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Announcement: ASR Will Be Measuring Speakers!

oldsysop

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Así que digo a corto y mediano plazo, deberíamos optar por tamaños más ligeros y manejables.
o_O

JBL Paragon.
s-l1600.jpg


:D
 

Cahudson42

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Yes, we have had a few of those threads. :) Search for "spinorama" and you should be able to find them.
Also, I suggest that we tap the expertise and measurement methodology as far as possible from - @solderdude on HP. This is likely an excellent starting point for speaker evaluation as well..
 

pozz

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Thanks very much for the kind support and welcome to the forum. That is a good point regarding a database of graphs. Had not thought about the fact that most of the information will be in the form of graphs than single numbers. Will have to think about it. @pozz, let's discuss....
@daverosenthal Did you have CLF in mind?
 

thefsb

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Congrats!

Figuring out what useful data is and is not is a major challenge.

This perhaps the most interesting part. Figuring out what is useful data involves also understanding to whom it is useful and for what purpose. Your collaboration with the ASR community stands a chance of adding to the state of the art in ways that are of real practical value.

It's exciting!
 

mitchco

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@amirm Amir, really great news man! I hope you also include as one of the standard reports from Page 37, Figure 11 of the CTA 2034-A standard: Estimating In-Room Response from Anechoic Data:

Estimating InRoom Response from Anechoic Data.jpg


"This standard describes an improved method for measuring and reporting the performance of a loudspeaker in a manner that should help consumers better understand the performance of the loudspeaker and convey a reasonably good representation of how it may sound in a room based on its off-axis response and how this response affects the consumer’s experience.

Unlike previously published standards, this standard describes how to measure and report the directivity of a loudspeaker, whether it stands by itself or is mounted in or on a wall or ceiling. It also describes how to use this directivity data to estimate the in-room frequency response that more recent research has shown correlates well to subjective listening preferences of consumers."

If interested, the ANSI/CTA 2034-A Standard Method of Measurement for In-Home Loudspeakers can be downloaded for free.

Also note that ANS/CTA 2034-B that includes subwoofers is planned for release at the end of February this year.

Again, congrats Amir!
 

milosz

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I see a bigger picture here....

Your dedication is AMAZING. You are something of a hero to all of us who are nauseated by the current anti-science fashion in audio and in our society at large. There is a kind of caustic anti-intellectualism abroad today that claims "We live in an egalitarian society, so my ignorance is just as valid as your expertise." This has led to the public being fleeced by snake oil salesmen and -much worse- to the denial that any objective truth even exists.

What I would like to see grow out of ASR is a magazine / blog / whatever to promote these objective tests and also A/B/X testing and dissemination of results -tests of things like audibility of cables, power cords, power conditioners, those pointy "isolators" for speakers, brass bowls touted as "quantum resonance control," sample rates / bit depth etc. If you live near a university with a proper engineering department or even a good psychology department you might be able to attract some grad students as interns who could do their thesis on these topics...... just an idea....

And speaking of academic approaches - maybe you could "publish" your raw data in some cloud for other researchers to use or verify. Just a thought.
 

DLS79

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Any chance of getting some near field monitors tested, say in the 4" to 8" range? Pricing an opinions are all over the place. Adam, JBL, Focal, Yamaha, it's so hard to choose.
 

Johnb

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I think that it would be important for the first bunch of speakers measured to be in your ownership or available for easy re-test from local members as you perfect your test / reporting methodology. I'm sure that you will send your first batches of test to the resident speaker experts on this forum for input on which graphs convey the most useful presentation.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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Dimensions and Weight.
No weight limitations since the speaker does not move. You can hang any weight speaker from ceiling for example.
 

NegativeEntropy

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Super impressed that you took this step Amir. I am excited about where this will take the site and the knowledge that will result.

I am too ignorant about the details of speakers to offer any other comments or suggestions, but I'll second that you (and the community) think carefully about how to gather and save data as the test/analysis/reporting protocols will most certainly evolve over time and it would be great if the original data (from early rev protocols) could be utilized to generate reports against whatever the current rev report is.
 

617

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This is pretty amazing news, Amir. Publishing this kind of data represents an enormous service to the (probably undeserving) audio buying public, but I feel a few issues need to be addressed if you want to start publishing this data. I recommend starting a new thread where we can discuss this sort of thing in turn:

1. There is a popular consensus, more or less, on what a DAC or Amp should do, but no such popular consensus exists with speakers. Among contemporary speaker designers and in industry there is a broad consensus on the value of civilized directivity, which is what this system evaluates really well, but this is hard for consumers to understand. If we want to prevent ASR from becoming a complete shit show, we will need to provide really good guides to explain this kind of data. Showing the obselescence of every two way speaker with a baffle mounted tweeter is not going to be a popular revelation.

1a. Perhaps to help educate consumers some initial tests can be done showing how driver topologies have intrinsic directivity characteristics. A series of measurements of a coaxial, a 5" two way with no waveguide, a 5" woofer with waveguide, an 8" with no waveguide, an MTM, a 3 way with a small midrange - these are all common speakers and would help show how driver size and bandwidth almost completely sets the ceiling for off axis performance.

2. SINAD is a good enough way of organizing DAC performance, but I don't believe a good comparative, single number metric can rank speaker performance. However, some kind of ranking or scoring system would be a good way to categorize speakers.

3. There are some some important technical qualities which the Klippel system does not measure (correct me if I'm mistaken) harmonic distortion being the main one. Many traditional audiophile designers sought after low distortion above all else, which was not a terrible way to design certain speakers in certain eras. The importance of HD in speaker design is of course controversial, and I think it's safe to say it is not a useful predictor of preference, but in the most basic sense it can tell us how much clean bass power a speaker can put out. This is really important to consumers. For people putting speakers in less than ideal acoustic contexts (almost all contexts really) output power is probably the most important characteristic provided a reasonably smooth axial FR (and as we can see from existing measurements, people tolerate ridiculous FR anomalies.)

4. If you're measuring subs, output is pretty much the only important metric, besides extension. At LF I think the Klippel is overkill although I'm sure others know more about measuring subs than I do.

5. The spinorama may be a prefered graph to many people, but to many people directivity sonograms and graphs showing DI/frequency and so on are prefered. Publishing these images would be a great service to the many DIYers who share data with these formats. Making available the raw data and/or CLF would be a good resource as well.

6. In addition to testing the directivity, bass extension and distortion characteristics of a speakers LF, a common issue with many popular powered speakers is hiss. In my experience with these products, the intrinsic noise of the active speaker is pretty audible in the near field, and no reliable data on this exists - we assume the Neumans are better than the JBLs but who really knows.

Anyway, I'd be more than happy to help you develop and organize a standard panel of comparitive measurements to be of use to consumers and dilletantes like me.

As far as D's I'd like to see UT, it's a long list! We basically have 0 data right now, although Geddes has collected some; a smattering of JBL or Danley and DIY products, but as far as reasonable speakers which consumers buy?
 

daverosenthal

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@daverosenthal Did you have CLF in mind?

@pozz, TBH, no, but CLF would be a great starting point if there is an easy way to author one from the Klippel data/software. I don't know the details of how what the Klippel system outputs, but I was actually thinking of a database of both the raw measurements (impulse responses at each measurement position) as well as any key "derived" measurements that Klippel can produce. (On-axis far field impulse response, directivity by frequency, etc.) Probably one key thing would be to store un-smoothed data for anything in the frequency domain so that different amounts of smoothing can be easily applied later (i.e. 1/3 octave for standard charts)
 

Xyrium

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Oh my, congratulations sir!

However, please don't review anything I currently own or have praised...my ignorance equates to personal audio bliss.
 

MZKM

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2. SINAD is a good enough way of organizing DAC performance, but I don't believe a good comparative, single number metric can rank speaker performance. However, some kind of ranking or scoring system would be a good way to categorize speakers.
Maybe some type of weighted measurement that incorporates the listening windows +/-dB with its deviation from the on-axis (which also shows how EQable it is), Early Reflections can’t be used as it naturally slopes downwards for traditional speakers. But yeah, so simple ranking scheme like SINAD (THD+N).
 
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