What would you donate for us to test speakers?

[soundwave76]

$50 in general, $100 if the speakers I own are measured.

 

[Wombat]

I like the fact that this is a forum for rational audio discussion. The focus on in-house tests I am not particularly interested in, as it is a distraction from this.

Maybe testing needs its own site.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I like the fact that this is a forum for rational audio discussion. The focus on in-house tests I am not particularly interested in, as it is a distraction from this.

Maybe testing needs its own site.

I like the rational discussion, but the real value is using that with actual hard data to work with. The feedback from reality checking our actual gear. Man how can it get better than that? Reasoning also needs reality based feedback to keep it honest and correct.

 

[Wombat]

I like the rational discussion, but the real value is using that with actual hard data to work with. The feedback from reality checking our actual gear. Man how can it get better than that? Reasoning also needs reality based feedback to keep it honest and correct.

The tests tend to bring out an almost endless stream of uninformed opinion. A forum form of constipation.

I didn't say get rid of them but give them their own identity and space. From a marketing point of view that makes sense to me.

 

[Rja4000]

Hi
I highly appreciate your work and the forum.
I want to help you fund to a reasonable (for me) extent, be it for speaker testing or anything.

I share some of the other users' concerns though.
The whole context of getting money and what this has as an impact should be carefully thought and, in my opinion, ideally, made transparent to some extent.

The main point I have is that, to evolve, Audiosciencereview will, in my opinion, have to build on the community.

If you want to be more extensive and still keep the high standards we all like, some work should, in my opinion, be delegated to others, while the strict procedure and quality level be managed by you and the major technical experts.
You show the way and monitor what's happening and the community will add the quantity.
So this is not just about money, but about overall structure of your way of working.

Is there a future for single-user effort?
Not on the long run. I don't think so.
The speaker testing effort is adding to that.
You want to demonstrate the way. And that's good.
But please, think also about the overall method.

 

[Wombat]

Hi
I highly appreciate your work and the forum.
I want to help you fund to a reasonable (for me) extent, be it for speaker testing or anything.

I share some of the other users' concerns though.
The whole context of getting money and what this has as an impact should be carefully thought and, in my opinion, ideally, made transparent to some extent.

The main point I have is that, to evolve, Audiosciencereview will, in my opinion, have to build on the community.

If you want to be more extensive and still keep the high standards we all like, some work should, in my opinion, be delegated to others, while the strict procedure and quality level be managed by you and the major technical experts.
You show the way and monitor what's happening and the community will add the quantity.
So this is not just about money, but about overall structure of your way of working.

Is there a future for single-user effort?
Not on the long run. I don't think so.
The speaker testing effort is adding to that.
You want to demonstrate the way. And that's good.
But please, think also about the overall method.

Be aware of one's limitations, Huh?

 

[amirm]

The focus on in-house tests I am not particularly interested in, as it is a distraction from this.

I don't think you are seeing the indirect benefit of this testing. It is actually starting to impact the industry. I have gotten emails from multiple companies who have bought Audio Precision analyzers specifically because of our testing and wanted to be ahead of the game in their product development. Indeed if there is one thing that gets me super excited and motivated every morning is such a large impact. We need to move the industry to better engineered designs. People expect that.

Second is the learning that comes from it. What makes a good design is not always written down. I am finishing the test of a very high performance device and it had exactly this impact as I compared it to its competitors.

Without these reviews, we also get stuck in argumentative threads like we had. People get bored and start picking on each other. Instead, we have fresh reviews and data to pour over.

 

[Shadrach]

I can't afford to donate. It's that simple.
There seems to be danger of amirm and some of the site members taking themselves far too seriously.
For me half a dozen tests of so called Hi End speakers would confirm what I already believe to be the case. Most audio enthusiasts who have been around a while know enough about the realities of audio reproduction not to be taken in by the bullshit anyway. The audiophile types with seemingly more money than sense will read a review, ignore the results and go and spend stupid amounts of money regardless. There is an assumption underlying this mission to save audiophiles from themselves that the audiophiles want saving. I don't think they do.
The dac and amp tests were/are great. The point has now been proven. Many other sites present a buy list and ASR is in danger of becoming a replica of these sites. What doesn't get stressed enough is roughly 90% of the dacs tested are going to sound fine in any system, no matter how golden eared you think you are or how transparent you believe your system is.
Imo the message ASR should be promoting is buy what you like, the chances of you getting something that is noticably worse than anything else are small. After a while even if the system is far from transparent you wont know and wont care as long as sounds come out of all the right bits.
It's a hobby and if peoplle are foolish enough to take it more seriously than that all the reviews and expert advice is just more print on a forum.
Guides on how to set things up are good; but having written a couple for other forums I can understand the points made above that I put a number of hours into such projects and the forum owners reap the benefits. I don't bother explaining anything technical these days. If people are interested then they'll find out for themselves. There comes a point when you realize that most of what you try to tell people falls on deaf ears; very fitting for audiophiles. Generally the only people impressed with the lengthy technical chat are the people that write it. A great many people don't understand the relevance, or the physics, or the math. Those that do know the stuff anyway and the more intelligent will find some proper papers on the subject.

 

[amirm]

If you want to be more extensive and still keep the high standards we all like, some work should, in my opinion, be delegated to others, while the strict procedure and quality level be managed by you and the major technical experts.

We will indeed need to move to that model in the future once my bandwidth is fully exhausted. And for a succession planning once I am dead and buried.

The challenge in doing so now is that the gear is the bottleneck. I can't even fund the gear that I need for testing let alone expect someone else to buy a $50K speaker tester, just to write free reviews for this site.

Consumer Reports in US has a decent model of a large scale effort. They rely on subscriptions and paywalls but otherwise, are fully independent and on the side of consumer.

 

[Wombat]

I don't think you are seeing the indirect benefit of this testing. It is actually starting to impact the industry. I have gotten emails from multiple companies who have bought Audio Precision analyzers specifically because of our testing and wanted to be ahead of the game in their product development. Indeed if there is one thing that gets me super excited and motivated every morning is such a large impact. We need to move the industry to better engineered designs. People expect that.

Second is the learning that comes from it. What makes a good design is not always written down. I am finishing the test of a very high performance device and it had exactly this impact as I compared it to its competitors.

Without these reviews, we also get stuck in argumentative threads like we had. People get bored and start picking on each other. Instead, we have fresh reviews and data to pour over.

I see it. I just think the general forum's identity can be separate from the testing one. They can be separate but associated.

 

[amirm]

For me half a dozen tests of so called Hi End speakers would confirm what I already believe to be the case.

Nothing about this effort is about high-end speakers. My goal is to sift through hundreds of budget and mid-priced speakers to see which ones are worth buying. RIght now, with everything I know, I can't give an ounce of advice about any random speaker out there. There is just no information to say anything reliable. Joe blogger says this speaker is good. Someone says another speaker is good. Where do you guys go with that?

We need to show the way for manufacturers to follow too. They don't have a compass either. It is all about marketing right now. What if there are excellent speakers that are lost in all the noise?

As to high-end people, some number of them will see the light one day. The rest will do what they will do and who cares. They are a tiny market compared to the one we are addressing.

 

[restorer-john]

There comes a point when you realize that most of what you try to tell people falls on deaf ears; very fitting for audiophiles. Generally the only people impressed with the lengthy technical chat are the people that write it. A great many people don't understand the relevance, or the physics, or the math.

Well said.

 

[restorer-john]

My goal is to sift through hundreds of budget and mid-priced speakers to see which ones are worth buying. RIght now, with everything I know, I can't give an ounce of advice about any random speaker out there. There is just no information to say anything reliable. Joe blogger says this speaker is good. Someone says another speaker is good. Where do you guys go with that?

Well that is an admirable goal. The volume business sure seems to be centred on the compact two way and powered mini monitor speaker systems and as you say, most is subjective musings by non-technical sites.

 

[Wombat]

'Hundreds of budget speakers'>

Say, average of $150 pr: That is lots of money unless they are donated.

How much has this idea been thought through? I am but an Engineer(policy, practice, project management and general management) but this all seems to be a thought-bubble to me. At least at this point.

Phono preamp testing has stalled. Peanuts compared to speakers.

Ambition needs to be tempered by practicality. Hasten slowly.

 

[Shadrach]

Nothing about this effort is about high-end speakers. My goal is to sift through hundreds of budget and mid-priced speakers to see which ones are worth buying. RIght now, with everything I know, I can't give an ounce of advice about any random speaker out there. There is just no information to say anything reliable. Joe blogger says this speaker is good. Someone says another speaker is good. Where do you guys go with that?

We need to show the way for manufacturers to follow too. They don't have a compass either. It is all about marketing right now. What if there are excellent speakers that are lost in all the noise?

As to high-end people, some number of them will see the light one day. The rest will do what they will do and who cares. They are a tiny market compared to the one we are addressing.

Why do you think anyone will pay the slightest attention to your advice in preference to Sound on Sound for example. There are lots of sites that 'test' speakers in this range. Showing people graphs of how a speaker performs in your test rig has so little relevance to how they will sound when the buyer gets them home.
With the progress made with DSP it won't matter soon whether the speaker performs well as standard or not; you'll be able to correct it and whats more, correct it for the room in which you listen to it.
Now if you were prepeared and able to rip one apart, cost the components and factor in production time then that might be interesting.

 

[Wombat]

Are there enough people, now, who really care? Hifi is now a lifestyle and consumer commodity. Let the manufacturers/Brands inform us. If they won't do it, why do it for them. Favour the ones that do. Life is too short. Do something else.

 

[q3cpma]

That's actually a good point. Genelec, Neumann and similar manufacturers really stick out of the mass in this measurement-less market.

 

[Krunok]

Showing people graphs of how a speaker performs in your test rig has so little relevance to how they will sound when the buyer gets them home.
With the progress made with DSP it won't matter soon whether the speaker performs well as standard or not; you'll be able to correct it and whats more, correct it for the room in which you listen to it.

I agree with many things you said but not with this part. If the speaker doesn't get good measurements on the "rig" Amir is considering buying then DSP/Room EQ canot make it sound well. Although every speaker will benefit from Room EQ, being well engineered or not, there are things that DSP/Room EQ simply cannot correct.

 

[Krunok]

That's actually a good point. Genelec, Neumann and similar manufacturers really stick out of the mass in this measurement-less market.

They do, but there are so few of them. If you can raise the awareness how important well measurements are there is a chance that would force manufacturers to make better speakers.

Speaking of measurements, I still cannot understand that even Harman doesn't publish measurements of their speakers. Just take a look at the official spec sheet for Revel Performa3 F208 speaker - no spinorama charts (not even on-axis FR), no dispersion graphs, no distortion data, no max SPL data, ..

 

[soundwave76]

What if ASR would make a bet/hypothesis that the speaker market is evolving towards active mini-mid size monitors with built in DACs and DSP room correction and focus on testing only those? This would narrow the scope and in my opinion this ’philosophy’ would fit ASR quite well.