It’s All a Preference
- Thread starter mep
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Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Bruce-Really, don't you think what you said is true? If we don't like the sound of a particular mastering engineer, chances are good that after several trys with the same result that we will not buy recordings we know were engineered by someone who we don't like the way their recordings sound.
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Wow, a Positive Feedback reviewer who might not prefer vinyl?
On a less controversial note, it's hard to see not agreeing with mep's original post, but maybe that's just my preference.
The information about the work of Harman is really interesting for creating some parameters for speaker development in an efficient and rationale way, but does not in any way indicate that these parameters are unique and needed for quality. I have read the Toole book and the articles freely available and still miss lots of information and details about the specific conditions in which they were carried. IMHO, the few examples shown are just illustrative and do not show all the work that has been done.
These tests target to standardization - the conditions are referred in section 17.3 Controlling the experimental variables. IMHO, most of them are not acceptable by audiophile usual standards. (If you need to ask what I am referring, you can jump to next post ASAP
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I can not imagine that all other companies that develop and sell loudspeakers do not do it scientifically, surely using different models. As they do not publish them and do not want to share them with the public we are not in position to debate their options. But I can not accept that they were not able to afford a microphone and a sound card to measure FR and directivity of their top speakers ...
Again IMHO, the Harman methodology and its constrains create a type of speaker, that will be ideal for many listeners. Some people seem to feel that if this type of speaker was imposed by force to producers and consumers there would be a improvement in sound reproduction quality. I have some doubts on it.
These tests target to standardization - the conditions are referred in section 17.3 Controlling the experimental variables. IMHO, most of them are not acceptable by audiophile usual standards. (If you need to ask what I am referring, you can jump to next post ASAP
) I can not imagine that all other companies that develop and sell loudspeakers do not do it scientifically, surely using different models. As they do not publish them and do not want to share them with the public we are not in position to debate their options. But I can not accept that they were not able to afford a microphone and a sound card to measure FR and directivity of their top speakers ...
Again IMHO, the Harman methodology and its constrains create a type of speaker, that will be ideal for many listeners. Some people seem to feel that if this type of speaker was imposed by force to producers and consumers there would be a improvement in sound reproduction quality. I have some doubts on it.
A big swing and a miss. Can feel the whiff all the way down here.
Obviously you don't read PFO as you David Robinson was one of the first covering high rez digital, in particular, SACD. And Dave Clark listens to both, has PD gear and has written extensively about music servers. Then there's Andy Schaub writing about digital. In fact among the staff, I'm, maybe with Marshall Nack and Bob Levi, the exception, rather the rule on PFO.
And there's only David Robinson and me when it comes to the king of the road eg. R2R.
But you know what? Analog, with all its inherent distortions, etc., still for me sounds closer to real music. And R2R is many steps even closer. Hey, you don't agree that fine with me. Whatever floats your boat. But it doesn't make me any more or less of a human being or more right or wrong because I prefer analog. No one is twisting your arm to listen to analog. Be happy and read digital reviews. There's plenty of them.
Oh, and the absence of noise still isn't the presence of music.
You would be amazed at the high percentage of them that are just designed by ear. We used to carry a high-end speaker line that we were unsatisfied with. I go and ask and find out that they had never measured them in the anechoic chamber! I was recently testing their subs and they do really crazy stuff. Clearly they didn't know what they were doing in building them.
High-end business just doesn't have the volumes that enable most companies to have proper testing done on them. Harman has the luxury of multi-billion dollar automobile business and funds much of this R&D. They have three anechoic chambers I think (I have been in two of them).
How is that?
Let's look a list of the top speakers. Which do you think are solely designed by ear, not by doing some measurements and then voicing the speaker?
Wilson
Magico
YG
Hansen
Martin-Logan
Avalon
Magnepan
NOLA
Scaena
MBL
Rockport
TAD
Evolution Acoustics
VSA
I've been reading Positive Feedback since before you were publishing your magazine (I still have hard copies of both from back when). I know PF likes digital, I spent at least a couple of hours Sat and Sun in the Hospitality Suite at RAMF 2011 listening to digital, but at the same time I picked up a clear preference for analog (not necessarily LP) while I was there. And I'm anti-analog only in the sense that I don't think that is the likely future for high fidelity music storage, so I'd like to see more of the resources currently devoted to analog to be more focused on hi-res digital. That's clearly just my preference, not intending to offend anyone.
I know of one of the ones above that started that way. So much so that the company founder didn't even understand the terminology used in speaker measurements! I can't say who it is though as that would breach confidence. That same company now brags about performing measurements in their latest marketing material as if they invented the techniques.
On Martin-Logan, I have already post the poor anechoic chamber measurements. So clearly that is not what has driven their designs.
On the other side, looking at their ads, YG seems to care a lot about measurements and post the NRC data which is good.
You do reviews of these speakers. Tell me who many of them have anechoic chambers in house, laser interferometry, and double blind testing facilities.
No Amir. You said and I quote, "You would be amazed at the high percentage of them that are just designed by ear." So I challenged you to name which of those in the list that didn't use any measurements, not which had the capabilities that Harman does.
I think it's a pretty safe bet all of the above measure certain parameters of their speakers performance, whether it be at the driver level, xover level, etc. And I know of several in that list that do laser interferometry, etc. DBT doesn't do anything for me. Do you know any high-end audiophile that bought their speakers on the basis of a speaker being the winner of a DBT test? I haven't run across any; maybe you have at your store.
But I'm also sure given enough testing that one will find speakers that pass the Harman test and sound awful too. And who do you know listens in an anechoic chamber or an orchestra that performs in one either?
Well my mag (actually it was the second I started; the The Audiophile Voice was the first) wasn't my first foray into high-end audio. My first review (other than an occassional piece in the NJAS newsletter) was in TAS back in 1987
And if you read the "mission" statement of PFO, the magazine is a diverse collection of writers with many POV.
Conversely, if a product measures good and sounds bad, it is bad. If it measures bad and sounds good, then you're measuring the wrong thing. Oh you say that we don't need to listen?
Does anyone but me wonder how the results might have turned out with non-ML gear?
No what? I gave two examples out of your short list, one named and one not. And if you don't have that kind of testing capabilities, how is it that you are testing your designs? By borrowing time from a lab? How often do you think they will do that?
Sure, they do some amount of testing. But that is not what we are talking about. We are talking about the type of measurements that correlate with what we consider good sound.
That's because you haven't experienced in this manner. This is not the trick DBT testing to see if you can tell A from B apart. All of these speakers sound different. Yet we need to assign a quality metric to them. Tests show that sighted with give different results than not. The usual reasons people don't like DBT don't apply here. The differences are very large. You don't need to be "relaxed" or whatever to hear them. Once there, if you can't assign a quality rating, then I wonder how you can judge the quality sighted.
That is the light bulb I am trying to turn on!
It is a shame that so few people know what great science we have discovered here. That we do not need to buy speakers with purely subjective basis when we know every speaker sounds different in every room. We close our eyes and buy speakers, take them home, pretending that what we heard in the store will be what we hear at home.Research at Harman allows one to predict the in-room response of a speaker based on anechoic chamber measurements (above transition frequencies). This lets us factor out the room. It is incredible that we can do this.
You seem to be thinking if their measurements are not perfect, one might as well through them out and pick randomly. I don't understand how one can subscribe to that. If the measurement technique predicts with 80% confidence which speaker is going to sound better, why not start with that? Are you really that much better? If so, how come not everyone owns your brand of speakers?
After all of this discussion, I have to agree with Mark. If we were "there", it would be a different story but the cold and hard facts say that we are not. Discussion about preference or observations whether blind or not including different speakers IMO, brings us right back to the original post. If we were there? There would be no discussion. At least that's my stance.
In the meantime, enjoy the music and try to catch what excellence you can. If you want real sound, IMO, go to the real event and listen there for everything else is a compromise.
Well my mag (actually it was the second I started; the The Audiophile Voice was the first) wasn't my first foray into high-end audio. My first review (other than an occassional piece in the NJAS newsletter) was in TAS back in 1987
And if you read the "mission" statement of PFO, the magazine is a diverse collection of writers with many POV.
I have issues of The Audiophile Voice as well as Ultimate Audio.
Well, that's your preference. I don't really agree with what you say but isn't that the point of the thread?
Case in point. Listening to Kansas live. Amplified at a small venue. There is no way I could get the same thing in my living room. An approximation thereof? Yes. What I experienced? Eh, not so much.
Case in point. Listening to Kansas live. Amplified at a small venue. There is no way I could get the same thing in my living room. An approximation thereof? Yes. What I experienced? Eh, not so much.
Those are two independent issues. First one is whether we can hear what would have been there if we were at the performance. The answer is no. We are so removed from that experience that we cannot expect to be teleported there. Given that, what then determines how well we approach the best fidelity? That answer is unrelated to the former. A signal was recorded and delivered to us for reproduction. There, we can tell what is good from what is not. This is not theory. It is demonstrated through both expert and casual listeners. That despite the fact that we lack a reference, we know what is good sound. And as a group, we tend to agree on what that is.
Simply put, IMO. Compare the real thing to the reproduced effort. Not speaker to speaker.
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