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

I've spent some time on the ASR site & didn't care for it much. Not that I'm against measuring audio equipment, it was the whole feeling of the forum...  lots of seemingly aggressive people shouting their opinion, mocking others who disagree. Mind you, I get the same feelings from those that are diehard cable/tweak believers, who belittle those that disagree with them. I keep reading them write the words "believe your own ears" while they completely ignore the concept that if you're watching something, or you're told something, or you're made aware of something while you're listening/comparing then you're not believing your ears... you're permitting your brain to override your ears & tell you that you're hearing something that you're not. Listen to 2 sources of music after being told that A<B and you'll hear a superior B. Listen  to 2 sources blindly and suddenly all  differences statistically disappear. 

So I find the two absolutes, listening & measuring, are both outliers that I will read but often categorize as interesting but not necessarily relevant to me. 

@dwcda Then it is an audiophile forum. It seems that is all audiophiles do, like their life's depend on being right. I get the exact same feeling from this forum, and that is the point. One needs to ignore the yellers and passive-aggressive people in this hobby. There are so many of them. There are absolutists in both sides, and they will NEVER agree. The sad thing is, if they put down the anger, they might learn something.

I think @amir_asr stated his idea well, he is giving measurements - what people on his forum do with it, is another thing. It is sad we have to pick through all the junk to find the information we need. But that is what I do.

 

Arguing is useless When people are bent on hate or had no recognized common ground...

-----It appear stupid to my eyes because audio experience is a perception personal subjective experience which must be trained and educated not by gear purchase but by acoustics experiments and concepts...

-----It appear stupid to me because audio experience result also from a set of acoustical measurable of parameters between the system /room/ears. This acoustics and psychoacouistics set of measures are so impactful that the electrical specs of the gear even the speakers specs matter less for the qualitative end result ...

Then Amir techno-cultist ideology and sarcasms about "golden ears" and the audiogoners hate toward him personnaly is preposterous, as useless, as in politics the hate between Biden or Trump, or left/right, big eggs /small eggs it neglect the hidden cause and real control of the parasitic minds watchwords put on the social fabric and reflecting the techno-cultist control of Finances, medecine,politics, even the lost of science and mind by big corporation criminality.

All is very clear since Bernard Mandeville work on social fabric controls and René Girard analysis of violence.

 

«Brain grow or shrink,they never stay put»--Groucho Marx neurologist🤓

@mahgister Agree partially. I feel there are cultists on both sides and there is trench between them and that is usually where I find myself.

They are both right and wrong at the same time. If they would listen to each other instead of talking over each other, they would find the common ground of enjoying music and the hobby

Ever been to AudioKarma - where the only good audio is 'Vintage' and everything else is not? One can find the same attitudes and aggressive tendencies there.

I think we need to find common ground and move on from there. I understand English is a 2nd language for you. I thank you for expressing yourself as well as you do. Oft times, we write small chunks of ideas that can seem to be more aggressive than they actually are.

thanks for your kind words...

I am glad i am not alone in the cracks where truth wait between the bricks of the jailing house...

You are lucky that i never spoke english in my life... I only had read english in science books and philosophy. I know very few concrete words and no slang...

In french i would have been much more clear and much more long and proficient with hues of meanings and humor...😊

 

By the way welcome on audiogon...

😊