Binaural blind comparison test of 4 loudspeakers

[Blumlein 88]

Which is exactly the appropriate response. These aren't "fun little experiments." They are harmful because due to their methodology, it's impossible to know if the results are valid or if they are false findings. But since very few people here appear to have an actual understanding of how to interpret experiments, people are misled into believing the results can be used to draw conclusions.



The problem is, the op didn't actually make the recordings himself, nor do we know the conditions of the recording room. The op also did not provide proper attribution for the source of these recordings in his original post. Some people, including yourself, appear to believe that the op was the one who made the recordings himself.

The op was crystal clear in post #10 the recordings were not his.

 

[thewas]

The problem is, the op didn't actually make the recordings himself, nor do we know the conditions of the recording room. The op also did not provide proper attribution for the source of these recordings in his original post. Some people, including yourself, appear to believe that the op was the one who made the recordings himself.

Elementary my dear Watson, you got me, of course I did them myself being a part of the anti-B&W mafia

Well... not... Here are just exemplary some parts of the article which should be enough to deconstruct the argumentum ad hominem:

Source of screenshots and recordings: Magazine Audio, issue 7/06

By the way being such a "B&W hater" myself I even used to own the CM7 back then which also was recorded on the same session too as shown above.

Yours truly,

Sherlock Holmes

 

[preload]

Elementary my dear Watson, you got me, of course I did them myself being a part of the anti-B&W mafia

Well... not... I didn't post mainly details as the source was a magazine but since you force me here are just exemplary some parts of the article which should be enough to deconstruct the argumentum ad hominem:

View attachment 158538

By the way being such a "B&W hater" myself I even used to own the CM7 back then which also was recorded on the same session too as shown above.

Yours truly,

Sherlock Holmes

Thank you for providing proper attribution to the recording source of the loudspeakers. I have no idea why you think your sarcastic post is okay.

Do you think it's ok to take credit for someone else's work?

As others have pointed out, it takes a great deal of time and energy to set up a binaural recording Your original post made it sound like you set up the experiment and could you could attest to the integrity of the conditions.

In fact even now you still haven't updated your original post to reflect the fact that these recordings were obtained from another source, specifically a magazine. Not only that but you also havent provided the full citation of the magazine/issue/etc.

 

[preload]

there is a way to level them ! i will tell u the LUFS for each of the tracks: [-20.6 -15.8] [-19.8 -14.7] [-18.7 -15.5] [-20.0 -15.3] so i would just pick the lowest value [-20.6 -15.8] and level the rest of the tracks....

Hang on a sec, are you saying the tracks weren't even level matched?

 

[oivavoi]

Thank you for providing proper attribution to the recording source of the loudspeakers. I have no idea why you think your sarcastic post is okay.

Do you think it's ok to take credit for someone else's work?

As others have pointed out, it takes a great deal of time and energy to set up a binaural recording Your original post made it sound like you set up the experiment and could you could attest to the integrity of the conditions.

In fact even now you still haven't updated your original post to reflect the fact that these recordings were obtained from another source, specifically a magazine. Not only that but you also havent provided the full citation of the magazine/issue/etc.

I think this is starting to get overboard a bit, actually. The OP was very clear in the first page of this thread that the recordings were not his, immediately when people asked. He was clearly not trying to "take credit for someone else's work". I also didn't perceive his previous post as sarcastic in a hostile way, I perceived it as an attempt at making a joke. I appreciate your substantial contributions to the thread about experimental methods etc, but I do not think your way of saying things in the recent posts is warranted or constructive.

 

[thewas]

I have no idea why you think your sarcastic post is okay.

Maybe some should rather re-consider their own sarcastic posts, who call others "mafia" because their opinion don't suit their worldview and insinuate others as liars.

Do you think it's ok to take credit for someone else's work?

In none point of this thread I said the recordings were mine, for example

post #10 (first page)

Unfortunately they are not my recordings but older ones done with a professional binaural recording head

post #189, the in #1 linked result post

Many years ago I was sent many binaural recordings of loudspeakers which were performed in the mid '00s.

post #272 (almost a week ago and even answering you)

They were done by a big German hifi magazine in the mid 2000s with a Head Acoustics artificial head in their listening room, actually of many more loudspeakers but these 4 were done in the same session and with the same music and matched the famous Harman blind test with the B&W best.

PS: oiavoi was quicker

 

[thewas]

Hang on a sec, are you saying the tracks weren't even level matched?

I had also replied to this issue here https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...son-test-of-4-loudspeakers.26785/#post-918780

 

[preload]

Maybe some should rather re-consider their own sarcastic posts, who call others "mafia" because their opinion don't suit their worldview and insinuate others as liars.


In none point of this thread I said the recordings were mine, for example

original post #1


post #10 (also first page)


post #272 (almost a week ago and even answering you)


PS: oiavoi was quicker

Attribution should have been in your original post, where you described how you set up your experiment and provided your download links. Not buried in post #10 or #272 in response to me asking for something basic.

Also as of this writing you still haven’t provided the full citation of magazine article that you obtained these recordings from. You clearly do not understand the concept of properly attributing the work of others so that there’s no perception that you are taking credit for the work of others.

 

[preload]

Good objection, I play them for example with Foobar with ReplayGain scanned and active and didn't want to manipulate the original files.
Please keep in mind though that they were will be always loudness differences when the tonality and compression are different and there are no unique perfectly fair ways to equalise them. Also in this case the tonality dominates so much that till now at least the loudness doesn't seem to be a strong influencing factor.

So you’re acknowledging that the files were not level matched. That further invalidates any meaningful conclusions that can be drawn from this so-called experiment.

 

[thewas]

Attribution should have been in your original post, where you described how you set up your experiment and provided your download links. Not buried in post #10 or #272 in response to me asking for something basic.

It wasn't in the original post to not make possible revelation to people who had read about that recordings possible but directly in the start of the in #1 linked results post.

So you’re acknowledging that the files were not level matched. That further invalidates any meaningful conclusions hat can be drawn from this so-called experiment.

As I wrote in the above linked reply I didn't want to alter the files of the magazine due to obvious reasons and also due to different frequency responses and dynamic behaviour any kind of levelling is just an arbitrary assumption but won't mean they will sound equally loud which is always a problem when AB-comparing different responses. By the way according to the LUFS analysis the Klipschhorn was per average on the 2 tracks the loudest but got zero votes. You can see also the problem of the different frequency and dynamic responses that the LUFS differences are not the same for the 2 tracks between the 4 loudspeakers.

 

[preload]

Maybe some should rather re-consider their own sarcastic posts, who call others "mafia" because their opinion don't suit their worldview and insinuate others as liars.

To be clear, I wouldn’t use the term “mafia” to refer to you, since as I’ve mentioned before, it’s an abbreviated term to refer to the perpetuation of group think on forums and other isolated corners of the internet whereby the existence of other (and even mainstream) perspectives is ignored or denied. Think for a moment whether the mainstream outside of ASR agrees with the degree of fierce anti-B&W sentiment here, on average. Think about recording studios and product sales.

I mention your sarcasm because I brought up something pretty serious (proper attribution), and you responded with Sherlock Holmes.

While we may not agree on basic things like what constitutes a valid experiment here, it doesn’t give anyone the right to casually appropriate the hard work of others. For instance there’s a lot of anti-Stereophile sentiment here, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to cut/paste Stereophile FR measurements without proper citation.

And nobody is insinuating that anyone is a liar, but describing what you did, the terms “dishonesty” and “plagiarism” do come to mind. By describing your experiment and offering direct download links in post #1, it is reasonable to infer that you created the sound files by recording your own speakers (which is why I asked about it in post #200-something). The responsibility to clearly attribute work so that there’s no confusion belongs to you, the author, not to the readers of what you write to figure out.

 

[thewas]

While we may not agree on basic things like what constitutes a valid experiment here, it doesn’t give anyone the right to casually appropriate the hard work of others. For instance there’s a lot of anti-Stereophile sentiment here, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to cut/paste Stereophile FR measurements without proper citation.

If you know my ASR posts I am one of the people who always tries to put source links to any measurements and text passages I quote, why I didn't here at #1 I also explained.

And nobody is insinuating that anyone is a liar

I had replied to you at #272

They were done by a big German hifi magazine in the mid 2000s with a Head Acoustics artificial head in their listening room

and you posted at #320

Some people, including yourself, appear to believe that the op was the one who made the recordings himself.

Also as you have seen no one else except you complained that I gave the impression it was my own work, as confirmed also by others posts.

Anyway, this ad hominem mudslinging has already gone too far and doesn't really belong here...

 

[AdamG]

Take a self imposed time out. Please!

 

[TheHighContemplator]

Take a self imposed time out. Please!

Nice!

 

[richard12511]

The recording equipment and people doing the recordings were not amateur and did also some direct comparisons back then, so I would say rather the very high typical "highend" listening distance where direct to reflected sound ratio is too low and also the used music recordings which are not too great for such tests either are the 2 main reasons.

I actually meant to say "due to the room and recording/playback equipment". I started with a more complicated sentence, but edited it down and mistakenly removed the room part. I only noticed the mistake after preload quoted me. I'm sure the recording equipment played some role, but I know the room and listening distance are by far the biggest factor.

 

[preload]

Failure to properly cite the work of others is a form of plagiarism. Referring to "a German magazine in the 2000's" is not an appropriate reference any more than "some audio engineer in Michigan who wrote an article for some conference" isn't an adequate citation for direct quoting a JAES paper written by Toole or Olive.

Lack of understanding of this obligation is never a valid excuse. Stating that a proper citation would have "ruined the experiment" is also not a valid excuse.

Since the op refuses to identify the name of the magazine, the date/issue it was published, or the authors, does anyone know this information based on the select screen shots that were provided? The authors and producers of the article and recording are people too and deserve to be credited.

OP need not respond as you have already made your position clear.

 

[LTig]

OP need not respond as you have already made your position clear.

As you did the same please stop here as well. Let the readers decide which side to choose.

 

[thewas]

Since the op refuses to identify the name of the magazine, the date/issue it was published, or the authors, does anyone know this information based on the select screen shots that were provided?

That sounded a bit different before...

Thank you. That still seems a little vague, and not sure what to make of it.

Thank you for providing proper attribution to the recording source of the loudspeakers.

By the way the information which exact magazine and issue it was was already in the above screenshot...

The authors and producers of the article and recording are people too and deserve to be credited.

That also sounded a bit different before I proved to you they were not mine...

I am pleased to confirm that all 4 speakers sounded absolutely horrible on both tracks. As in not even listenable. None of them. If this is how the Revel, B&W, and Klipschhorn actually sound in real life, I wouldn't even use them for the pc speaker that does the "beep" when you turn on your pc. Now to be fair, I don't know how the original tracks would have sounded when not re-recorded using mics, but unless the recording engineer was using a tape recorder like the police detectives use when interrogating suspects in the movies, there is no way anything the originals sounded that bad.

This was essentially an exercise in which recorded speaker sounded horrible vs which recorded speaker sounded horrible but slightly less so.

If there was anyone who also listened to those tracks and didn't buy into the kool-aid in this thread but was overwhelmed by the group think and didn't say anything, let me be first to say that you heard what I heard. Unbelievable.

Anyway, your intentions and interests seem luckily clear to most, so not much more needed to be said...

 

[preload]

By the way the information which exact magazine and issue it was was already in the above screenshot...
View attachment 158722

Thank you. This isn't exactly a citation, and I think you know that, but I appreciate that you are willing to at least try.

For clarity, is the actual magazine name "Audio Test Magazin?" I cannot locate a German audio magazine with the name "Test AUDIO."
And are those the publication dates of each of the magazine's speaker reviews, or are those the dates the recordings were made? What issue date did you obtain the screenshots above from?

Thank you for taking the request for attribution seriously.

 

[thewas]

Test means review, anyway added them to the original posts as this must come to an end.