PS Audio sent Erin their speaker??!!

[CleanSound]

You completely misinterpret.
You measure one speaker.
You buy two (or more).
I’m not sure if you really don’t understand or are being difficult. In any case you misinterpret and use illogic to jump to your odd conclusion.
Please read Toole for instance.
And perhaps read napilopez’ excellent tutorial on making your own spinorama with a mic and turntable. And then go and do the measurements, perhaps start with a speaker with wide directivity and one with narrow.

No, I think you are not reading what my "claim" is and you are talking about something else completely different and therefore you are confusing me.

I am advocating for loud speaker listening evaluation in both mono and stereo. Because there are spatial characteristics of stereo that you cannot predict nor anticipate with just mono listening alone.

 

[amirm]

ALL I AM SAYING IS THAT MONO LISTENING EVALUATION ALONE IS INCOMPLETE AND INSUFFICIENT FOR THE PURPOSE OF EVALUATING A PAIR OF SPEAKERS INTENDED FOR STEREO PLAYBACK.

It is the best and most accurate data you can get. Whatever it is missing, you are not going to get from some person's subjective opinion with no established protocols in stereo testing.

 

[MAB]

No, I think you are not reading what my "claim" is and you are talking about something else completely different and therefore you are confusing me.

Yes, I agree.

I am advocating for loud speaker listening evaluation in both mono and stereo. Because there are spatial characteristics of stereo that you cannot predict nor anticipate with just mono listening alone.

No I don’t agree.

 

[Duke]

I wouldn't say that spatial qualities "unfailingly" track mono ratings, but as you mention it seems they generally do....

I've personally found mono listening gives me a good idea of what to expect in stereo. Certainly, I've never been surprised by a speaker's sound in stereo vs mono, besides the fact that stereo just sounds better in general (as one would hope!)

What interests me are the exceptions to the rule, the outliers... those speakers (and those approaches to loudspeaker design) that do something better than expected. There are speakers whose interaction in stereo (when set up correctly) has psychoacoustic implications that cannot be adequately evaluated in mono.

For example, a pair of Polk Audio speakers incorporating their "Stereo Dimensional Array" technology uses slightly-delayed cross-feed signals to cancel interaural crosstalk. The effectiveness and net results of this cannot be adequately evaluated in mono. I think Fried made speakers using something similar back when they were in business.

There are less extreme examples of stereo speakers which can interact in ways that have psychoacoustic implications for spatial quality, which don't show up in a mono evaluation.

Whether the rare exceptions to the rules are of interest is of course a matter of opinion, but I tend to see the good exceptions as arguably "pushing the boundaries", even if not every such push stands out in terms of commercial success.

 

[Duke]

[Mono data] is the best and most accurate data you can get. Whatever it is missing, you are not going to get from some person's subjective opinion with no established protocols in stereo testing.

And I can certainly understand your not wanting to open the inevitable giant can of worms that stereo listening would serve you with! Not to mention the logistic nightmare and time-suck of doing so.

[Edit: But what about if we DOUBLED what you get paid for doing this... ??]

 

[Somafunk]

What interests me are the exceptions to the rule, the outliers...

Runs into forum, throws a bomb…….My HomePod mini’s in stereo sound quite spacious and enjoyable……..Runs out of forum…….trips over doorway threshold and smacks face hard…….crawls out apologising profusely vowing never to return.

 

[olieb]

I am advocating for loud speaker listening evaluation in both mono and stereo.

As Amir made clear there are pragmatic reasons to use mono for practical evaluation purposes. It gives you rather good results with reasonable amount of effort.

Because there are spatial characteristics of stereo that you cannot predict nor anticipate with just mono listening alone.

I would call that a valid and even plausible hypothesis.
The stereo reproduction brings additional information into the signal and there might be special characteristics of loudspeakers that translate this information more or less successful into the sound field to invoke a spacial illusion of the auditory scene.

Just look at the data @Duke presented. I assume Toole did not choose bad data for print.
Obviously speaker BB is a lousy mono speaker compared to the other two considering the poor preference ratings.
But the increase in preference rating is obviously much bigger for BB than for the others. In stereo the same speaker is practically on par with the other two.
For this three reasons come to mind
- there are specific mono qualities that BB lacks that are not important in stereo
- there are specific stereo qualities that BB possesses that make the speaker achieve a comparable preference over all
- perceived sound quality is somehow limited, so the preference rating of the other speakers cannot profit much from stereo

Or it is a combination of all three, of course.
In any case it would be interesting to know more about these points. What is specifically good for stereo? What mono qualities are only of little importance for stereo? And so on.

 

[Spkrdctr]

So, it looks the The FR10 is a very nice speaker. Who knows? It might be their best speaker of the FR line. Erin did a great review and as he stated they sounded very good. A very nice product made for people who can afford it. If I could afford them I would be tempted to give them a try. Nothing in them screams cheap at all. Well, maybe the lack of tube connectors.......


Chris did a great job and really did go with his high end custom drivers and ribbons. Can't beat that. I call it a win!

 

[napilopez]

The same example I have been using in my last x posts: some call it holography and some call it 3D imaging.

I have three pairs of speaker in my house that does this with magic: Perlisten S7t, Ascend Acoustic Sierra LX, Nuemann KH 120.

Especially with the track Walkin' In The Sun by Fink. The 3D imaging is uncanny with these speakers, I can almost reach my arm out and grab Fink by his neck!

This uncanny 3D imaging do not manifest this way with other speakers I have in the past (which includes most recently Revel M16, Revel F226Be and distant past NHT, Wharfedale, B&W, KEF).

I guess we might just have to end this here, because I don't think I'm understanding you. I can't say I've personally experienced a sense of spatial realism that go beyond the combination of tonal qualities, positioning and width/depth/height. Nor do your experiences on speakers that image better align with mine (not saying your impressions are wrong!)

All that being said, I do fully recognize that you think mono listening is good but insufficient.

2) There never ever have been multiple measurements of the same speaker using the same equipment, in the same facility with the same environmental condition that measures identically, meaning I can overlay the graph and it aligns perfectly or very very close (at least not that I am aware of). If we can't even do that, you mean to tell me we can accurately predict the behavior of the sum of the sound waves of a pair of speakers in stereo but evaluating just one speaker in mono?

Ah now this point I do strongly contest. Measurement consistency between two identical speakers can be extremely close. Given decent speakers and reasonable measurement conditions, in fact, I'd expect nothingless

Here's one measurement I made of the JBL HDI-1600 in my old living room vs Amir's.You can ignore below 100Hz where resolution is lost and there isn't much soundstage impact anyway.

Here's the Focal Chora 806 in my living room vs the anechoic chamber at the NRC:

Here are four measurements of the Neumann KH80, from me, ASR, Neumann/Klippel, and S&R, all with different microphones/setups

They're not perfect overlays, but considering the different setups with different microphones, different speakers with no effort to match testing methodology, I think measurements of speakers are remarkably consistent, let alone matched pairs tested on the same system...

In fact, at this point I'd be willing to bet differences between microphones are more likely to cause differences in measurements than differences between identical speakers models from most companies.

And I have many more examples of measurement matching. I think I've sometimes been ASR's resident measurement comparison guy, so it's something I've noticed a lot.

 

[napilopez]

What interests me are the exceptions to the rule, the outliers... those speakers (and those approaches to loudspeaker design) that do something better than expected. There are speakers whose interaction in stereo (when set up correctly) has psychoacoustic implications that cannot be adequately evaluated in mono.

For example, a pair of Polk Audio speakers incorporating their "Stereo Dimensional Array" technology uses slightly-delayed cross-feed signals to cancel interaural crosstalk. The effectiveness and net results of this cannot be adequately evaluated in mono. I think Fried made speakers using something similar back when they were in business.

There are less extreme examples of stereo speakers which can interact in ways that have psychoacoustic implications for spatial quality, which don't show up in a mono evaluation.

Whether the rare exceptions to the rules are of interest is of course a matter of opinion, but I tend to see the good exceptions as arguably "pushing the boundaries", even if not every such push stands out in terms of commercial success.

Good points all around! I actually thought specifically of those polk speakers too (the L800)

 

[CleanSound]

It is the best and most accurate data you can get. Whatever it is missing, you are not going to get from some person's subjective opinion with no established protocols in stereo testing.

Fair enough. But this whole discussion came about when others are arguing that there is no value in stereo listening evaluation as mono alone is all one needs. Which is I vehemently reject.

 

[CleanSound]

No I don’t agree.

We agree to disagree.

 

[Gringoaudio1]

You completely misinterpret.
You measure one speaker.
You buy two (or more).
I’m not sure if you really don’t understand or are being difficult. In any case you misinterpret and use illogic to jump to your odd conclusion.
Please read Toole for instance.
And perhaps read napilopez’ excellent tutorial on making your own spinorama with a mic and turntable. And then go and do the measurements, perhaps start with a speaker with wide directivity and one with narrow.

No he’s not. Yes you measure but you cannot measure the subjective sense of spatial soundstage. That is what he’s talking about. And there is constructive and destructive interference when you have two speakers running. The result is unmeasurable. And you know when a speaker pair sounds great this way and when it doesn’t.

 

[MAB]

No he’s not. Yes you measure but you cannot measure the subjective sense of spatial soundstage. That is what he’s talking about. And there is constructive and destructive interference when you have two speakers running. The result is unmeasurable. And you know when a speaker pair sounds great this way and when it doesn’t.

Yeah. You are talking about in room response.
Regarding the subjective impression of stereo imaging, I defer to Toole on that too.

 

[Duke]

I actually thought specifically of those polk speakers too (the L800)

There is at least one aspect of spatial quality that wasn't included in the assessment questions used in the study that produced the charts shown in post #250 above. Here are the assessment questions that were used:

So one thing that was left out is, an assessment of the spatial quality from outside the central sweet spot. Of course the spatial quality will be worse outside the sweet spot, but how much worse may vary significantly, and will matter more to some listeners than others. The Polk L800 would presumably score very high from within the sweet spot, and much worse from outside the sweet spot, because in order for crosstalk cancellation to work effectively the listener must be equidistant from both speakers, or very nearly so.

On the other hand, there are loudspeaker topologies whose spatial quality holds up unusually well outside of the central sweet spot (this being in some cases particularly setup-dependent).

And as was described in the passages from Toole's book that you quoted, some speakers deliver significantly preferred spatial quality with certain recordings and/or certain types of recordings, and how much that matters will again go back to personal preference.

I'm not trying to paint the picture as hopeless; I'm trying to paint it as hopeful but possibly requiring some educated analysis on the part of a prospective buyer who is trying to narrow down his or her short-list before investing the time and expense to listen to the front-runners.

 

[napilopez]

Just look at the data @Duke presented. I assume Toole did not choose bad data for print.
Obviously speaker BB is a lousy mono speaker compared to the other two considering the poor preference ratings.
But the increase in preference rating is obviously much bigger for BB than for the others. In stereo the same speaker is practically on par with the other two.
For this three reasons come to mind
- there are specific mono qualities that BB lacks that are not important in stereo
- there are specific stereo qualities that BB possesses that make the speaker achieve a comparable preference over all
- perceived sound quality is somehow limited, so the preference rating of the other speakers cannot profit much from stereo

Or it is a combination of all three, of course.
In any case it would be interesting to know more about these points. What is specifically good for stereo? What mono qualities are only of little importance for stereo? And so on.

I don't completely deny the possibility of some things being more apparent in stereo. But I do want to point out that the most likely explanation for the increase in speaker BB, and indeed the point driven home in the book, is something we've been discussing already: when listening in stereo, the differences between speakers become smaller. Rankings remain the same, but the gap between them becomes smaller. The recording becomes increasingly dominant.

On second thought, I suppose you could say that's similar to your third option ("perceived sound quality is somehow limited, so the preference rating of the other speakers cannot profit much from stereo")

I actually think that's an important point in general. Imo sound quality is essentially limited, and in blind tests listeners tend to describe what they hear as flaws rather than pluses. Things only get as good as real.

 

[napilopez]

On the other hand, there are loudspeaker topologies whose spatial quality holds up unusually well outside of the central sweet spot (this being in some cases particularly setup-dependent).

Good points all around. While I'd generally the above as simply having wide, controlled directivity in most cases, I'd love to see more research into this. For example, what if directivity isn't even all around? Some speakers are very wide up to say, 50 degrees, then drop off more quickly. And now with beam forming speakers and the like, there's more research to be done.

 

[amirm]

Fair enough. But this whole discussion came about when others are arguing that there is no value in stereo listening evaluation as mono alone is all one needs. Which is I vehemently reject.

As a reviewer, doing anything else is irresponsible (feeding people unreliable and misleading information). I know some audiophiles love the sense of soundstage but go and listen to some live music and you will notice that the band's sound is diffused and there is no precise imaging, etc.

 

[CleanSound]

I guess we might just have to end this here, because I don't think I'm understanding you. I can't say I've personally experienced a sense of spatial realism that go beyond the combination of tonal qualities, positioning and width/depth/height. Nor do your experiences on speakers that image better align with mine (not saying your impressions are wrong!)

All that being said, I do fully recognize that you think mono listening is good but insufficient.

That is OK, I myself have never experience this kind of 3D soundstage until within this past year when I got my Perlisten, Neumann and Ascend LX. Even the speakers I thought was great of the likes of Revel didn't even do that.

They're not perfect overlays

Thank you for confirming what I said.

Even with the same exact speaker, equipment, facility and environmental condition, it would never, ever be the same. That is the nature of sound waves. So you now mean to tell me that somehow you can predict how two speakers sound waves' construct, destruct and interact with each other by only measuring and listening to one speaker?

 

[CleanSound]

As a reviewer, doing anything else is irresponsible (feeding people unreliable and misleading information).

That is the disagreement on this thread and a healthy and so far civil debate. Some find the subjective impression valuable (just like yours, when you reviewed the Magico bookshelf and recommended it when it had mediocre measurements); but the key is, we all are taking such subjective impression with a grain of salt.

I for one will not buy a speaker without seeing the data and have a return policy or listened to them first.