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Amir recommendation criticism

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Music1969

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he does mention the measurements in his final conclusion but he seems to ignore them most of the time.

He seems to ignore measurements in his conclusion, most of the time?

Most of the time meaning 6 of 10 times?

I don't think that's a fair comment at all...
 
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st379

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He seems to ignore measurements in his conclusion, most of the time?

Most of the time meaning 6 of 10 times?

I don't think that's a fair comment at all...
I have no problem with his final conclusion but it is a fair comment.
Kef scores pretty well but Amir does not like them.
His site, his time and his review he can write whatever he want but his recommendations are subjective.
 

Music1969

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I have no problem with his final conclusion but it is a fair comment.
Kef scores pretty well but Amir does not like them.
His site, his time and his review he can write whatever he want but his recommendations are subjective.

I just disagree with 'most of the time'.

But fair enough, I guess interpretations of his conclusions can be subjective also.
 
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st379

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I just disagree with 'most of the time'.

But fair enough, I guess interpretations of his conclusions can be subjective also.
We are talking about speakers. In DAC and phono preamp it is based on measurments. In the speakers section his opinion being heavily calculated into the recommendation.
 

JohnYang1997

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I would argue that subjective part weighs a bit too much in the final recommendation decision for the speakers. And there's correlation between somewhat high distortion and he liking it. Maybe it's due to the speakers are more efficient so it plays louder to distort. Otherwise it feels weird to me. R3 review was definitely something that confused me. There's either improvements needed to measurements procedure and interpretation or bias towards certain sound. I think it's nothing wrong that anyone likes certain sound. I just like to see more coherent subjective and objective performance. Or maybe better worded conclusions. I'm not saying I know a lot about speakers and measurements. I just don't quite understand.
 

JohnYang1997

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The issue with the R3 was that there was a room mode that needed to be EQed for them to sound good. This is why you should take every reviewer opinion with a grain of salt. Bass is a significant component of whether a speaker sounds good or not, and without EQ it's pretty much just tossing the dice to see how a speaker will interact with your room.

Personally I actually feel more EQ(ie: room correction) should be used with every speaker for listening tests, but there are various opinions of that. Regardless, there's too many variables involved to just boil it down to recommended or not. Recommended for what, where, multichannel, stereo, size of room, directivity preference? Etc.
Maybe we need to see some in room frequency response?
 

JohnYang1997

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Do you actually know of any such experiments trying to measure fatigue?
If you get tired doing listening tests, it means the difference is very small at least to the point its it's meaningless to identify as it tires a person to do so.
 

JohnYang1997

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Can you expand which parts specifically confused you in the R3 review?

I may have skipped over something when I first read it.
Quote from the review:
"
Sadly hardly any of them sounded all that good here. Yes, the highs were there. The lows at times were there. But overall experience was unexciting and unengaging for lack of a better word.
"
Wut? is exactly what I felt when I saw that..... Is Amir used to higher distortion from other speakers? I didn't want to say that. Really....not
 

Music1969

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Is Amir used to higher distortion from other speakers?

The answer to that is in distortion measurements. But I did see in his R3 review he said:

"The distortion graphs is still work in progress as I continue to fight the Klippel software to generate proper SPL measures."
 

JohnYang1997

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The answer to that is in distortion measurements. But I did see in his R3 review he said:

"The distortion graphs is still work in progress as I continue to fight the Klippel software to generate proper SPL measures."
But according to existing measurements data. R3 has one of the best mid to high distortion measurements.
 

MZKM

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Amir did not like the best passive speaker in this list the R3.
As stated by others, that was before he added in the room mode fix in the bass, he since has stated he likes much more if I recall.

Also, the FR measurements don't tell you anything about how easy a speaker is to drive nor the max SPL capable, it mostly tells you information regarding tonal balance and imaging/soundstage, and the preference score favors narrow dispersion whereas it is being more accepted that wide-ish dispersion is more preferable.
 

tecnogadget

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Maybe we need to see some in room frequency response?

Look at my last post in the official thread. As for Amir’s I think is going to be impossible to do InRoom since he already returned them, and it would be time consuming. I spend a lot of time doing my fair share of experiments
 

JohnYang1997

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Look at my last post in the official thread. As for Amir’s I think is going to be impossible to do InRoom since he already returned them, and it would be time consuming. I spend a lot of time doing my fair share of experiments
I mean in the future. That way we can know what Amir is actually listening instead of guessing.
 

QMuse

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As stated by others, that was before he added in the room mode fix in the bass, he since has stated he likes much more if I recall.

Do you really think room mess like this..

Capture.JPG


.. can be fixed with a single filter like the one below? That's it, add that 1 filter and the response is now smooth? Not to mention that that filter is too small to lower that peak at 102Hz and it is too wide so it will make both surrounding dips even deeper.

Btw, even that filter was not applied consistently in all later listening tests - for example with Vanatoo speaker.

Capture1.JPG
 

ctrl

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Would like to see a counterweight to the strongly opinionated Panther on the homepage - or none at all.
I don't agree with the calculated score, because it's too simplistic, but at least it's an attempt of an unbiased evaluation of loudspeakers - apart from the algorithm itself.

This could look as follows:
1591448196933.png

Thus, inexperienced visitors to the website would not be completely without a counterbalance to Amir's subjective assessment.
 

tjkadar

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Personally, I felt Amir's measurements, combined with his subjective impressions, were enough for me to feel confident ordering the KEF R3. Amir has experience and training in evaluating speakers by listening impression and by measurement. To me, his opinion is one that carries a lot of weight. I also know his room is different then mine and his speaker setup, mono vs stereo, no subwoofer, listening position, etc., are also different from mine. Additionally, I understand Amir's listening test are not stringently done and are more of a quick impression type of thing.

These factors all played a role in my decision process. The KEFs work for me in this situation and I'll keep them. If they didn't, I would have sent them back.

Amir's speaker reviews are not the final word, they are merely a informative introduction with a recommendation to give them a try. Or not.

If I sell my trials bike, I'll see how well a pair of Revels work in the living room.
 
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