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.
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.
"Now you resort to name calling and insults because you’ve run out of intelligent ways to defeat Amir and ASR. "
The minion reinforcements have arrived to support the cult leader. How pathetic that the minions regard this as a battle to defeat someone. Amir is just a rude, obnoxious, arrogant person who actually knows very little. It looks like the cult leader needs support to try and persuade us of our failings.
"You probably got kicked out for being unintelligent on ASR - a site full of engineers and physicists." I suggest you go back and play with your $2.00 dongle that measures superbly. Seriously I have never come across a less educated rabble than on ASR.
you've run out of intelligent ways to defeat Amir and ASR.
It only takes one way. I have seen plenty of people take on Amir intelligently. Amir will simply post another graph.
I've decided that Amir has taken the position that no PR is bad PR. So his lack of respect, arrogance, condescension, these are all part of his brand. People that want to feel intellectually superior follow him.
Measurements and scientific approach can be useful and important in choosing gear or evaluating a system configuration. That doesn't make it everything. Nor does ASR really come near measuring everything relevant. There is no attention paid to system synergy or the relationship of components.
ASR and their followers are completely blind to their own biases. And then there's this stupid rating system built on top of the partial measuring scheme. Deaf panther.
Now you resort to name calling and insults because you've run out of intelligent ways to defeat Amir and ASR.
"defeat Amir and ASR"? You make it sound like Amir is some kind of crusader going to war against the infidels. Take time for some good introspection and weigh the pluses and minuses of what constitutes being in a cult.
By the way, that sentence of yours constitutes a big plus in the being in a cult ledger.
"a better test would be using a square wave input.. "
You have no idea what you're talking about since a square wave jumps and repeats itself at a given frequency that is a 'discontinuity' you can't possibly use a s.w. input as an audio signal.
"you are a hypocrite - you throw people off your own site for expressing contrary opinions yet come here yet you come here and bleat your opinions like a goat"
You probably got kicked out for being unintelligent on ASR - a site full of engineers and physicists.
If you need a non-performant tube amp to feel that emotion, you have no love for music, nor the talent that created it....
That would be a silly thing to say if it weren't so nasty and judgmental. I don't think you know a thing about @mahgister. To be fair to you, he'd be difficult to represent using only charts and graphs, which seems to be your preferred language.
This point illustrate well the problem with most engineers sleepwalking in the A.I. idolization right now...
It is techno-cultism, where the tool replace us as truth.
It is why Amir opinion about audio is the perfect reflection of the techno-cultist religion ...
There’s even a well known case that you actually had a Mark Levinson 360S DAC for 21 years until January of 2020 and only after you measured it, and found out that it was worse than the MEIZU dongle did you decide to say goodbye to it. You even admitted it yourself in own review which I’ve also linked below. You really don’t know what you’re listening to and those charts are messing with your mind. You ignore what you can’t even answer yourself about what I said using a single speaker with my jazz. Emotion is blasphemy for a mind like yours.
Without emotions, there is really no point in music.
If you need a non-performant tube amp to feel that emotion, you have no love for music, nor the talent that created it....
Proves my point exactly. Your mind is so consumed by what you see in measurements and graphs, you’ve actually convinced yourself you are hearing all sorts of terrible distortion. There’s even a well known case that you actually had a Mark Levinson 360S DAC for 21 years until January of 2020 and only after you measured it and found out that it was worse than the MEIZU dongle did you decide to say goodbye to it. You even admitted it yourself in own review which I’ve also linked below. You really don’t know what you’re listening to and those charts are messing with your mind. You ignore what you can’t even answer yourself about what I said using a single speaker with my jazz. Emotion is blasphemy for a mind like yours.
Like a petulant child.....the endless need to have the last word....
Amir, you’re a clown, and ASR is a clown-show. If we ever met, I'd tell you that straight to your face.
Kind of sad, really. Take something worthwhile and burn it completely down.
Nothing more than a petulant, immature child trying desperately to have the last word in an argument.
I doubt you’ve won anyone over to your point of view. Just me, though.....I’m sure you’ll win someone over with your incessant arguing and snarky replies. Complete with pretty graphs. IRL, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t be friends, you’re just not very likeable. Might want to work on your people skills, dude. In the meantime...
Complete rubbish quarrel which do not touch and stay above the ground : hearing theory...
What do we hear when we hear a sound quality and why do we recognize it as such ?
Bad answers:
----My branded name gear is picked by my taste and experience with gear.-
---- I read Amir reviews and i had bought ONLY what he measured as good .-
---- I only use ABX double blind test to select my gear 😋. ( This third answer is a joke, nobody go so lost as doing this as the serious thing to do not even Amir whose "acuity" anyway was measured as superiorly trained spotting digital artefacts)
It is useless and preposterous to discuss the technical validity of some measures if this grounding point is not explained : how do we recognize sound quality ?
Sorry nor Helmholtz nor Fourier alone can explain it. A fortiori not Amir either ...
Without emotions, there is really no point in music.
That says it all for me. Not all, but most of these debates about measurements are just academic. I believe measurements are important for engineers when they design and test their gear, but I'm absolutely convinced Amir wouldn't know what he was listening to. I have my tube setups designed on the warm side. If Amir heard my system blind folded, he'd fail miserably.
2. Use a spectrum analyzer to measure the amplitude at several frequency since the output is not a pure sine wave.
What on earth are talking about? Spectrum analyzer shows the spectrum, not time domain amplitude. Regardless, that was done in the P12 review:
As show, the P12 actually increases AC noise, not decrease it. It does so because it is not a true regenerator.
3. Now connect the output to different load such as 2ohm, 4ohm, .... or more.
Looks like you have forgotten about ohm's law. P12 generates 120 volt RMS AC. At 2 ohm, you would be asking it to spit out whopping 60 amps! The could cause it to be damaged at worst, or shut down at best. That is on top of needing a high voltage dummy load that could dissipate over 7 kilowatts of power! You seem to be confusing how you measure the output impedance of audio amplifier rather than a high voltage AC generator.
5. With those information, you can use a simple equation to calculate for the output impedance.
Which is what I do when measuring output impedance of headphone amplifiers. But per above, you are dealing with a completely different beast here with a high voltage AC source.
None of this is necessary anyway as output impedance of AC source only has a loose relationship to what comes out of your audio device as the latter has its own power supply and capacitor bank to provide power for transients. Measuring an amplifier power is a much better and more clear verdict of whether the P12 is able to do its job transparently or cause performance to be lost. The latter was clearly shown in my measurements.
I did use an impedance meter to measure anyway so not sure why you are continuing on. Here is my AC source impedance:
And here it is going through P12:
As noted, P12's output impedance is nearly 10 times worse despite company claims of it being better!
No the square wave will test for transient condition. It is like a step response to test how the amp can deliver the current.
Square wave testing can generate highly misleading information as the signal itself may never be representable with music signals. To wit, digital audio at 44.1 kHz won't have any components above 22.05 kHz. Feed it a 10 kHz square wave and what comes out is a pure sine wave! I have a video on that:
"We all focus on performance."
Wrong. Practically every reviewer looks at and comments on the build quality and the components used.
" I don’t know why you all don’t let this concept sink in by spending just a few minutes learning about the topic instead of relying on your lay intuition."Why should anyone listen to you? You have nothing important to add.
"If you act this unprofessional" I am unprofessional? What a joke. You are arrogant with nothing to be arrogant about, you are rude and overbearing. It is no wonder you are so disliked and have been thrown off so many fora. Go back to your cult an your minions.
at 30% efficiencies almost 20kw input. At 220v thats almost 90 amps. And the "power meter" is the most useless meter I have ever seen, its a joke. Hardware for people with way too much money and no brains.
Your thinking is wrong. All testing is done in time domain. The graphs are shown in frequency domain since it is hard for a human to tease out the noise and distortion from a waveform display in time domain. Keep in mind again that based on Fourier Theorem, time and frequency domain are interchangeable.
The input signal may be in time domain, but the analysis is done in frequency domain and the graph you show only shows steady state response. No transient information. But it’s in the transient that truely show the performance with different loads. You also need to test with different loads as well. May be at 2ohm, 4ohm to show the current capability of the amp.
If the P12 does what PS audio said, I think you will see it in the transient response.
That is still "steady state" by your definition since there is no discontinuity in the signal.
No the square wave will test for transient condition. It is like a step response to test how the amp can deliver the current. You can make the square wave period long enough so wait out any ringing or steady state settling time.
That aside, you can’t have square wave as a valid audio signal since it has infinite bandwidth (Fourier Theorem).
You don’t have to worry about that. A real world square wave will have finite rise and fall time. Music is not a sine wave or multiple of frequency sweep either but you use it for your testing.
As for measuring output impedance, what you did might not be adequate and I think you might have taken the short cut. In order to really test for it you have to:
1. Measure the PS12 output with no load.
2. Use a spectrum analyzer to measure the amplitude at several frequency since the output is not a pure sine wave.
3. Now connect the output to different load such as 2ohm, 4ohm, .... or more.
4. Then measure again the output spectrum again with the loads connected. The output amplitude now will be slightly lower due to the finite output impedance of the unit.
5. With those information, you can use a simple equation to calculate for the output impedance.
That’s the only accurate way to measure. It’s a little bit more involvement and I am not sure you’re prepared or have the setup to do that.
We had no choice in science as in life , we trust our hearing, test it yes and train it but trust it. Only sellers can claim the opposite and say: «All you need to know is in «my "objective" reviews» and we can prove it by debunking your ears as Edison debunked alternate current by inventing the electrical death chair (ABX double blind test) .
It is fraud or ignorance. In Amir case it is ignorance about what is hearing.(No Fourier linear maps explain hearing)
I’m not necessarily interested in the deep science of listening. I’m interested in enjoying what I’m listening to. It’s too simple for Amir to understand because he wants to throw data at everything. People who behave like this are just not being practical and not everyone who’s an audiophile feels compelled to get deep into the science of this. Show me the data that explains why Michelangelo was a great artist. You get these science nerds who take things so far, they lose sight of what’s practical. They forget common sense and get too lost in their own intricacies. A person can be very smart yet be a horrible teacher.
Which is an easier position to take talking people out of spending larger amounts of money on audio or trying talk them into listening, trusting their instincts and spending more? Choose your position, take this position to an extreme and double down.
ASR doesnt seem like a very professional organization and has no credibility because he sells equipment.
Check his reference system and how it is stuck into a media room of sorts. Just dont have that much space in the old double-wide I guess. Being driven by a front-end that I wouldnt put in my garage system.
Amir, seriously man you just dont get it and need to move on. The sun has set on your time to contribute to this hobby.
Anyway it seems people speak about something they dont even know they dont understand .
And insulting Amir because he dont even recognise the hearing problem will not go far...
Insults between subjectivist and objectivist about the way and moment to use and test hearing with the gear or test of the gear with hearing are useless😁... What about the fact Amir dont understand hearing for what we know about it( he only understand acuity for spotting digital artefacts, acuity being his main concepts in acoustics )...
What about the fact that most dont understand how to judge and evaluate and modify a system/room for our Ears/brain, i dont means by using a linear frequencies based computation recipe here i means doing it mechanically by hands, a concrete understanding perception as a piano tuner?
There is two side of musical acoustics : materials acoustics and psychoacoustics.
Even Helmholtz was wrong about hearing because linear Fourier maps dont work to describe human hearing and Amir think he understand using his "acuity" measures and blind test?😊
It is like pretending to solve meaning problem in philosophy of science using grammar...
My job as a reviewer is to give you accurate assessments of products and single speaker
Then you’re FIRED! I listen to jazz mostly, so obviously your method of a single speaker is absurd unless a listener is mainly into mono. With older jazz recordings in stereo, certain instruments are often more or less audible in one channel vs the other. Listeners who are familiar with earlier jazz know this because this is very common in many of the older jazz recordings. If I’m listening to speakers, I need to be able to listen in stereo, otherwise certain instruments won’t be audible. If the answer is to change to a more modern recording, then what’s the point.
I sometimes use the Magnepan LRS+ and one panel is purposely designed slightly different than the other. This is why the tie-downs are different with each panel. I don’t know how your single speaker scenario would address this and even if it did, listening to a single speaker is absurd anyway unless one is into mono recordings only. You have too many of these charts scattered in your mind and I would never take your listening advise after that hack job of a review you did on the VTA ST70. You refused to tell your audience what speakers you are pairing. You trashed the LRS and Klipsch The Three as well, all of which I enjoy for their purposes. I don’t need your measurements to tell me what I enjoy.
You are too overly consumed by measurements and you’re a horrible listener as far as I’m concerned. The overwhelming majority of listeners in this forum think your cultist measuring ideology and attitude is absurd. You yourself can’t even decide what you like because you need all these measurements to tell you, even when they’re wrong. There are many products that measure well that don’t sound good and vice-versa and you don’t explain that. You just see everything black & white. I can’t even fathom how a person like you enjoys listening to music. Your head is so polluted with all this nonsense.
You DO NOT give accurate assessments of products else you would assess the quality of the workmanship, and as we can all see, Topping's quality control is crap.
Your statement is "crap." No audio reviewer gives you reliability assessments. We all focus on performance. Now, I do perform teardowns which they don't do, and provide that information from time to time. Indeed, we have a completely subforum for that on ASR:
As for topping reliability, they have had some issues with some products. But countless others have been quite reliable. But let's say you are right. Where you get that information about reliability of Topping and other similar brands is ASR!
Secondly only a half wit assesses speakers by testing only one. Spakers are listened to in pairs.
Just today I post that video that provides multiple research papers on why listening to one speaker is more revealing of their flaws than stereo. I don't know why you all don't let this concept sink in by spending just a few minutes learning about the topic instead of relying on your lay intuition.
Thirdly you are a hypocrite - you throw people off your own site for expressing contrary opinions yet come here and bleat your opinions like a goat.
If you act this unprofessional on ASR, regardless of whether you are in favor our mission or not, we walk you out. Period. ASR is a professional organization. If you cant keep your emotions in check, I don't care how valid your opinion may be. We don't want you there.
If you are going to show up expressing opinions like you just did, and insisting to be right even though you are wrong as a matter of science and engineering, you are going to get strong pushback. Don't go to a Chinese restaurant and demand that they make Pizza for you! We have a mission of trusting data, repeatability, and science and engineering. If you all you are after is feeling good about what you think is right without the benefit of those, then you are not going to do well on ASR.
@amir_asr
"My job as a reviewer is to give you accurate assessments of products and single speaker is a critical component of that. Use stereo for enjoyment but if you are evaluating speaker performance, do it with a single one."
You appear to know as much about what you are posting as the man in the moon.
You DO NOT give accurate assessments of products else you would assess the quality of the workmanship, and as we can all see, Topping's quality control is crap.You never mention this of course.
Secondly only a half wit assesses speakers by testing only one. Spakers are listened to in pairs.
Thirdly you are a hypocrite - you throw people off your own site for expressing contrary opinions yet come here and bleat your opinions like a goat.
Your thinking is wrong. All testing is done in time domain. The graphs are shown in frequency domain since it is hard for a human to tease out the noise and distortion from a waveform display in time domain. Keep in mind again that based on Fourier Theorem, time and frequency domain are interchangeable.
What are the REAL value of your information if the ears/brain do not work in the linear frequency/time domain of Fourier maps but in his own non linear time domain and recognise and decode what it was trained for by evolution for millenia and personal history of each one of us (QUALIA in speech and music and spatial attributes of sound)?
As it is proven already by acoustics research...And i already gives many articles about that...
Nothing can replace hearing ...
You put at the core of S.Q. analysis a peripheral set of tool at best...
But it is useless to discuss because what i say put your measuring set stance as a secondary tool unable to replace listening at all..
Then it is impossible for you to recognize truth here...It is the cost you must pay for promotion of your tools.
We must evaluate a piece of gear in a specific system for a specific room and by specific ears/brain.
His verified specs are in spite of their importance only secondary data relative to psychoacoustics parameters and system parameters in the room in the REAL evaluation and cannot replace it.
You sell as science about S.Q. a set of measures which so useful it could be are not the truth about S.Q.
It is an ideology.
😊
I bought the Fosi SK1 headphone ampli/preamp not because it measured well in your review but because you want to keep it for your headphone.
If you had not said so about your subjective experience i would never had bought it only because of good specs... It is not enough...
Read the Yamaha white papers and dump the Harman curve. The button pushing, chart generating Harman sinad moron seems to think he understands music better than the guys who made all your musical instruments.
By that notion, those engineers should be creating your music as well. After all, they know more about those instruments than any musician!
We trust Harman because they don't make lay claims like that. They perform controlled studies across different sets of populations. That testing instructs us what is likely to sound good to majority of people.
My Kawai digital piano sounds like crap due to poor sound system. The fact that they create great acoustic pianos didn't at all enable them to produce an electronic one.
To wit, this is the performance of a clone of Yamaha NS-10M one of the most famous monitoring speakers of its era:
This is a highly colored and bright speaker. No way you want to use this speaker for any use, playback or music creation. Clearly no one recorded one of their Pianos and then played it back on this speaker and said they sounded the same.
This is what a proper monitoring speaker looks like (the Neumann KH120II):
Clearly building musical instruments it not a requirement for building proper speaker.
So please stop appealing to authority this way. We know how to measure speakers and determine what is or is not a good product. If a company knows what they are doing, it would be reflected here. Not in some lay argument as you put forward.
Amir calls himself a professional listener. He sets up "one" Magnepan LRS panel and calls that his listening experiences for the common audience.
Pretty absurd, isn't it? Even more absurd is you go to your doctor wondering if you have broken your arm. He turns on this machine that outputs invisible rays. Yet he claims he can get a picture out of that showing your arm is broken!!! They must create these X-ray pictures in photoshop!
Not everything in audio needs to make lay sense to you. Same as X-ray being able to go through your body and show your bones. You trust your doctor to know that X-ray can show you that information. You should trust people who have research single-speaker vs stereo vs multi-channel and found that single speaker is far more revealing of speaker flaws than when you add more channels.
I have a video on that:
My job as a reviewer is to give you accurate assessments of products and single speaker is a critical component of that. Use stereo for enjoyment but if you are evaluating speaker performance, do it with a single one.
I think you measured using a single frequency at steady state response at one 1KHz.
That would be wrong. Here is a full frequency sweep of the P12 Powerplant:
Full frequency sweep is performed from 20 Hz to 20 KHz.
It might not reveal the affectiveness or deficiencess of the power plant.
Seeing how the above measurement showed that the P12 increased noise instead of decrease it, I say your assessment is incorrect.
A better test would be using a square wave input then look at how the output follows the input square wave with different load - using high current and low current load. This would be a more difficult test than steady state.
That is still "steady state" by your definition since there is no discontinuity in the signal. That aside, you can't have square wave as a valid audio signal since it has infinite bandwidth (Fourier Theorem).
Also make sure the partner amp that you’re using for the test is not the limiting factor. An outlaw amp probably is not really a good candidate. You probably need a better amp.
Here is the amp by itself, with continuous power and burst:
Now see how power lowered while using the P12:
Both burst and continuous power reduced. This was easily explained due to use of current limiting in P12, contrary to company marketing and understanding of their CEO and founder.
We can see this in power sweep as well:
I think the flaw of most of your testing is because they are done in the frequency domain.
Your thinking is wrong. All testing is done in time domain. The graphs are shown in frequency domain since it is hard for a human to tease out the noise and distortion from a waveform display in time domain. Keep in mind again that based on Fourier Theorem, time and frequency domain are interchangeable.
Frequency domain also has a major advantage in that much of our psychoacoustic knowledge is in frequency domain due to how our ear works with a bank of auditory filters.
Bottom line is that P12 is not a true power regenerator and has current limiting which reduces performance of amplifiers. Testing clearly showed this. With non-amplifiers, it simply did nothing useful since those products have their own internal filtering and run on DC, not AC.
Note that company doesn't provide any of the measurements I provided. Had they done this type of testing, they would have a) seen the degradations P12 introduces and b) realized it makes no difference to output of audio products.
I think you measured using a single frequency at steady state response at one 1KHz. It might not reveal the affectiveness or deficiencess of the power plant. It is not even close to being adequate.
A better test would be using a square wave input then look at how the output follows the input square wave with different load - using high current and low current load. This would be a more difficult test than steady state.
Also make sure the partner amp that you’re using for the test is not the limiting factor. An outlaw amp probably is not really a good candidate. You probably need a better amp.
I think the flaw of most of your testing is because they are done in the frequency domain.
I have done exactly that with Roon for several rooms at home. Creating your own filter is not as easy as just using one that already exists like for headphone models but every room is different so you have to create your own. REW is very powerful but a bit technical and complex to get one’s arms around initially. Luckily there are guides available via Roon forum that takes one through the process if interested. I highly recommend it as both a learning experience and a very practical way to help bring out the best in most any system
Now, Imagine a site where someone reviews lady’s handbags on measurements only. You might find the most functional bag for the best price but how many ladies buy handbags that way? The boutique/designer handbag industry would be in an uproar. 😉
Amir calls himself a professional listener. He sets up "one" Magnepan LRS panel and calls that his listening experiences for the common audience. He then claims his site has millions of views. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if most of those views were readers wondering what this guy has trashed next.
Read the Yamaha white papers and dump the Harman curve. The button pushing, chart generating Harman sinad moron seems to think he understands music better than the guys who made all your musical instruments.
did not read my posts arguments and the link (hearing theory) between the articles i posted here and i doubt he could even understand my point as i used it to point out how Amir is "not even wrong".
All audio empty deadlock discussion between objectivists and subjectivists are rooted in acoustic ignorance and with a common focus on gear design specific curves (Harman or not) or gear design branded names revendicated subjective taste and choices.Gear fetichism in the two "political" parties so opposed they are.😁
Acoustic principles exist by themselves and had nothing to do with the gear. It is the gear that must obey acoustics and psychoacoustics principles and serve them.😎
As anything in society right now in audio experience most walk on their head instead of their feet.
If i am wrong , how can i upgrade my listening experience with a straw of the right size located at the right place ?
Do i need an ABX double blind test to prove the reality of acoustics principles already written in science book?
Do i need to pay a big amount of money to prove that my (straw) upgrade if well placed may have a big acoustic value?
Asking the right question is already most of the answer.😊
It is always worthwhile to use and understand the measurements we have. I think we are missing some still though. Our ears are the best tools still.
On a side note I do a lot of double blind testing for taste (food and beverage manufacturing industry) and those scores are measured againts a standard and a team of testers. I will tell you double blind testing of senses is extremely hard but as a group panel the group is almost always aligned with the standard. audio should be no different. For those that don’t trust measurements I would encourage you to try gear that measures different and see if you can correlate the differences to the measurements.
now I will not disagree that some preferences may differ from standard, and there is not “correct” dispersion angle. For example I like about 3db bass (60hz and under) above “flat” for extra kick drum impact. I just tune that in with subs and measurements rather than chasing super speakers.
I can report that in each case (about six different headphones/ear monitors) the Harmon corrected sound is better than each devices default sound to various degrees and I now always listen using the associated convolution filter for each.
In fact the more expensive and better made phones tend to sound the best after correction as well in that they are robust enough to deliver the corrected sound well. Also this tends to make all my various headphones that each sounds much different otherwise sound more consistent as well as better.
If that graph was from Harmon Inc/Sean Olive, I still have to call BS on it as there are "trained listeners" in the category of audio reviewers as that's what they're trained to do when reviewing. I can't imagine at least one audio reviewer not passing the test.
Now if the category were renamed "trained blind listeners with similar preferences for what sounds nice to them" (hence the Harmon curve), then have at it.
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