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Announcement: ASR Will Be Measuring Speakers!

Thomas savage

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In fact I started donating today through the upgrade account option. Hope it'll help.
Everything helps , ultimately it helps all of you as we stay independent together.

So thanks on behalf of everyone.
 

MZKM

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@amirm
As pointed out by another user, how does this system deal with side/rear firing drivers?

The original Revel Salon has a rear tweeter for instance, I wonder what the Spinorama of that would be.

Also, in regards to the look of your graphs, you posted this example:
index.php

Which is not at all visually appealing, are you able to generate the data in the type of “ocean wave” graph that Stereophile/Audiolics uses?
 
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Darkweb

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It's the mix of sugar and fat that's irresistible for the vast majority of humans and thusly makes Amirm's point.

Maybe next time mate lol.

So I guess the "ice cream", or sugar and fat as you call it, is whatever came back from Harman's listener prefences eh?

We'll see if a little midrange "scoop" is treated as strawberry, or slightly warm bass is treated as chocolate when the reviews come out and not as rancid garbage in the ice cream. The more expensive the speaker, the less leeway for taste is what I'll predict.
 

Thomas savage

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Maybe Harman could chip in?
Yes Butch ' Harmon ' could definitely chip in, he could even teach you.

So I guess the "ice cream", or sugar and fat as you call it, is whatever came back from Harman's listener prefences eh?

We'll see if a little midrange "scoop" is treated as strawberry, or slightly warm bass is treated as chocolate when the reviews come out and not as rancid garbage in the ice cream. The more expensive the speaker, the less leeway for taste is what I'll predict.
Ah , we have something in common.. neither of us know what you are talking about.

Unfortunately your obvious to this, you seem quite jolly though so I'd not worry too much.
 

Darkweb

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Yes Butch ' Harmon ' could definitely chip in, he could even teach you.


Ah , we have something in common.. neither of us know what you are talking about.

Unfortunately your obvious to this, you seem quite jolly though so I'd not worry too much.
All I can say is either my point is sailing clear over your head, or you're simply responding in bad faith.

A good indicator of how this speaker review process may go.
 
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q3cpma

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@amirm
index.php

Which is not at all visually appealing, are you able to generate the data in the type of “ocean wave” graph that Stereophile/Audiolics uses?
Personally, I really like this graph type, as long as each curve has its own colour. I find the stereophile "cascade" less transparent; the geometric perspective isn't telegraphed clear enough for me.
 

Purité Audio

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Only time will tell of course, I don’t know AMIR well, but to me he appears to throw himself whole heartedly into every project.
Keith
 

spacevector

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@amirm, congratulations on the new toy. This is state-of-the-art stuff.

In the future I can see some original research coming from your 'lab'. Perhaps numerous AES papers will be published through your efforts!

Congrats again and good luck!
 

MZKM

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Personally, I really like this graph type, as long as each curve has its own colour. I find the stereophile "cascade" less transparent; the geometric perspective isn't telegraphed clear enough for me.
Maybe if color coded and only one side shown unless the design is non-symmetrical (e.g. offset tweeter).

An on-axis referenced version should also be shown, as this shows EQability.
 

Spocko

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Uh-huh.

What flavor of ice cream: chocolate vanilla, or strawberry?

Dark or milk chocolate?

If the most popular was vanilla ice cream, should we put a decapitated toy over cookies and cream’s head?
Actually, this is an interesting point. People surveyed say they prefer the taste of dark/black coffee, but during taste tests the milky/light coffee consistent won by a landslide.
 

Spocko

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THANK YOU FOR THIS!

Amir, three questions:
1. I assume you only need one speaker sent (not the pair)
2. I assume powered speakers are fine since they'll be level matched anyway?
3. What sort of acoustic treatment are needed (if any) for the measurements to be as accurate as possible?
 

Darkweb

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Actually, this is an interesting point. People surveyed say they prefer the taste of dark/black coffee, but during taste tests the milky/light coffee consistent won by a landslide.

Interesting that in coffee’s instance its basically the inverse of Harman’s listening preferences. The purest form of the coffee (neutral) loses to sweetness. Sound and taste aren’t a perfect corollary however.

Another interesting thought is that if you preferred dark coffee sighted but picked milky coffee blind, would you then deny your sighted preference and drink it milky? Why shouldn’t sight factor in if you’re drinking it sighted.
 

Jake's Dad

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Very impressive, Amir. By that I mean the rig, the math behind it, and particularly your dedication to doing sound (in both senses) measurement! Very exciting developments at ASR! Looking forward to reading the reviews with great anticipation.
 

napilopez

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@amirm
As pointed out by another user, how does this system deal with side/rear firing drivers?

The original Revel Salon has a rear tweeter for instance, I wonder what the Spinorama of that would be.

Also, in regards to the look of your graphs, you posted this example:
index.php

Which is not at all visually appealing, are you able to generate the data in the type of “ocean wave” graph that Stereophile/Audiolics uses?

As far as I know it should deal with side and rear firing drivers as well as an anechoic chamber. In fact, better. See the multi-source superposition section on Klippel's page here.

It does a 360-degree measurements and it can project measurements out into the farfield. It should also theoretically be more accurate than even large anechoic chambers at low frequencies.

Personally, I really like this graph type, as long as each curve has its own colour. I find the stereophile "cascade" less transparent; the geometric perspective isn't telegraphed clear enough for me.

Same. This has always been the most intuitive way of understanding off axis performance imo. You don't need really need to learn how to read it. I always felt I got an idea of directivity without really understanding directivity when I read soundstage network measurements.

The problem with the 'wave' type plots, specially the ones that are normalized to an onaxis or window graph is that they don't give you information about reflections at specific angles, or at least, they're hard to interpret this way. These can be useful when setting up a room or trying to figure out exact placement of speakers. I also just find them harder to interpret in general.

As for the above graphs, I think they're just crowded and like @q3cpma said, they should be color coded. There's no reason to show both left and right horizontal data on a symmetrical speaker, for instance.

I personally think displaying 15-degree intervals is the sweet spot for readability and utility, again a la soundstage network, but I'm biased because that's what I do :) . 10 degrees is crowded but it works with colors.
 
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jhaider

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Personally, I really like this graph type, as long as each curve has its own colour. I find the stereophile "cascade" less transparent; the geometric perspective isn't telegraphed clear enough for me.

Funny, I hate those. A polar map makes much more sense to my brain.

One other problem with Stereophile's is normalization to the on axis response. Amir presumably won't make that mistake.
 

napilopez

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Funny, I hate those. A polar map makes much more sense to my brain.

One other problem with Stereophile's is normalization to the on axis response. Amir presumably won't make that mistake.

While I don't mind polar graphs, my problem with themis they very often have different scaling on different sources, though that presumably shouldn't be an issue here on asr where amir will build up a database of speakers.

In any case, it shouldn't be too hard to render both a standard multiple curve graph as shown above and polar graph with klippel's software. I say amir does both, don't think it would overload the speaker reviews and it would let different people interpret data however they prefer.
 

SoundsGood2Me

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Good 4 U Amir! I hope You keep shaking things up!! SINAD IS KING, and we live in Good Times.
 

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minus3dB

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This is pretty awesome news. I've become badly addicted to reading all of your component reviews and measurement data. This will only pour fuel onto the fire. :p

The most unique aspect of your reviews I think is the ranking of how equipment performs in various measurements. Taken with a grain of salt or two as you caution, this is precisely the kind of thing I've always wanted to see in the audio press, or media, if you will. As others have pointed out, the dilemma is how to carry forward that signature "single number" feature in the loudspeaker domain?

Could it be possible to derive a meaningful figure of merit for complex graphical data such as FR plots and spinoramas? Perhaps, but ultimately any single descriptor of an information-rich graph like those things will have an averaging effect. There are probably some mathematicians among us who could give that some thought.
 
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