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

@mahgister, please don't misstate my background.

 

I apologize if i did reduce your experience field  as it seems. I dont know your exact background.

Then i dont understand why the articles coming from different researchers in acoustics were dismissed by you...

 I cannot  then invoke ignorance from you ...

 Then... it is simple matter for someone with your knowledge...

You cannot extrapolate from electrical gear specs to perception of specific acoustic  experience...

These acoustics articles explained why from different point of view...

 

 

 

The best way to deal with Mahgister’s incredibly soporific posts and Amir’s nonsense is to ignore them both. I scroll past anything by Mahgister because if I want to sleep I will take a Mogadon.
If they are ignored they can cackle on and will stop eventually, (I hope).

As an aside, if anyone wants to see Amir called out for poor testing practices, I suggest you read this thread:
"Incompetent Internet Reviewers - Beware!" on the March Audio site.

Some of the contributions on this thread are a bit like someone offers to use a double "blind" test to determine whether their partner is pretty...

 

To Magister: as Mr. Boileau pointed out: "Ce que l'on concoit bien s'enonce clairement, et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément"

None of your posts have used this decay measurement to show better fidelity.

you miss completely the argument...

It is not about measurement here... He explained why it is very difficult to measure this without very serious research... You dismissed it without even getting the main point BECAUSE IT SUIT YOU..😊

The main point is here :

 

«We have demonstrated that human auditory perception is primed for the shapes of natural sounds,a sharp attack followed by a long decay, corresponding to the physics of natural sound production. We have used simple, direct psychophysical measurements to test for the changes in simultaneous time-frequency acuity after reversing the temporal direction of symmetry-broken pulses, lending credence to,
at the minimum, statistical priors for sharp attack, long decay sounds. Such statistical priors add to the growing body of evidence that human auditory processing is adapted for natural sounds. Not only then is auditory processing inherently nonlinear, these nonlinearities are used to improve perceptual acuity to
sounds that correspond to the physics of natural sound production.»

 

 

 

This fact that human hearing trained by evolution makes us able to extract information over the Fourier uncertainty limit ,( because of this symmetry breaking disposition making us sensible or biased toward to Attack-decay time),

this fact make preposterous ANY CLAIM about the reduction of any auditory experience a consequence predicted by only a few set of measures on some piece of gear evaluated in the context of the Fourier linear mapping.

Then your pretense to predict sound quality with your narrow set of measures is preposterous... our ears/brain work non linearly in his own time domain...The sound quality cannot be predicted from the reading of the specs of a piece of gear interpreted in a linear context with simple tools. ... We cannot replace hearing...

this is why Van Maanen insisted on the importance of taking into account the way our hearing work:

 

«The, never mentioned, assumption is that the frequency components above the
hearing limit, usually taken at 20 kHz, do not influence the perceived
sound in any way.

Although this seems a reasonable assumption at first, it is not as
straightforward as one would think. Two aspects play an important role: the
first is that Fourier analysis only holds for linear systems and if there
is one transducer which is non-linear, it is the human ear. In non-linear

systems frequencies not present in the original signal can be generated
and/or other frequencies can acquire more power than in the original sig-
nal.
This can easily be demonstrated using a 3 kHz sine wave with 5 periods
on and 5 periods off. Although Fourier analysis tells that 300 Hz is only a
weak component in this signal, it is the strongest one hears. As 300 Hz
corresponds to the envelope of the signal it is not surprising using the
non-linear properties of our ears. It can be concluded that frequencies
above the hearing limit can indeed generate signals that are below the
hearing limit which could thus influence the perceived sound and the
quality experienced.»
 
 
 
All this demonstrate the complete futility to PREDICT sound quality by measuring with Fourier linear tool some aspects of the gear piece ...
We must listen...
And why we must listen it is because the human ears dont work as ASR order it , it work as Magnasco and Oppenheim experiments reveal it : it extract too much information to obey Fourier uncertainty mathematical limit. Then it work non linearly in his time domain as evolution has designed us.
Then your set of electrical measures so useful they could be CANNOT PREDICT sound quality experience... Your stance is ideological not rooted in acoustics science ...
 
 

If they are ignored they can cackle on and will stop eventually, (I hope).

All the best,
Nonoise