What if a high end speaker measures really badly?

My take:

Without prejudice to the fact that I am currently a card-carrying HARBETH disciple with their famous class-leading flat frequency response curve that measures in the top tier ….. and their best of breed midrange …… Just Fuhgeddaboud about all the textbook graphs and like shite, and just refer to your ears and senses in real life experiences.

For example:

In 1970, JBL released the iconic L100 Loudspeaker. Over the years, the L100 became the bestselling loudspeaker in JBL’s history. These were rock recording studio monitors with a roller-coaster and sine wave frequency response graph …..and everybody loved them.

These were everywhere in the early 1970s and onward, because they sounded great, thet were small compared to other speakers that sounded this good, and they played very loud without needing much power. (a perfect recipe for the college cohort budgets now buying the new gear)

The L100 was designed for rock & roll, efficiency, power handling, sine waves frequency responses (…heavy boosted treble, another peak in mids, AND a big boost in bass ) and sharp musical transients.

KEY POINT.
They were renowned as THE studio monitors in that era springing up in the west USA studios BECAUSE they dramatized / emphasized the recording industry engineers approach back then capitalizing on the prevailing music genre and purposely punching up the top, middle and bottom with peaks and valleys. Your favorite classic rock acts were probably recorded with JBL monitors, when L100s ruled the world.

Their easily identified sound, the so-called West Coast sound, was once a highly touted marketing feature.
- JBL speakers identified immediately as having a very pronounced treble peak
- JBL speakers as having a somewhat ragged and peaky midrange that could put the vocalist in your lap,
- booming bold bass
- Ad copy claimed that musicians and recording engineers were buying or stealing the original model 4310 (a professional studio monitor that preceded the L-100s) for home use.
- JBL did succeed in installing these monitors in most large recording studios in the 1970s, including Angel, Capitol, Deutsche Grammophon, Elektra, EMI, London/Decca, MGM, RCA, Reprise, Vanguard, and Warner Bros.
- Although they may have been responsible for some bad studio mixes from the ’70s and ’80s, even by today’s standards, they do amazingly well for a 3-way speaker with only 2 crossover components. Their relatively high sensitivity generates an incredible attack giving music an energy and presence that few other speakers could reproduce back then …

Everyone should own a pair of L-100 at some point in life…. and of course the much better L-110

Actually, the studio version of the L100 was made to try to replicate the sound of the Altec 604 of the day.

I find people that don’t think measurements matter just lack experience. Use REW (it is free!) and start making your own correlations. 
 

I have had/have 4 speakers that have full kipple measurements posted publicly. I find frequency response and dispersion to transfer very well from measurements to my room.  
 

what I think is still missing in measurements is detail and transient response. The ability of the driver to start and stop with no over hang or over shoot. 

Some bumps are good and others not so much.

With DSP, you get to add bumps where needed and where you want them to be, not where they just happened to be when the product shipped.

I find with most speakers I tend to like a bump from ~4-6khz. That adds a bit of edge and definition, much like one might expect with a very good pair of high efficiency horns. In particular it helps to keep your attention at lower volumes. The other tweaks I might apply often tend to be more room and listening position dependent.

In the chart in the original post, that relative peak at ~10k in conjunction with the dip just below will likely result in a piercing sound (more fatigue) that might only benefit in certain more extreme cases of hearing loss. Would not be for me most likely. though again it may be nothing that some smartly applied DSP couldn’t resolve. But even if so, better to not have to apply DSP to fix what appears to be a significant design flaw. Better to go with a more suitable design right out of the gate where any bumps perhaps might be better located and maybe even work in your favor in some cases. You decide! To me a good design is always preferrable.