Crutchfield's Speaker Compare


Hey everyone, for those in the market for new speakers, Crutchfield now has something called "Speaker compare", in which you can select up to 4 speakers and make sound comparisons online using your computer and a pair of headphones. Although not all the speakers models are available for audition at the moment, a lot are, and I think it’s a great alternative for those (like me) who cannot audition speakers in person. You can compare several songs at the same volume or at the same wattage. I am not associated with Crutchfield at all. I think it’s a great tool and a good start!
Cheers y’all!
128x128luciano33
The only way this could be useful is if the Crutchfield sound reproduction is a perfect representation of the speaker itself.
This is about as likely as Vladimir Putin giving up power in Russia.
And if it were so, why buy the speakers, save the money and listen to the Crutchfield.

This speaks nothing of the truth of listening in your room on your system.
Try speakers in your room.  Dealer margins allow for the costs of doing this and good dealers expect it.
"Too bad they specialize in MidFi. "
Revel, B&W, Dynaudio and McIntosh are midfi?
The last time I looked those are HiFi products!
This speaks nothing of the truth of listening in your room on your system.

Neither does going to a show or a dealer, so what’s your point?
It’s the fact that you can get at least an idea of how they sound.
Then, you can order the speaker’s and actually listen to them in your room on your equipment.
Crutchfield also has a very generous return policy and they go out of their way to work with you. 

Millercarbon,

Very glad that you are happy with your Moabs.  It would have been very discouraging to find after all of your research that your ultimate opinion didn't align with your expectations.  Also, returning the speakers would have been a huge pain, and perhaps would have led to a confrontation with the designer -- I'm sure you're very glad to avoid all of that.  

Your excellent outcome notwithstanding, it is still my view that the tool is more a parlor trick than anything else.  If you read the Crutchfield patents on the tool, you will find that they use the purported transfer function of each speaker to do the compare.  (How'd they generate that transfer function, BTW??)   So no actual sound from the speakers is used to create the comparison; it is a filter applied to the samples.  For that reason, among others, I think the tool is kind of silly.  But if folks find it useful and find themselves happy with their Crutchfield speakers, that's great for them.  To me, that doesn't prove the validity of the tool.  If others are convinced otherwise, great for them and I respect their view, as well as yours.  

I can't be sure, but your last sentence "At least, they are useful once you learn to listen" might have been intended as a slight toward me, implying that I am not sufficiently competent to make YouTube speaker reviews helpful.  I would note that your argument cuts both ways.  I can just as easily say that you aren't able to listen well enough to appreciate the difference between the YouTube videos and the actual performance in your room, and that your view is hopelessly tainted by, e.g., confirmation bias.  But I see no reason to go there.