Genelec is also EQ-ed to be linear. When you compare speakers EQ-ed to similar FR what you would notice first is difference in bass. I could easilly push LF response of the Infinity for few dB at 50Hz to be equal to Genelec 8341A, and it may easilly turn out that Infinity, being larger, would have better bass which can go louder too.
What you would also hear is a difference in directivity, but Infinity is very good with that too. I doubt you would hear the difference in the distortion. In other words, it may be a tough job to hear the difference between those 2 speakers in a proper blind test.
You may want to check
article @mitchco wrote when comparing 2 different speakers EQ-ed to the same target.
I've read
@mitchco 's article before. Great read!
You're right that the Genelec uses EQ to achieve the score it does. A better example would probably be the Revel F208, especially since it's in the same Harman family as the Infinity. I think it would be a really interesting concept to test. How much can speaker EQ really fix a speaker? Can you EQ this speaker to sound better than a Revel F208(at least with a sub and to a certain volume)? Going by the Olive score, it seems to be the case, but I still have my doubts. They're not confident doubts, though.
As for the comparison with the Genelec, while this speaker has really well controlled directivity, it's still significantly worse than the Genelec's (as are most speakers), so I don't think there's much danger of an EQ'd version of this speaker making Genelec owners feel they've wasted their money.
That difference in directivity control should be accounted for by the Olive score, though, right? Or maybe you're saying it might not be weighted heavily enough?
My question was more about what could the Olive score be missing. Or maybe it's not missing, and these really would have a greater than 50% probability of being preferred over the Genelecs. Right now I'm leaning more towards your side, but I think it would be interesting to test.
I remember earlier discussions about the Score being reported to two decimals - being decided that was 'meaningless' and one decimal suffices.
In reality, a single rounded digit and no decimal at all is probably all the Score deserves..there seem to be enough 'deficiencies' that a single digit is all it's worth - if even that. Just IMHO..
Personally, I think distortion, measured at various SPL levels, may tell us as much.. or more..
I disagree that a single rounded number with no decimal is good enough, but I can agree with the 1 decimal point.
I also think it depends on what you're trying to get out of the score. If you're trying to use it to make purchasing decisions, then I probably wouldn't be comfortable making such decisions completely on score differences of less than 1.0(more like 1.5). Even then, I think there's evidence to support it doesn't do well with really weird designs(like omnis), and you still have to take into account max output and personal directivity preferences. In that sense, I agree with you that differences smaller than say 1.0 are probably not so meaningful.
If, however, you're just trying to make general statements of preference with a large sample size of say 1,000 listeners, then I think small differences in score can be relevant. For example, lets put this Infinity R162 against it's bigger brother Revel F208:
The EQed Infinity has a score of 6.6, while the Revel has a score of 6.1, so a 0.5 difference. Personally, that's no where near a big enough difference for me to make a purchasing decision off of, but for predicting preference in the general population over a large enough sample size, I see no reason why it shouldn't be relevant. Im assuming an equal score to roughly mean that one should be preferred 50% of the time over another. How does that % chance change with a 0.5 difference? 55%, 60%, 65%? I honestly have no idea. I know someone calculated that a 1.6 difference would lead to a 95% chance, but I don't know how they calculated that; I asked in another thread, but got no response.
PS: I'm listening to this speaker's bigger brother(R263) this morning, and I think it sounds great for the money.
PSS: I know
@QMuse is an advocate for room EQ being *mostly equal for speakers below a certain point. I'm not sure if I agree or disagree, but in this case I found that the R263 measured very similarly to my mains below 300Hz, and so I was able to just reuse the sub 300Hz EQ that I use for my mains, and it worked well.