killdozzer
Major Contributor
Much like prioritizing you secret high school crush, she may know nothing about it.
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What is Alan Shaw on about? (is "coloration" unmeasurable?)
- Thread starter ahofer
- Start date
Pretty sure all speaker manufacturers would like their speakers to accurately reproduce voices?
Remember, you shared the statement of A.S. about the 40.3.Surely we need to keep the variables in the playback down so the only major effect on presentation/reproduction via a loudpsealker is the room interface? Adding in a fixed-eq graphic equliser via a *typical* domestic enthusiast valve amp is not a good idea. been there, done that, had the charm and grew bored of it all sounding much the same,,,
The onus now is on YOU to prove the 40.3 is not a labour intensive or expensive speaker to make! Go on, you make your own and tell how easy or not it is. Sorry to be excessively blunt, but at least I tried to mention an alternative and roughly similar price which I've personally seen being made and tested, albeit in slightly earlier form! Maybe AS doesn't want to do the 40.3 any more? I mean, the originals were custom installed into the professional rooms personally I seem to remember and it was only really the 40.1 that was released domestically (they cost twelve grand or so in the UK ten years or so back).
Seriously sir, you don't seem to have much good to say about the brand, so why not leave it and us users alone and concentrate on cheaper, more ASR-friendly prosumer speaker brands which often cost rather less as well. I mean, I'm hankering after returning to a good active model at less money than an ATC for example, but I have an awful load of old 'stuff' to sell off first to make that possible and I'm too damned well attached to most of it to make that change currently!(we hoarders are very odd people and tend to 'bond' with the stuff we have, something my wife doesn't understand at all - I've told her to have a bloody huge bonfire after I've gone
)
why you recommend me to leave the brand and users alone?
I like comment on fairytales
any speaker with smooth response through the midband will reproduce a vocal recording accurately. There's no way to 'prioritize' voice reproduction in any technical sense. Either the speaker is accurate or it isn't.
In this thread (please delete if external links are not allowed) Alan Shaw talks about the 'essence of fidelity and coloration' and concludes that 90% of modern loudspeakers fail in reproducing uncolored human voice:
"That said, in a recording control room that is adjacent to the recording hall - say, EMI Abbey Road or BBC regional concert hall (Usher Hall in Edinburgh, Ulster Hall, Belfast etc.) it was standard practice during the design and field testing of (most) BBC loudspeakers to encourage recording balance engineers (Studio Managers in BBC speak) to freely migrate between the hall and the control room to to establish if the essence of the recording venue was being reproduced by the loudspeakers.
What that essence is is quite an interesting subject on its own, but it is not really what the audiophile is having delivered with many modern loudspeakers. His choice of course.
It is not realistic to set the bar too high with what absolute believability can be achieved with a point sampling (microphone) and point projection (loudspeaker) system as this demands not-trivial mental effort to construct and sustain the listening illusion of reality, and must vary in vibrancy with exposure, training, expectations and willingness. But, we can set a realistic, and significantly achievable target of relatively low coloration even if we can never recreate the size, dynamics, depth and airiness of the real venue.
And lucky us - grading coloration is one of the easiest things to do: attempt to reproduce human voice convincingly and that will eliminate 90% of loudspeakers immediately as introducing unwelcome sonic issues that no live human voice could ever be accused of. The live human voice box doesn't 'do' wiry, spitty, brittle, pinched, cuppy, reedy, foggy, metallic, rasping, zingy, peaky, chirpy, hollow, over-bright, sibilant etc. etc. which are all too common artefacts of voice over loudspeakers."
Which loudspeakers succeed and are among the 10%?
I agree.
killdozzer
Major Contributor
You just come of as enamored with Harbeth. Do you really think Shaw was at liberty to draw any other conclusion? Perhaps he should've said; yes I work for Harbeth, but we're so bad at reproducing uncolored human voice, back at home I actually have B&W.
Sidenote - I wanted to make a joke about how racist it is to consider uncolored human voice as faithful to true human voice, but I'll skip for now.
I had the P3ESR but sold it, man.
killdozzer
Major Contributor
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't follow. I sold B&W. Some dude was willing to give me 1300$ for a pair of 802 Matrix S1.
killdozzer
Major Contributor
Nice to see amps don't make a difference.
which one is the SS, the class D, the valve amp.
do we see the coloration, the non coloration?
do we see the laboratory flat FR?
….
First class comment
Judging from the Stereophile impedance measurement, the impedance is relatively low in the region of ~150 - 500 Hz. Which coincides with the ~1-2 dB lower response of the R8-TR trace. My guess would be the R8-TR has a high output impedance (or low damping factor). TR is for triode?
www.stereophile.com
Harbeth Super HL5plus loudspeaker Measurements
Sidebar 3: Measurements I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Harbeth Super HL5plus's frequency response in the farfield; and an Earthworks QTC-40, with its small, ¼"-diameter capsule, for the nearfield responses.
www.stereophile.com
Judging from the Stereophile impedance measurement, the impedance is relatively low in the region of ~150 - 500 Hz. Which coincides with the ~1-2 dB lower response of the R8-TR trace. My guess would be the R8-TR has a high output impedance (or low damping factor). TR is for triode?
Harbeth Super HL5plus loudspeaker Measurements
Sidebar 3: Measurements I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Harbeth Super HL5plus's frequency response in the farfield; and an Earthworks QTC-40, with its small, ¼"-diameter capsule, for the nearfield responses.
yes, you are right!
R8 ist the valve amp with TR (triode mode) and UL (ultra linear mode)
Why?
Didn't like the bass bump @ 100Hz and the slight hardness in the high frequency.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #198
Again, we should not take Alan's marketing talk as fact. I'm not sure why you continue to seem to do so (Alan, is that you?). Personally, however, I don't think he's far off if you consider the broad market of loudspeakers. Flat response and low distortion through the midrange is key for human voice. There are many models on this site that meet those criteria, including Genelec, Kef, Revel, and some other cheaper designs. But your average TV soundbar, or "showroom treble" high end speaker, not so much. It was nice to see, for instance, that the Google Nest speakers have done reasonably well by this criterion.
One question we might ask Alan is if that voice accuracy is equally as good off-axis. That seems to be the potential flaw in Harbeth's designs. I note that the dispersion anomalies in his (older) M30 tends to center around the key midrange (note the sound power drop in the 2-3Khz area), which creates a version of the BBC dip in the in-room response.
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OP
- Thread Starter
- #199
Incidentally, this may be a Harbeth competitor, even an M40 competitor, for much, much less. It would be interesting to hear them side by side.
www.audiosciencereview.com
The response linearity (my new favorite measurement) looks kind of bad to me on the Linton. AS talks about things that sound a bit like response linearity (when discussing the material of their driver). But AS has never shared any measurements on his speakers [AARGH, citizen scientist indeed], and nobody is sending them to Erin. I need to send mine.
Wharfedale Linton 85th Anniversary speaker review & measurements by Erin's Audio Corner
It seems he really likes them: Parting / Random Thoughts As stated in the Foreword, this written review is purposely a cliff’s notes version. For details about the performance (objectively and subjectively) please watch the YouTube video. But a couple quick notes based on my listening and...
www.audiosciencereview.com
The response linearity (my new favorite measurement) looks kind of bad to me on the Linton. AS talks about things that sound a bit like response linearity (when discussing the material of their driver). But AS has never shared any measurements on his speakers [AARGH, citizen scientist indeed], and nobody is sending them to Erin. I need to send mine.
True. Administration of a user group is a marketing activity and mainly serves marketing purposes. I am aware of that.
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