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.

erik_squires

"I suppose I do not get the point of this thread. Once a speaker is placed and set up in a typical listening room, all bets are off, no matter what measurements were used in the design of them."

Above transition frequencies of a few hundred hertz, speaker dominates.  Yes, there are secondary such as reflections but we have a good model to represent them in measurements as well.  See this standard CEA-2034 measurement in every speaker review I do:

 

 

We can even predict the response with decent accuracy in a room:

In bass domain, the room dominates almost independent of the speaker.  So there, you must have a strategy for dealing with room modes, again, independent of what speaker you use.

"Is the amp class A or A/B, how many watts in class a?

It is well proven that components that have measured bad sound very good and vice versa. This goes for this guys measurements and stereophiles. 
Your ears are the best instruments to use when evaluating audio components."

It doesn't matter what class an amplifier is. It is all in the implemention/engineering.

And no, it is not remotely proven that badly measuring devices sound better.  At best, they sound the same if the impairments are not bad enough for listening to hear.  

Your ears can be very useful in assessing fidelity but not when you involve your other senses such as eyes, and sources of bias.  Even when there are provable, audible differences, these sources of bias dominate outcome of listening tests.  Without controlled testing, you are just generating noise, not data.

And what if you can't listen to the device?  Those of us who know the power of measurements, can easily deal with this.  Those that don't, miss out on great audio gear.

I bought the Fosi sk1 headphone amplifier and preamp thanks to you ...

But i did not buy it because it was good on the measurements test...

It is a plus and a positive fact ONLY...

I bought it because you listened to it and you wanted one for your headphone which you tested with it... 😊

You were right, a bargain for the price under 100 bucks.

Thanks I used it for my secondary headphones at night for documentaries and movies...A little music ...He drive my AKG K340 hybrid better than a very well known tube amplifier costing 20 times its price. ( i know because i tried it biased by the price tag and reviews) 😁

And what if you can’t listen to the device? Those of us who know the power of measurements, can easily deal with this. Those that don’t, miss out on great audio gear.

By the way i cannot be influenced by the look of my gear i use acoustics to modify my speakers and only use relatively low cost or vintage pieces which i modified in acoustic dedicated room .

You critics can made sense only for gullible passive consumers of relatively high cost products...

Then you accusation of biases are exagerated and do not concern people using acoustics basic...

Your ears can be very useful in assessing fidelity but not when you involve your other senses such as eyes, and sources of bias.

 


Mind you, you can have all of these views and be just fine in ASR. We have plenty of subjectivists that way. The issue comes up is when you take on the membership and try to tell them how it is done. Naturally you get strong pushback. But that is something you are bringing onto yourself.

I suspect the primary issue many have with ASR is the condescending tone adopted by many of its senior members.

It’s quite apparent many of them are merely there to be in an echo chamber, rather than engage in any real debate. Perhaps the biggest irony is some of ASR’s vehement disciples fail to understand the basic principles of its orthodoxy, such as the ability to read graphs, or, like the author of this thread, fail to understand how the Klippel works.

Let’s be real, many, if not most members of ASR are there for self-validation—to support the notion that they can build a true high-end system on a very modest budget. And I say that as someone who places high value on quantifiable performance. 

So he is an electrical engineer with a degree and is a truth-teller based on science and engineering principles and never speaks sweet lies. They are  paid trolls aka influencers come here to mislead viewers with their pseudo science nonsense and brag about their certificate degrees from community colleges.