Fixing problems that don’t exist, very expensively at that. You have to love high end audio.
How good is the crossover in your loudspeakers?
I just watched a Danny Richie YouTube video from three weeks ago (linked below). Danny is the owner/designer of GR Research, a company that caters to the DIY loudspeaker community. He designs and sells kits that contain the drivers and crossover schematics to his loudspeakers, to hi-fi enthusiasts who are willing and able to build their own enclosures (though he also has a few cabinet makers who will do it for you if you are willing to pay them to do so).
Danny has also designed crossovers for loudspeaker companies who lack his crossover design knowledge. In addition, he offers a service to consumers who, while liking some aspects of the sound of their loudspeakers, find some degree of fault in those loudspeakers, faults Danny offers to try to eliminate. Send Danny one of your loudspeakers, and he will free of charge do a complete evaluation of it's design. If his evaluation reveals design faults (almost always crossover related) he is able to cure, he offers a crossover upgrade kit as a product.
Some make the case that Danny will of course find fault in the designs of others, in an attempt to sell you one of his loudspeaker kits. A reasonable accusation, were it not for the fact that---for instance---in this particular video (an examination of an Eggleston model) Danny makes Eggleston an offer to drop into the company headquarters and help them correct the glaring faults he found in the crossover design of the Eggleston loudspeaker a customer sent him.
Even if you are skeptical---ESPECIALLY if you are---why not give the video a viewing? Like the loudspeaker evaluation, it's free.
https://youtu.be/1wF-DEEXv64?si=tmd6JI3DFBq8GAjK&t=1
And for owners of other loudspeakers, there are a number of other GR Research videos in which other models are evaluated.
Showing 4 responses by viridian
BDP, you are kidding, right? You say, "If you look at John Atkinson’s measurements of the Eggleston models that have been reviewed in Stereophile you will find the same "hole" in the frequency response Danny did when he measured the model a customer sent him." Well, let’s actually look at those lab tests, shall we? Here is the first and the dip in the crossover is clear as day, as mentioned. https://www.stereophile.com/content/egglestonworks-andra-loudspeaker measurements-part-2 It is from 28 years ago. Is that how far you have to go back to find a poorly engineered speaker? Let’s look at another test: https://www.stereophile.com/content/egglestonworks-viginti-loudspeaker-measurements I fail to see the 12db hole you refer to, the windowed response being admirably flat. There is a room mode in the upper bass in Mr. Fremer’s room that causes a suckout, but as it is apparent in both the Wilson and Eggleston speakers it has to be a room mode. Please tell me where the issue is here. And this review, and speaker, are at least from the current century. And here is the only other Eggleston review that I was able to find in Stereophile. If there are more, please direct me to them: https://www.stereophile.com/content/egglestonworks-andra-ii-loudspeaker-measurements Please point me to the 12db trough here. Response seems very smooth with a high Q 5db dip around 1K which fills in off-axis. I would simply say dont angle the speakers at the listening seat, listen off-axis. And this stuff about Maggie and Klipsch using his mods really? There is basically nothing new in crossover design, no doubt, as time went on these manufacturers refined their crossovers, just as we can see that Eggleston did. It’s a natural progression. And I would go so far as to say if someone liked the sound of those first Eggleston speakers and purchased them, the sound did not change, so they would still enjoy them. For them, having enjoyed the speaker, it is a problem that does not exist and simply one of the design tradeoffs that was chosen in the voicing of the speakers. It might bother you, it would probably bother me, but neither of us has bought these speakers. I dont know folks that buy speakers that they dont like the sound of and then need have that bad sound remediated by crossover changes. It makes no sense on the face of it, but I am still trying to understand the problems in the other two lab tests. This is a guy profiteering off of insecure audiophiles nothing more, and the disinformation is only being added to by the implication that all Stereophile lab tests of Eggleston speakers share these characteristics. |
Agreed, this absolutely highlights the objectivist/subjectivist divide in the hobby, and I too would put him in the same camp as ASR. I don’t distrust loudspeaker evaluation, that is a red herring. I just linked three lab tests of speakers and discussed all three. Perhaps you missed that. But, on the other hand, I don't find a high correlation with my subjective opinions and lab tests, and that may come down to the contribution of the room, IMHO, and YMMV. |