Can 2 speakers measure the same but sound differently?

[Blaspheme]

he literally said the necessary power requirements, not watts. So that includes both current and voltage.

Which rules out a lot of amps—or amp-speaker pairings—just as I said.

 

[muad]

he literally said the necessary power requirements, not watts. So that includes both current and voltage.

Hey, someone who actually read what I wrote thanks!

 

[steve59]

There's brands that match their speakers pairs to 1 db, of the reference and .5 of each other, but idk how sensitive my hearing is and there's still placement in the room with direct and reflected sound ok then unless we're listening to mono the signals are different from the two coming at you at the same time. Having 0 experience with measuring speaker values I don't know how manufacturers match drivers to the reference? do they add parts to the xover to 'voice them to each other' if so wouldn't that change the resistance of them presenting a different load to an amp which in turn changes the sound from the original?

 

[puppet]

I'd say that in a hypothetical case of identical response you'd have to look at the individual harmonic production(s) to explain the differences you are hearing.

 

[tomtoo]

Its a hypothetical question.
Couse you would need to find two real different speakers that realy measure the same.
Good luck to find this.
If they realy would measure the same they would have no change than to sound the same. But you wont find them.

If they sound different they measure different. If not, ask whats missing in the measurements? If you have only onaxe measurements we know its not enough.

 

[Wes]

I take the KH120( which i owned) and 8030C for example
They are very similar from what i understand (measurements wise) but they sound completely different for me.
So basically my question is, is there anything beyond the science?
Nothing in the world will convince me they sound the same, the treble especially is very different.

you are raising the issue of completeness

if all measurements are the same then yes

all measurements are not done, and perhaps not even known

so, the reduced question is: what measurements are needed to prevent a human form distinguishing one speaker from another

 

[QuadDiffusor]

There are many speaker performance parameters which are highly variable at the “listening position”; on-axis amplitude response (gated to a short time-frame to isolate reflections) is what most measurements seem to focus on, yet the room response contributes the majority (70%+) of the perceived “sound” in a typical setup at the listening position’s sweet spot. Performance in the temporal domain (phase, attack and decay, cabinet diffraction, etc.) differentiates the ultimate portrayal of soundstage reality, yet it can hardly be objectively measured consistently and reliably, repeatedly.

 

[Frgirard]

The phase? Have you datas ?

The soundstage is the results of the reflection distribution and the directivity / response of axis.
The room (the ETC curve) and the directivity diagram can predict the soundstage quality.

Put your speakers outside fare of walls.
Soundstage on an headphone.
Where are the soundstage?

 

[ctrl]

I take the KH120( which i owned) and 8030C for example
They are very similar from what i understand (measurements wise) but they sound completely different for me.
So basically my question is, is there anything beyond the science?
Nothing in the world will convince me they sound the same, the treble especially is very different.

I'm a bit late to the party, but with the current debate about the value and utility of measurement, here's an opportunity to avoid misunderstandings.

So the two speakers measure as differently as one could wish.
Even on-axis and LW wise they are not the same, they are similar in a certain sound pressure level band (e.g. +-2dB, if one ignores the different slopes in the low frequency range), but to say "they are very similar" measuring wise would be not correct.

If one looks at the two red markings in the gif image below, one can see that the sound power around these markings behave diametrically for the two speakers.
This should not only lead to different timbres in the frequency range 1-4kHz, but the spatial staggering of voices, for example, should be different.
One might expect that, for example, voices will sound more forward (more present) with the KH120 compared to the 8030C (less present, more distant) - more details on this can be found here.

If one looks at the SPDI (defined as the difference between the listening window curve and the sound power curve), you can see that the two speakers show significant differences in directivity.
One must always keep in mind that the SPDI compares averaged horizontal and vertical curves with averaged hor and ver curves, deviations of 0.5dB can have immense tonal effects.

It would become even clearer if one would look at the horizontal and vertical DI of the two speakers separately.

Source: https://pierreaubert.github.io/spinorama/index.html

 

[pogo]

If they sound different they measure different. If not, ask whats missing in the measurements? If you have only onaxe measurements we know its not enough.

That's correct. And here is a possible measurement method:
Link

 

[MaxRockbin]

Even on-axis and LW wise they are not the same, they are similar in a certain sound pressure level band (e.g. +-2dB, if one ignores the different slopes in the low frequency range), but to say "they are very similar" measuring wise would be not correct.

For what it's worth, I thought the on axis measurement, at least, would be more interesting if it was more apples to apples. If the KH120 graph is from Neuman, how does that compare vs Genelec's own graph for the 8030c.
In this graph, the blue is the KH120 and the Green is the 8030c. I do not know why there are two lines for the 8030c diverging at 150hz. It must say somewhere, but I'm not seeing it. I matched up the grid scales in photoshop, but NOTE that Genelec is reporting for 85dB/1M and Neuman at 90dB. Not a fair fight.

Like a lot of people reading this thread, I'm in the market for speakers and am looking closely at these. In my mind the biggest pros/cons are:
KH120 has more headroom vs 8030c, I think. Louder without bass distortion. (I do not know why the graph CTRL put up appears to show better KH120 bass than the one I just got from their website here: https://en-de.neumann.com/kh-120-a-g That's puzzling. But it probably does have better bass, if only because of its amp power.

Cons for the KH120: Heat. It has A/B amps and no sleep mode, so you would want to manually switch it off when not in use.
That probably isn't a big deal for most people, but my listening room doesn't seem to get as much AC as the rest of the house, so...
The main problem with the 8030c is it's probably underpowered for mid-distance listening.

Personally, I would be surprised if I would hear a ton of difference, except when playing loud. And since I would probably cross over to to the sub around 90-100hz, the low end of the bass is no biggie to me. And I'm deef over 12.5kHz, so the high end isn't either. One of these days I'm going to have to go the the Guitar Center and see if I can actually hear them.
I'm sure their listening room is exactly like this one: