Andrew Jones’s new speaker brand - Jones and Cerreta

[Vladimir Filevski]

And yes, so where we/some apparently deviate is that I use listening as a fine tuning tool to balance the speaker. Final measurements typically reveal that this can be to the effect of reducing "perfection" in the on-axis response, and to the benefit of the listening window and in-room response. Personally I am not able to do this to my satisfaction with measurements alone.

But I successfully analyzed your loudspeaker sound by looking at the measurements only! When designing loudspeakers which don't have waveguide/horn for the tweeter, it is very difficult/impossible to get simultaneously flat on-axis and good in-room response - some balance between the two is required.

 

[Arindal]

im sure we all listen to different types of music, but will get the same flaws if a speaker sound not „correct“.

Not necessarily. I am not implying that there should be any type of ´house curve´ per genre, that is nonsense, and the issue has nothing to do with EQ. But different genres will reveal completely different flaws and potential limitations more easily. For example, string quartet lovers will rarely notice limitations in max SPL below 60Hz, while supporters of Hiphop and Techno will not be in the position to reliably judge depth-of field or reverb tonality.

 

[Marin]

i found this horrible to listen to on my iphone. how much worse can it be on a super hi-fi system?

… i dont believe that there is a certain type of music for a certain type of system/speaker.

im sure we all listen to different types of music, but will get the same flaws if a speaker sound not „correct“.

Hey hoo for that quote
Otherwise, I do not claim that my system is "super hi-fi".
Some would laugh if I said the price

 

[SigbergAudio]

But I successfully analyzed your loudspeaker sound by looking at the measurements only! When designing loudspeakers which don't have waveguide/horn for the tweeter, it is very difficult/impossible to get simultaneously flat on-axis and good in-room response - some balance between the two is required.

I humbly suggest looking at a CTA2034 measurement and getting some idea about its performance vs designing a loudspeaker isn't quite the same thing.

 

[Marin]

… i dont believe that there is a certain type of music for a certain type of system/speaker.

This is my opinion too, especially if you sell them in a store to the general public.
That's why I appreciate AJ so much.
I think this hobby has brought it closer to younger listeners, especially with budget series...

 

[Marin]

I humbly suggest looking at a CTA2034 measurement and getting some idea about its performance vs designing a loudspeaker isn't quite the same thing.

But that can't tell you anything about his sensitivity, his robustness,max SPL, all kinds of distortion...

 

[Arindal]

And that is on top of a ton of music not coming from any kind of concert.

Isn´t that exactly the definition of the ´circle of confusion´? Judging sound quality of speakers with recordings, which from acoustic and mixing point have no reference, no ´original´, in the real world, have been mixed and mastered on other speakers of unknown reproduction characteristics, and are unknown to the listening test participants?

If you add the preconditions ´flat anechoic response is the sole reference´ and ´reference for off-axis behavior should be defined after controlled fully subjective listening tests´, well, you have the perfect circle of confusion.

I am not really surprised that existing speakers following such design philosophy, usually behave more or less fine with electronic recordings, while it is easy to reveal flaws with classical recordings, or spoken word recorded in an existing reverberant room.

You can't go past the recording into those phases for any music production.

Don´t quite understand what you want to express by that.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

I humbly suggest looking at a CTA2034 measurement and getting some idea about its performance vs designing a loudspeaker isn't quite the same thing.

Yes, of course it is not the same thing, but because I am designing my loudspeakers, I do know how difficult is to design loudspeakers with such good measurements as yours.

 

[Marin]

I personally have a selection of recordings, which I, with my own ears, have heard ´in the making´. That usually involves listening to the general rehearsal in the concert hall, listening to the broadcast mixdown during the concert, and comparing it with the final product after mastering. This gives me personally a pretty good reference of how the original sounded.

Oh, then it's okay.
Be sure to say hello to Mick Jagger for me

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

But that can't tell you anything about his sensitivity, his robustness,max SPL, all kinds of distortion...

CTA2034 measurements do tell some important aspects od the loudseaker sound, but other measurements are very important also, like those you mentioned - distortion, max SPL, waterfal diagram, etc.

 

[DanielT]

My debate is on the statement that the sighted listening part of the above process is 100% useless, as I would obviously strongly disagree that this is the case.

More generally I also strongly disagree that sighted listening is 100% unreliable. I am perfectly fine to agree that we can't use sighted listening as scientific proof about anything, but that is strawman / not the same. Even @amirm clearly does not believe his ears to be 100% unreliable. Why else waste time sharing subjective impressions of a speaker (yes I know he tells us to disgregard it as unrelieable), and why else EQ speakers he finds to be imperfect, and then listen to the result and share those findings. This seems to be a complete waste of time given a stance of ears being 100% unreliable in any sighted situation.

As Amir has seen the measurements and knows what the EQ does, of course he will be biased to hear an even stronger difference than is perhaps present. But what his brain is processing and interpreting is biased, not completely random.

Listening to bass. To take it to the extreme. I mean no one can miss, by listening with their ears, and hear the difference between a pair of micro tiny satellite speakers vs. for example one of your bass competent speaker creations. The difference will be obvious.
A clock radio vs. ....and so on.
I know that these are not such extremes we are talking about in the thread but sooner or later we can hear differences. Differences that are definitely not imaginary.

The question is more when do differences between different speakers become so small that our hearing, bias and so on can play a trick on us.

 

[PGansz]

It has been shown and discussed ad nauseam here that unless the listening is done under controlled, double-blind conditions, the listener is not "using the ears" but rather using the eyes and biases, both of which supersede the ears' input. Nobody is immune.

This is wrong. It depends on who's listening and why they're listening - purpose matters.

In my line of work, I have to approach a system, tech stack, architecture, or process looking for issues and ways to make them better. If I didn't, I'd just be a consumer of the product, not the builder or modifier - completely different attitudes and results.

And, the more times you run through the build putting it to the test with this mindset, the better the result.

 

[thewas]

It seems this discussion is going again to the still unfortunately existing audio's circle of confusion where loudspeakers are wrongly seen as art and not engineering. Floyd Toole has repeatedly written about it and the only real solution:

All loudspeakers, professional monitors or consumer products, should aim to be as neutral as possible. If they play loud enough and long enough for the intended purpose, they qualify. If everyone followed this principle, the circle of confusion would be less of an issue. In our loudspeaker evaluations there have been pro monitors and high-end audiophile loudspeakers that end up in statistical ties in terms of sound quality, not sound quantity. A good loudspeaker is a good loudspeaker. All electronics are fundamentally neutral and always have been. The best studio microphones are almost as accurate as measurement microphones (there are other types that are used as equalizers of a special kind). The entire sound record/reproduction path should have neutrality as its baseline. Then recording engineers and musicians can create whatever art they like, realistic or abstract, and consumers might have a chance of hearing it as it was created. That is my kind of "equivalence". Those in the recording business call it "translation", but as things are the sound translations are rarely "literal". Fortunately music itself translates very well, and. if there is enough bass to get the juices flowing most of us can find pleasure, if not always complete gratification. And I haven't mentioned soundstage and imaging . . .

So long as they measure similarly and well, there is no problem. Loudspeaker design is a mature science, with similar-measuring loudspeakers sounding extremely similar. Unfortunately that is not a universal truth, and there remain remnants of the "bad old days" of highly colored monitor loudspeakers being used to create the recordings we listen to. If everyone had timbrally neutral loudspeakers we might have a chance of hearing what the artists created. Chapter 18 and other references in my book show horror-story examples of professionally "approved" monitor loudspeakers, as well as their consumer equivalents.

Fortunately the brands you name seem to agree on the general performance target. Others may differ. Consumer and pro loudspeakers have exactly the same problem.

 

[Mort]

I consider myself 100% audio objectivist

I would say less than 100%. You don't even see it the bias is so strong.

 

[Mort]

It's not that listening is 100% useless. It's that listening is 100% pointless. There is a difference.

 

[SigbergAudio]

It's not that listening is 100% useless. It's that listening is 100% pointless. There is a difference.

Not sure what the difference is. But anway, let's agree to disagree.

 

[SigbergAudio]

It seems this discussion is going again to the still unfortunately existing audio's circle of confusion where loudspeakers are wrongly seen as art and not engineering. Floyd Toole has repeatedly written about it and the only real solution:

It doesn't really feel like we are debating wether engineering is art in this thread, but I may be interpreting it wrong.

 

[Mort]

It would be rational for a speaker manufacturer to appeal to subjectivists by saying that there is a 'human' or 'voicing' step in the engineering process. Subjectivists would want to hear that even if it's untrue and only measurements are actually used in the design process. Philharmonic Audio does something similar. I don't blame them.

It would also make sense that a speaker manufacturer would start to believe that the 'voicing' step is really a part of the process because it doesn't feel good to live with the cognitive dissonance. It's kind of inevitable.

 

[SigbergAudio]

It would be rational for a speaker manufacturer to appeal to subjectivists by saying that there is a 'human' or 'voicing' step in the engineering process. Subjectivists would want to hear that even if it's untrue and only measurements are actually used in the design process. Philharmonic Audio does something similar. I don't blame them.

It would also make sense that a speaker manufacturer would start to believe that the 'voicing' step is really a part of the process because it doesn't feel good to live with the cognitive dissonance. It's kind of inevitable.

I feel it would be rational for a speaker manufacturer to listen to a product that has a singular purpose: To be listened to. But I do of course hope as many competitors as possible follow your advice.

 

[Arindal]

this discussion is going again to the still unfortunately existing audio's circle of confusion where loudspeakers are wrongly seen as art and not engineering.

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

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.