Stereophile complains it's readers are too informed.

The point of the article I believe that to many are automatically drawn to speakers that say or they are told have a flat response

And this is not a position I have ever espoused. I mean, I know this is what I like, but why should that influence your buying choices?  Also, Stereophile has promoted several brands as "reference" or "neutral" speakers when they clearly and audibly were not.   Don't try to sell me "neutral" speakers as the epitome of desirability one moment, then complain about this too.

Not enough just listen to the speakers and find out they enjoy them.

I think that is in fact how you should buy loudspeakers.

My issues with the article was not that reviewers liked non-neutral speakers, but that when speaker measurements varied egregiously from good design patterns they fail to bridge the gap between their measurements and observations.


Best,
E

What really incensed me about this article is that they want to wear the mantle of knowing what good speaker design is by invoking Toole and others, but past articles clearly show they have no clue.

A great example of this was the Crystal Minissimo diamond. I was so angry I wrote a blog post about it:

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2016/09/stereophile-slanders-crystal-cable.html

The speaker was deliberately designed for close to wall placement. The measurements show it lacks a baffle step compensation, EXACTLY the way you design a speaker for wall/bookshelf placement.  This yields a neutral speaker with elevated sensitivity than youd' get otherwise.  JA measures all this, writes a half page review, where he notes he could not place the speakers as designed, and then complains they have a deliberately "tailored" treble.

Especially since JA has a penchant for a specific non-neutral treble curve.


Basically everything in this article is proven false. Not only do they not know what a good speaker is, nor do they take the intentions of the speaker designer to heart while listening. It is very hard not to read this article is a disingenuous attempt to cover their lack of either knowledge or impartiality. Pick all that apply.

Stereophile seems pretty straightforward to me and they seem to be clear about their measurements. Of course, measurements can never tell the whole story and they're not a substitute for listening.

Yep, I like their measurements. I just feel that they should be contextualizing, and if they see an issue, go back to listening and explain if it mattered.

They are basically upset their readers are interpreting the measurements themselves. As I wrote in the comments section, providing data without context is often a road to disaster, especially at work.  If you do the measurements also provide the context, and follow up if anything sticks out.

I did. The issue is the context of the article, which you’d have to be reading the comments from recent speaker reviews to get.

While they invoke Toole here, they don’t in their reviews and completely ignore glaring differences from classical speaker design in their measurements, so they complain that their readers are using good speaker design practices to judge their measurements and reviews.

I agree with the overall statements, that speakers should be judged by the intention of the developer, not an industry standard. That’s fine. What I disagree with is that they feel no reason to point these differences themselves, and also ignore times when they’ve been dead wrong in their conclusions, or biased towards speakers that had obvious color and called them neutral.

They are producing measurements without context and are upset the readers will.

Best,

E