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DO SPECS REALLY MATTER in Audio? - Understanding Speaker Measurements!

TheWalkman

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Sean,

I didn’t see the infamous, “/s“ after your post so my next assumption Is you are completely punking us, correct?

And if you’re signature is accurate, I‘m back at ya with a Citation 12 amp of mine that had beautiful specs but repeatedly cooked my 12” JBL woofers with a massive DC pulse on start up that couldn’t, seemingly, be repaired. :facepalm:
 

phoenixdogfan

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In order to agree with him, you would have to either believe that the measurement set employed by reviews like Amir and researcher/designers like Sean Olive lack validity, i.e. they simply don't correlate with what speaker the vast majority of listeners consistently and repeatedly prefer in a transducer, OR that a significant subset of individuals have some particular bias(es) in their listening preferences which causes them to consistently prefer some alternative set of measurements which deviate from psycho acoustic norms.

But most likely of all--it's just a pandering to the overall social backlash against anyone offering expertise-based advice on any matter whatsoever. In short, another eruption of this culture's militant, rising. and perhaps ascendant anti-intellectualism with old Andrew looking to hop onto the bandwagon and make himself a few easy bucks in the process.
 

sweetchaos

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I remember he was praising his Klipsches, and at the last second, I saw the "one shoulder shrug".
It's called a 'micro-expression', for those who don't know.
Here it is...I found it and clipped for your reference (uploaded to imgur):


Body Language doesn't lie.
 

Doodski

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Here it is...I found it and clipped for your reference (uploaded to imgur):


Body Language doesn't lie.
Lol... Buddy has discovered horns and large woofers... After listening to horns in the right room with the right setup some people think they are the best thing. I've had large Altec horns before and yes they have snap and sizzle in the mids with drums and trumpets and stuff. :D
 

vavan

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posvibes

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The most interesting part of my audio journey of late has been delving into but unfortunately not too deeply (the deeply scientific literature leaves me feeling totally inadequate) into the field of psychoacoustics, along with some popular science on the irrationality of our brains.

The hierarchy of decision making between our brain and our self itself is in dispute. I have been taught valuable lessons about not trusting my ears and I have a developing dubious relationship with the reliability of my brain and we both may need 3rd party counseling.

If the youtuber can plant a seed the marketeers can reap the rewards of the harvest. I've been wrong for so long, but have been making course corrections for the last few years, ASR has been a great help in regards to this re-alignment.
 

FeddyLost

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I think it's the very troublesome matter for almost everyone excluding 0,05% of population = audio enthusiasts with tech background and ability to disconnect from subjective self while reading any measurement data and choosing something.
One need not only good complex measured data, but also good ability to merge this data into whole reproduction chain (including room and his earbrain) to predict somehow if this equipment ok for his goals or not.
So, I'd say that listener have to educate himself and do some work anyway - either to understand basics of acoustics/electronics either to get a good job, earn money and buy out installation team with few equipment options in his room.
Without understanding of this dichotomy, any controversy between measurements and listening impression is kind of argue between ruler and object being measured.
 

Feelas

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I guess we ought not to give this guy publicity and perhaps going on a public bashing is a bit of an overt reaction.

That being said, his opinion on measurements not being of use because of room interactions and so forth... well, that can be assessed, and informing people that it can't is being totally disrespectful to anyone unable to see through the bullshit - he's literally turning physics into magic pixie dust!
 

bo_knows

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I think it's the very troublesome matter for almost everyone excluding 0,05% of population = audio enthusiasts with tech background and ability to disconnect from subjective self while reading any measurement data and choosing something.
One need not only good complex measured data, but also good ability to merge this data into whole reproduction chain (including room and his earbrain) to predict somehow if this equipment ok for his goals or not.
So, I'd say that listener have to educate himself and do some work anyway - either to understand basics of acoustics/electronics either to get a good job, earn money and buy out installation team with few equipment options in his room.
Without understanding of this dichotomy, any controversy between measurements and listening impression is kind of argue between ruler and object being measured.
Excellent post.
"So, I'd say that listener have to educate himself and do some work anyway - either to understand basics of acoustics/electronics either to get a good job, earn money and buy out installation team with few equipment options in his room."
Correct, unless you are listening in the near field, one will need to spend a considerable amount of money on speakers and room treatments, DSP to make stuff work to a certain degree. Revel, KEF, Focal, B&W all want a lot of money for their top models. As far as Andrew, he's trying to make a living with youtube and cash out in his previous audiophile experience. As such in my eyes, he's forgiven and when I listen to his videos, I try to be open-minded as I can. As FeedyLost mention in the above post, it's up to ME to get educated and find what works for me. That being said, this forum has made me think and grow a lot in the short period of time I joined.:)
 

TimVG

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Is not caring about measurements simply a lack of understanding? Do certain groups feel threatened by them? Consumers tend to care about specifcations when it comes to just about anything else. Do we buy a mobile phone based on specs or based on fiddling around on a sample for 10 min in a shop? Do we buy a computer based on specs and determine it meets or exceeds our needs, or based on running a couple of programs and games on the spot to see if things work smoothly? Do we buy a washing mashine based on specs or do we do a testrun with a load or two? .. We seem to rely on specs for most of our consumer behaviour, yet when it comes to sound suddenly everything goes out the window. The average consumer doesn't seem to look beyond design, rated power and sometimes brand, and the average audiophile feels he or she is beyond crude numbers and rejects them all the same.
 

thewas

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I guess the problem is that many audiophiles don't see their hardware as devices but as music instruments and thus as part of the "art" (which of course is wrong in the original concept of High Fidelity) and "don't want to chose something so emotional from a bunch of numbers".
Some even feel themselves like a kind of music conductors, trying to match and optimise their "chains" to a highest "synergy", if you go to them about specs, they will tell you would you chose your wife or music instrument based on "some soulless graphs"? :facepalm:
 
OP
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Sean Olive

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Yeah, I blocked him from showing up in my recommendations. The guy is delusional and just shilling for ad revenue.


Don't know, didn't watch it either, but measurements can be part of the specifications. Some brands show their spins right there on the product page (too bad Revel doesn't do it) or in the brochures for their products.


Maybe @Sean Olive can invite him over to Harman when this pandemic thing is over. Let him do some double blind tests and see where his preferences lie.
Apparently he has visited Harman in the past as a guest of Kevin Voecks, and I met him, but I don't remember the visit. There have been a lot of visitors over the past 28 years.
 

richard12511

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Apparently he has visited Harman in the past as a guest of Kevin Voecks, and I met him, but I don't remember the visit. There have been a lot of visitors over the past 28 years.

I somewhat remember him talking about it before, and how it changed his view on audio. Going purely by memory, the Salon2 was the most preferred speaker in the blind he participated in, but what surprised him the most is that there was a cheaper Infinity speaker that beat out another much more expensive speaker, and it even beat the Salon2 for a few of the songs for a few people(including himself). His biggest takeaway iirc was that price is weakly correlated with performance. It's been a long time since I watched, though, so my memory could be totally off. I can't remember the title of the video.
 

weasels

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it's not the first time some people stick to that flawed logic

I work with a bunch of economists and they have the same logical flaw.

The "if this was the only way to do it, no one else would be in the market" line presumes that market forces are completely rational and all products are accessible to all people with equal means.

Of course, none of that is true.
 
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Sean Olive

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I saw the video earlier. Replied. I was going to link it here but didn’t want to give him any publicity. Imagine my surprise when I see it posted here by none other than Sean himself.
I don't normally watch these things, but Gene Dellasala @Audioholics sent me the link probably with intention to geting a reaction out of me.

I listened to 30 s, dismissed it.. Later I went back and listened to more, and heard him talking about Harman. He didn't say we don't listen but I thought he sort of mischaracterized or dismissed the effort we put into doing listening and doing it right.

At any rate, the main objections I have to this video are:

1) It dismisses the importance of measurements which are are highly predictive of listeners' loudspeaker preference ratings.
2) It dismisses tests done under laboratory conditions as being irrelevant to consumers because he says "variables like a) rooms, b) programs, c) hearing and d) personal tastes"

a) Rooms _ As people know here, the room is mostly dominant below the room transition frequency (~200 Hz) but above that the ANSI 2034 measurements are generally good predictors of sounds that will be heard in a room (e.g. the PIR or predicted-in-room response ). Above 2-3kHz, due to the directivity behavior of the speaker and room absorption, the listener hears mostly direct sound which is represented by the on-axis/listening window. Good off-axis response and smooth directivity ensure the reflected sounds are neutral.


b) Program -- Yes, loudspeaker-program interactions are real but you deal with them from a statistical standpoint. Andrew gives examples of bright programs being compatible with dull speakers. What is the chance that you only listen to just bright mixes or dull mixes? On average, programs likely converge on neutral, so you make the speaker neutral to be compatible with neutral recordings, and use tone controls for bright and dull recordings. The recording industry monitors are generally converging on flat so hopefully neutral recordings will be the trend (assuming the producer has no serious HF hearing loss).

c). Hearing - We generally screen for normal hearing although in larger studies we may include unscreened listeners and older listeners. Does that invalidate the results for Andrew's audience who may have significant hearing loss? So far, I have seen little evidence that people with slight-moderate hearing loss prefer speakers that are not neutral. I just saw a recent study where 3 groups of listeners. (normal, slight, moderate HL) preferred the same headphones. The difference was the more hearing loss, the noisier and less discriminating the ratings where. The HL groups used a smaller range of ratings but the rankings, at least for the top 50 percentile ranked headphones was consistent with the normal hearing listeners.

d) Taste- When listeners are asked to rate headphones or speakers based on preference there is remarkable agreement on which ones are most and least preferred. Recently I looked at segmentation of listeners based on headphone preferences and found there are three groups: 64% who prefer the Harman Target Curve, 21% who prefer the Target with less bass and 15% who like the Target with more bass. So again, there appears to be a majority of people who like what they consider neutral or accurate.

So how can 35+ years of research into perception and measurement of loudspeakers and headphones not jive with Andrew's reality of what he and listeners prefer?

The simple answer is: the lack of controlled, unbiased listening. When you do not control the variables (normal hearing, listener training, loudspeaker position, double- blind, loudness matching, randomized order, program, statistical analysis, hidden anchors and references ) you will tend to get random, noisy and unexpected results. A single stimulus demonstration doesn't even allow the opportunity for the listener to hear what is "neutral".

In the absence of measurements we are encouraged to let our ears choose what we like, but no guidance is given on how to do scientific listening so we avoid making rookie mistakes. Instead let all the acoustic, psychological and physiological nuisance variables and biases run amok, roll the dice, and choose whatever speaker they like or sounds fun. Andrew even gives us some speakers that measure bad but sound "fun" to further bias his audience towards making mistakes.

This is *exactly* the situation where good technical measurements are needed to help consumers avoid making poor decisions in sub-optimal listening conditions (or no listening which reflects increasingly more internet sales) yet, the video generally dismisses their usefulness.
 
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Phorize

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According to this guy, speaker measurements are not good indicators of sound quality because of other variables not accounted for in measurements that influence what we like including our hearing, our taste, our listening rooms, our program material.

So speaker companies that rely are measurements are deluding themselves. And they also admit they don't like neutral speakers but speakers that sound "fun". Apparently fun speakers are not designed with measurements. This should be a "fun" thread.

I agree with him, I hate being expected to predict the performance my audio equipment using measured specs. It’s not as if standardised engineering specs can tell me more than some bloke on YouTube. Stupid engineers.
 
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Sean Olive

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I saw the video earlier. Replied. I was going to link it here but didn’t want to give him any publicity. Imagine my surprise when I see it posted here by none other than Sean himself.
Yeah, I'm sorry I linked it.. Was not my intention to give him publicity but I guess I did :(
 

weasels

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I agree with him, I hate being able to predict the performance my audio equipment using measured specs. It’s not as if standardised engineering specs can tell me more than some bloke on YouTube. Stupid engineers.

where's the fun in knowing what's in the box? that's why when i order delivery for dinner I just tell the driver to pick.
 
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