KaiserSoze
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2020
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I've only been looking at this site for a short while, and regardless of whether I do or do not agree with Amir's recommendations, I very much appreciate the testing he does. It is by leaps and bounds the best testing I've found, and covering many more speakers than, for example, Stereophile.
That said, I have found myself perplexed by some of his decisions with respect to the recommendations. When I am not able to discern a clear objective basis for how this decision is made, I have no choice but to infer that it is mostly subjective, and this bothers me because to me it disparages the rationale for doing objective measurements. One thing in particular that I'm puzzled about is how he decides where to draw that red line. The slope of the line is drawn differently for different speakers, and his assessment of whether the treble will be too strong or too weak seems to be strongly influenced by where he chooses to draw the red line. At least, this is what it looks like to me. It seems to me that the line should always be flat and positioned so that the bounded areas above the line and below the line are equal. His philosophy is apparently that the line should be sloped, which also confuses me. Is the chart where he draws the line the on-axis response, or is it supposed to be an averaged response or "room response"? As I sit I here I realize that I'm not at all sure. I thought it was the on-axis response, but now I think not, because if it were the on-axis response, there wouldn't be any reason for the line to slope downward toward increasing frequency. In fact, if it were the on-axis response, then the only way it would seem to make sense for the line to be sloped would be if it were sloped in the other direction, since in this case the on-axis high-frequency elevation would be accepted as compensation for the weaker high-frequency response off-axis. No, I'm not suggesting that the line should be sloped up toward high frequency, only that it seems to me that this would make more sense than for it to be sloped down. In any case, this is obviously something that I don't understand. I supposed I should read the writeup about the Klippel measuring system, and maybe this will be explained, but if by chance there is some explanation therein for why the measurements of speakers generally are downward sloping toward high frequency, I will be surprised if there is any explanation of how to determine the ideal slope for each given individual speaker. It just does not make sense to me that this slope should be different for different speakers. And if there is no purely objective way to decide what the slope should be for each individual speaker, then this is an inherent flaw in the measurement methodology. The only way that I can think of, for how this would be objective, is if the line were the very same slope for all speakers, dictated by some theoretical ideal. Oh well.
That said, I have found myself perplexed by some of his decisions with respect to the recommendations. When I am not able to discern a clear objective basis for how this decision is made, I have no choice but to infer that it is mostly subjective, and this bothers me because to me it disparages the rationale for doing objective measurements. One thing in particular that I'm puzzled about is how he decides where to draw that red line. The slope of the line is drawn differently for different speakers, and his assessment of whether the treble will be too strong or too weak seems to be strongly influenced by where he chooses to draw the red line. At least, this is what it looks like to me. It seems to me that the line should always be flat and positioned so that the bounded areas above the line and below the line are equal. His philosophy is apparently that the line should be sloped, which also confuses me. Is the chart where he draws the line the on-axis response, or is it supposed to be an averaged response or "room response"? As I sit I here I realize that I'm not at all sure. I thought it was the on-axis response, but now I think not, because if it were the on-axis response, there wouldn't be any reason for the line to slope downward toward increasing frequency. In fact, if it were the on-axis response, then the only way it would seem to make sense for the line to be sloped would be if it were sloped in the other direction, since in this case the on-axis high-frequency elevation would be accepted as compensation for the weaker high-frequency response off-axis. No, I'm not suggesting that the line should be sloped up toward high frequency, only that it seems to me that this would make more sense than for it to be sloped down. In any case, this is obviously something that I don't understand. I supposed I should read the writeup about the Klippel measuring system, and maybe this will be explained, but if by chance there is some explanation therein for why the measurements of speakers generally are downward sloping toward high frequency, I will be surprised if there is any explanation of how to determine the ideal slope for each given individual speaker. It just does not make sense to me that this slope should be different for different speakers. And if there is no purely objective way to decide what the slope should be for each individual speaker, then this is an inherent flaw in the measurement methodology. The only way that I can think of, for how this would be objective, is if the line were the very same slope for all speakers, dictated by some theoretical ideal. Oh well.