Andrew Jones’s new speaker brand - Jones and Cerreta

[PristineSound]

All I can say is that I hope most companies will listen to you guys and only measure and not listen to their products before they go out the door.

I don't think anyone here is saying no listening test is needed in speaker development. At least I am not.

What people are saying is that the listening tests should be controlled and repeatable and ideally the results can be scientifically explained. And that the speaker's tonal balance shouldn't be tuned to be nonlinear intentionally because someone arbitrary and subjectively decided that's how it should sound.

 

[Marin]

I agree with everything you said, but I usually find myself turning down subwoofer after listening jazz,or classical music because hip-hop music has such pronounce bass section,and you could say I'm a Bass head.
Maybe it's because of that

hip hop producer decided to add extra bass to an album because he noticed the previous album didn't have enough bass

Even though you say

If I wanted some extra bass to match the stereotypical character of the genre, say hip hop, I mess around with the EQ and throw a bit more bass on the track.

But then again sometime I don't even bother because I found a golden mean (around +4dB in bass range) and

99.9% of the time, I don't EQ for the genre of music

 

[PristineSound]

Taken to this extreme, no one knows if the Neuman KH120 actually sounds good - they are obviously 100% biased by seeing the measurements. And you couldn't tell it apart from a clock radio unless it's a double blind listening test.

I own a pair, out of the box, they sound absolutely stunting. I would even argue they sound better than my much more expensive Ascend ELX RAAL, except it's not an apple to apple because of the limited SPL/size of the little Neumann.

I do have it with the DSP software tune for room correction though.

 

[Ktacos]

I am the opposite of you. All of my all time favorite speakers have very near ideal response.

My experience as well.

That's complete nonsense. You can't go past the recording into those phases for any music production. And that is on top of a ton of music not coming from any kind of concert.

I work in live events and I think that user was trying to flex in some way, but they really just came off as hilariously insecure.

 

[Pearljam5000]

He should offer an active version of this speaker, it would be great

 

[Marin]

Taken to this extreme, no one knows if the Neuman KH120 actually sounds good - they are obviously 100% biased by seeing the measurements. And you couldn't tell it apart from a clock radio unless it's a double blind listening test.

I didn't notice that my alarm clock radio had a flat anechoic response,just the opposite, the curve goes up and down as desired with respect to the volume...

 

[Ktacos]

Can we talk about how the woofers trim ring should actually be orange

 

[Marin]

Možemo li razgovarati o tome kako bi prsten za ukrašavanje woofera zapravo trebao biti narančast?

You forgot the LED Disco light show that every proper hi-fi sistem should have

 

[mglobe]

Can we talk about how the woofers trim ring should actually be orange

That would be a far more informative and interesting discussion.

 

[thewas]

Mind me, who was the one in this thread declaring loudspeaker design being an art instead of engineering?

Who was it?

No doubt about the existence of the circle of confusion, either. The question is, which reference is the origin of the circle of confusion. I would assume that taking insufficient measurements like anechoic FR as the main reference, asking listeners about their subjective preference (´do you like A, B or C the most?´), and choosing artificial recordings without an ´original´, unknown to the listener, for preference tests, as well as monaural listening. I would expect any verdict or product originating from this circle of confusion, to not meet the goals of accurate sound reproduction in the real world.

Above is an insult to the unique contribution and research of people like Toole and Olive which were the first and only doing such tests meeting the basic minima of objective and unbiased testing which is normal in any other field, while not showing any better alternatives except typical anecdotal stories of nameless mastering gurus doing supposed tests in studios which "strangely" are always more secret than the nuclear programs of all countries so there is never any documentation about them.

 

[Marin]

I was referencing this newer model in terms of Erin’s remarks:

MoFi Sourcepoint V10 Master Edition

Erin's Review is up. He likes the speaker a lot even asking "Is This the Best Speaker of 2025?" It's not super linear (notice this is the 15° measurement): But not bad at all.

www.audiosciencereview.com

(I also heard the top end rise in the original SourcePoint 10, as did JA in his Stereophile review as I remember)

But since when did we start publishing 15 degrees off-axis just to favor, reduce the errors (dips and peaks) that some designs have?
I didn't see that in"CEA 2034-A-2015 (ANSI)" standard?

 

[Kevin1956]

It seems to me, since all consumers make purchases using varying combinations of objective and subjective criteria, a producer of a product, including loudspeakers, had better use a combination of objective and subjective criteria in all aspects of their product development. Whether or not any subjective alterations to the objective criteria are correct will ultimately be decided by the consumer. A loudspeaker designer not listening to his loudspeaker as their final approval of their design makes as little sense as someone designing the “perfect” appliance without actually using it for it’s intended purpose before putting it into the marketplace.

 

[Mart68]

Anyone who designs speakers is hooking them up for a listen the second they're finished.

There's a difference between listening as a sanity check and to see if there's any issues that either the measurements you did didn't show up for whatever reason, and listening to see if they're conveying fully the emotion of Diana Krall's voice.

The latter is what your audiophile thinks is happening in the listening test and what some designers claim they're listening (and then tweaking) for and what, I think, is what AJ et al are happy to give the impression that they do. People want to hear that story.

 

[Mnyb]

So am I understanding it correctly that in your opinion, when I listen to a speaker during the development process, and alternate between measuring, adjusting and listening, the listening part is completely unreliable.

In that case I don't see much point in arguing further, let us agree to disagree. If I misunderstand, I apologize in advance.

Ideas ( that you probably already implemented ) pure small EQ alterations that don’t move any crossovers . You can do this in external software, and quickly switch EQ settings or have a helper doing that for you , or if you find some useful listeners you can run the tests with some rigour to your protocol . Then implement the EQ fine tuning in the actual speaker.

Or mono listen if it’s tonality you want to check then you use two speakers and shift between them ? Make good use of one pair ? As you are not KEF so you don’t have warehouses full of speakers.

 

[mglobe]

So am I understanding it correctly that in your opinion, when I listen to a speaker during the development process, and alternate between measuring, adjusting and listening, the listening part is completely unreliable.

In that case I don't see much point in arguing further, let us agree to disagree. If I misunderstand, I apologize in advance.

What consistently gets ignored in discussions like this is the fact that Dr Toole proved that listeners, both trained and not trained, male, and female, can consistently identify speakers with favorable frequency response and directivity by listening. The caveat being that they did not know what speaker they were listening to. So we know our ears and mind can get the job done. One would think that a competent and motivated speaker designer could and would find a way to make their listening skills useful in creating a product.

 

[mhardy6647]

Can we talk about how the woofers trim ring should actually be orange

That would be a far more informative and interesting discussion.

Don't talk to (the late) Gene Czerwinski!

His engineering was clearly evidence-based.

Cerwin-Vega - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Sigberg Audio]

I don't think anyone here is saying no listening test is needed in speaker development. At least I am not.

What people are saying is that the listening tests should be controlled and repeatable and ideally the results can be scientifically explained. And that the speaker's tonal balance shouldn't be tuned to be nonlinear intentionally because someone arbitrary and subjectively decided that's how it should sound.

It certainly sounds like some suggest it is not needed.

Personally, I haven't claimed any of what you suggest in the second paragraph. That has at least not been my intention. With the slight clarification that I am targeting a smooth in-room response at the potential expense of anechoic on-axis response. Put differently, listening window and/or in-room response is more important to me than anechoic on-axis response. So I may be intentionally deviating from a linear on-axis response, but not because "I subjectively decided that's how it should sound".

I would also claim that the measurements are tools and means to an end, not the end.

 

[Sigberg Audio]

I didn't notice that my alarm clock radio had a flat anechoic response,just the opposite, the curve goes up and down as desired with respect to the volume...

How is that relevant to how you perceive it with your ears that are 100% not to be trusted?

 

[Sigberg Audio]

But since when did we start publishing 15 degrees off-axis just to favor, reduce the errors (dips and peaks) that some designs have?
I didn't see that in"CEA 2034-A-2015 (ANSI)" standard?

This is another interesting point, not all speakers are designed to be listened to on-axis, so should't we reference that axis instead? Why treat what is practically off-axis as on-axis?

 

[Pearljam5000]

Can anyone identify the drivers?