I get your point that you shouldn't dismiss a speaker just because it doesn't measure 'harmanesque.' I don't necessarily disagree.
It's surely true that being on ASR can reinforce one way of thinking, though I personally have not shied away about mentioning times I've enjoyed speakers that don't measure perfect (the JBL L100 classic is one of my favorites, for instance). Sometimes that's led me to some insights about what kind of deviations from 'perfect' I like (as some here know, I'll take wide directivity, even if somewhat uneven, over 'perfect' narrow directivity any day).
It's good that there are other open-minded, scientific thinkers here. It's not that the Harman research isn't solid, it's just that I notice people (not you) are interpreting it incorrectly.
In any case, I think we need to be pretty realistic about comparisons, and that's why I clarified things like 'timbral neutrality' vs preference. I don't expect small old monitors to best newer floorstanders, and I don't think most people here would either, for various reasons.
Right. It should be painfully obvious to anyone that a $1,000 mid-tier bookshelf isn't going to outperform the flagship $15,000 speakers from the same manufacturer - but it isn't. People who fixate on their overinterpretation of the Harman directivity goals have to accept this ridiculous belief in order remain consistent.
I'd like to highlight the distinction between figuring out "preference" and "what a speaker will sound like" from measurements.
I do think it can be hard to distinguish between which of two speakers someone will prefer just by eyeballing them, unless the differences are dramatic. However I disagree that one can't substantially determine what a speaker "will sound like" from looking at a few key measurements, especially when one is aware of how their own tastes correlate with the data.
Those are two different things. You reference the the famous olive preference paper (part 2), but for the most part all it tries to do is predict preference from measurements -- it says very little about what listeners thought the speakers sounded like from these measurements.
I recognize the difference between preference scores and the bold claim of being able to accurately determine how a speaker will sound by eyeballing measurements.
It is from other research (including but certainly not limited to the oft-ignored part 1), that we know measurements can be largely associated with different aspects of sound quality, and that flattish on-axis and smooth directivity are generally perceived as neutral.
I'm so sorry, but Part 1 absolutely does not establish the ability to eyeball a specific measurement and its perceived sound characteristic. And the paper only just touches on the correlation between the slope of a regression line through the listening window (or sound power) FR chart and perceived timbre as "bright" vs. "neutral." But let's go with that, since you bring up the paper. Do you feel that you have the ability to eyeball an FR chart, eyeball a regression line, and calculate its slope in your head with a level of accuracy necessary to decide if the speaker will sound "bright?"
(BTW, I'm not talking about something obviously wrong with the FR chart, like 2nd order rolloff above 1kHz and making the claim that the speaker will probably sound "dull.")
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