what sounds the best for the money you are prepared to spend, you are now in the realm of preferences. You will lay down your money and buy a piece of gear based on what your ears preferred to hear. That’s the bottom line.
 
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If I put your speakers behind the curtain and it lost, together with its measurements saying the same, would you still have the same faith in them as you do now? Just asking hypothetically :).

Amir-The truth is the truth. If I heard my speakers against other speakers and my speakers clearly sounded inferior, I would certainly pony up to that. I’m under no delusions that I have the best speakers on the planet. So, could my “faith” be shaken? Sure it could.
 
I suspect it is the later mep ...

You would sure like to think so Fernando. This combo went through many interations starting at 5 and the total number of sales has to be in the thousands if not tens of thousands around the world.
 
This one is always worth reposting time and again...

http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/some_reminiscing/P0/

It tells his story about some speakers he was going to bring to market, until he tested them at the harmon facility that is..

I will tell you straight out, I learned more about loudspeakers, listening and subjective measurement in one day of blind testing under Floyd’s kind and gracious supervision than I had in the previous decade! What was particularly interesting was that three of us, three-out-of-four partners in a fledgling little loudspeaker company, served as our own highly biased listening panel. We knew, before we even started, that our loudspeakers were superior. We had no doubts. So, we settled down to listen to our babies behind the black screens. We told ourselves. We filled out our test forms. We described quite convincingly to ourselves exactly in what ways and how it was that our babies, our lovely-looking cherry veneer ready-for-prime-time loudspeakers, sucked.

An entertaining read at the very least.
 
I agree with your premise.

This is 90% a subjective hobby.

The problem is.....

Many of the most "respected' voices in our hobby deal in absolutes.

There are several top tier reviewers, usually from the baby boomer era, who proclaim vinyl
is superior, period, no ifs ands or buts...case closed.

Many golden eared "authorities" have proclaimed that more power is always better...no debate allowed.

We have heard about how much more "organic" tubes are....solid state need not apply.

We have heard volumes about the superiority of certain speaker designs...and if you don't agree, well, then, you are tin eared neanderthal.

When all these opinions, defended with amazing hubris, are being passed off as facts, its no wonder many younger budding audiophiles are very intimidated.

I can only imagine how many younger people who had encounters with snobby, opinionated hifi salesmen and decided to just bag their exploration of better sound and just went home to their computers and ipods.

We like to talk about neutrality vice preferences like there is really a black and white choice to be made. Although we can say with a high degree of certainty that there are measurable differences between electronics and speakers of any type with some measuring *better* in ways that have been deemed to be better, in reality, none of them are neutral. And I mean neutral in the fact that no electronics sound exactly like live music and the circuit has zero colorations. We just aren’t there yet people.

You like SS? That’s a preference. You like tubes? That’s a preference. You prefer single-ended amps over push-pull amps? That’s a preference. You think electrostats sound better than box speakers? That’s a preference. You like digital and not analog? That’s a preference. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. All of our systems are built upon our preferences.

So, given that no electronics or speakers are perfect, the sound and the gear we all buy are based on our preferences whether we care to admit it or not. While absolute fidelity may be our goal, we have no absolute fidelity at this point in time. I for one think there is much more work to be done in all links of the recording and playback chain before we can declare victory and say we have arrived and crossed the threshold of absolute fidelity.
 
Andre-I'm appreciative that somebody *gets* what I'm saying and agrees.
 

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