Someone is smoking some stuff from the 60s
Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews
I’ve briefly taken a look at some online reviews for budget Tekton speakers from ASR and Youtube. Both are based on Klippel quasi-anechoic measurements to achieve "in-room" simulations.
As an amateur speaker designer, and lover of graphs and data I have some thoughts. I mostly hope this helps the entire A’gon community get a little more perspective into how a speaker builder would think about the data.
Of course, I’ve only skimmed the data I’ve seen, I’m no expert, and have no eyes or ears on actual Tekton speakers. Please take this as purely an academic exercise based on limited and incomplete knowledge.
1. Speaker pricing.
One ASR review spends an amazing amount of time and effort analyzing the ~$800 US Tekton M-Lore. That price compares very favorably with a full Seas A26 kit from Madisound, around $1,700. I mean, not sure these inexpensive speakers deserve quite the nit-picking done here.
2. Measuring mid-woofers is hard.
The standard practice for analyzing speakers is called "quasi-anechoic." That is, we pretend to do so in a room free of reflections or boundaries. You do this with very close measurements (within 1/2") of the components, blended together. There are a couple of ways this can be incomplete though.
a - Midwoofers measure much worse this way than in a truly anechoic room. The 7" Scanspeak Revelators are good examples of this. The close mic response is deceptively bad but the 1m in-room measurements smooth out a lot of problems. If you took the close-mic measurements (as seen in the spec sheet) as correct you’d make the wrong crossover.
b - Baffle step - As popularized and researched by the late, great Jeff Bagby, the effects of the baffle on the output need to be included in any whole speaker/room simulation, which of course also means the speaker should have this built in when it is not a near-wall speaker. I don’t know enough about the Klippel simulation, but if this is not included you’ll get a bass-lite expereinced compared to real life. The effects of baffle compensation is to have more bass, but an overall lower sensitivity rating.
For both of those reasons, an actual in-room measurement is critical to assessing actual speaker behavior. We may not all have the same room, but this is a great way to see the actual mid-woofer response as well as the effects of any baffle step compensation.
Looking at the quasi anechoic measurements done by ASR and Erin it _seems_ that these speakers are not compensated, which may be OK if close-wall placement is expected.
In either event, you really want to see the actual in-room response, not just the simulated response before passing judgement. If I had to critique based strictly on the measurements and simulations, I’d 100% wonder if a better design wouldn’t be to trade sensitivity for more bass, and the in-room response would tell me that.
3. Crossover point and dispersion
One of the most important choices a speaker designer has is picking the -3 or -6 dB point for the high and low pass filters. A lot of things have to be balanced and traded off, including cost of crossover parts.
Both of the reviews, above, seem to imply a crossover point that is too high for a smooth transition from the woofer to the tweeters. No speaker can avoid rolling off the treble as you go off-axis, but the best at this do so very evenly. This gives the best off-axis performance and offers up great imaging and wide sweet spots. You’d think this was a budget speaker problem, but it is not. Look at reviews for B&W’s D series speakers, and many Focal models as examples of expensive, well received speakers that don’t excel at this.
Speakers which DO typically excel here include Revel and Magico. This is by no means a story that you should buy Revel because B&W sucks, at all. Buy what you like. I’m just pointing out that this limited dispersion problem is not at all unique to Tekton. And in fact many other Tekton speakers don’t suffer this particular set of challenges.
In the case of the M-Lore, the tweeter has really amazingly good dynamic range. If I was the designer I’d definitely want to ask if I could lower the crossover 1 kHz, which would give up a little power handling but improve the off-axis response. One big reason not to is crossover costs. I may have to add more parts to flatten the tweeter response well enough to extend it's useful range. In other words, a higher crossover point may hide tweeter deficiencies. Again, Tekton is NOT alone if they did this calculus.
I’ve probably made a lot of omissions here, but I hope this helps readers think about speaker performance and costs in a more complete manner. The listening tests always matter more than the measurements, so finding reviewers with trustworthy ears is really more important than taste-makers who let the tools, which may not be properly used, judge the experience.
Showing 16 responses by facten
@audition__audio Why continue to get yourself aggravated by Amir’s views on tube amps or anything else. I have 3 tube integrated amps between my 2 systems, a tube preamp in one of them that I use when I switch to a solid state power amp, and a tube DAC in one of the systems. I could care less whether or not he thinks it is primative technology, that folks buy them with some imagined fixation with filamnet glow, or any of his other points relative to them. I like the way each in its own way sounds with the rest of my systems’ components. Likewise, I could care less what his critique would or wouldn’t be on my speakers or other components. As long as I enjoy what I am listening to is all that matters to me. I don't need him or anyone else saving me from myself, or my money. Life is too short. Sit back and immerse yourself in the music, versus aggravating yourself with him. |
"I hope it is not news to you that he has moved on to solid state Class D amplifier design now." He also hasn't eliminated his tube lineup. https://www.atma-sphere.com/en/index.html
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"We love listening tests at ASR" "I hear you but where do you draw the line? I listen to all speakers and headphones I review. I also listen to every headphone amplifier and portable DAC+HP amp I review. As you go further upstream, I listen less and less."
These 2 statements say enough for me to continue to disregard ASR
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@bigtwin +100 |
These 2 statements don't seem to lineup "I listen to these DACs for hours and hours" "I hear you but where do you draw the line? I listen to all speakers and headphones I review. I also listen to every headphone amplifier and portable DAC+HP amp I review. As you go further upstream, I listen less and less."
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"The second is in the context of reviewing products. But even the second statement means many hours of listening given the 200 to 300 products I test every year" What the 2nd statement suggests is that you do in fact listen, however the scope of your listening relative to reviews is limited in focus which is comes into play with what folks have been critical about in this thread your 2nd statement ""I hear you but where do you draw the line? I listen to all speakers and headphones I review. I also listen to every headphone amplifier and portable DAC+HP amp I review. As you go further upstream, I listen less and less."
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@bigtwin Good to see you’re a hockey fan. I’m rooting for the Panthers so if they win the Cup I can feel slightly better that the Rangers lost to the eventual Cup champ |
Regarding the Borreson Room at PAF 2023: From Amir’s post above which I take as a mixture of sarcasm, but maybe it's not "The whole system sounded poor because as you see, no cable lifters were used. Electrons were looping needlessly and escaping onto the floor, the rack, etc. This muddied all the detail as there were no micro-dynamics to speak of. Soundstage was poor as well due to crosstalk between those cables." From his link to his review on the sound of 2 different tracks "Boomy and tuby. But large presentation." "Central vocal image nice; bass still sounded wrong." The following don’t specify tracks just provide overall impressions Positive Feedback: "A remarkable sounding room featuring Ansuz, Aavik, Borresen, and Axxess. Crazy good." Part Time Audiophile: "Børresen M6 were playing music in a HUGE way. In comparison to the M3s, the M6s walked up to the rear wall of the exhibit room and kicked it over like it was a backdrop in a movie... to call the Børresen M6s a Friday highlight of the show is a massive understatement." Archimago’s Musings : "No need to beat around the bush with this one. The Børresen M6 speaker with accompanying Aavik gear, all part of Audio Group Denmark, was a joy to listen to for this high-fidelity-loving audiophile Enjoy the Music: "To say it sounded amazing would be an understatement.... the sonics were jaw-dropping, with the music emanating from the darkest, densest, quietest background you can imagine. Speed and impact were world-class, and it offered an unworldly degree of resolution, supporting its exquisite transparency."
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""As Robert says, it’s a damn show report. If you only want to read censored news, news that’s in accord with your preferences, or reviews that are bought by audio companies, your choices are plentiful." So are you implying that the 4 other reviewers were bought because they didn’t specifically opine on the bass? The rest of Jason’s comments seem inline with their overall take. "But beyond that, the soundstage was huge, depth was impressive, and low bass lines were as fleshed out as can be." Also, it’s a bit curious that you align yourself with Jason since he attributed his "concern" about the lower midrange upper bass at least in part to speaker break-in "The reason is simple. Because the pair of M6s on display had just arrived from Denmark via the Chicago area—this huge speaker requires up to 500 hours of break-in before it sounds its best—they only had 100–150 hours on them." This is diametrically opposed to your position on speaker break-in . Per your opening statement on ASR thread - Do Audio Speakers Break In 3/6/2020 "Manufacturers either genuinely believe in the speaker break-in myth, repeating what they have falsely concluded like audiophiles. Or are hoping that if you don’t like the speaker at first, you hang on to it longer to lose the motivation or option to return them later. Either way, there is no reason to listen to them unless they provide objective proof that sound changes with break-in. After all, this is no small difference so surely they can measure and provide proof.... Now that I have saved you a ton of money from myth of speaker burn-in, how about donating some of that to me so I can run more of these tests". It would have seemed that you would have discounted his assessment since they don’t follow your science
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I didn’t say that your listening wasn’t valid, I provided others overall assessments . Just because you don’t agree with how they provided their reports doesn’t make their comments invalid. And, yes Jason did state concerns about their fidelity, I noted that; likewise his overall assessment tends to be inline with the others but go ahead and ignore that. Maybe you should reach out to him about his apparent ignorance on speaker break-in eh
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Sure looked like you were posting the three other reports to do exactly that.
Then you must also agree with this from Jason: "Having already discovered how some of the hotel’s huge rooms tended to overemphasize the lower midrange and upper bass, I have no idea if the over-emphasis and extra resonance I heard in that region reflected the speaker’s true character, the speaker’s character in the early stages of break-in, room interactions, or a combination of all three. (I expect the latter.) " So he heard extra resonances, and overemphasis of lower midrange and upper bass. Right? The three other show reports posted made zero mention of any faults let alone these. What you quoted from me was this: "Boomy and tuby. But large presentation." "Central vocal image nice; bass still sounded wrong."" Jason said similar thing with "upper bass" having problems. He praised the large presentation which I also mentioned as a positive."
You seem to have this view that yours is the only word in audio, posting others comments to give balance is something you apparently can’t tolerate. Oh well! Relative to Jason’s comments I didn’t state that he wasn’t in agreement with you, I did question your letting slide his comments about speaker break-in being a possible cause since you so adamantly say it doesn’t exist. But hey, as you noted in one of your posts they are just dammed show reports and shouldn’t be taken seriously, including yours. Given that, maybe you shouldn’t use yours to try to prove a point. Anyway, I’m done. Listening to music via a tube integrated, sounds damm good!
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