Can you choose a great speaker by its frequency response?

[Digby]

I haven't done any cheating, I promise, but my guess is that speaker 1 is the JBL M2

I think I would take 1 because if bass frequencies are missing, I notice, and it might be easy enough to employ some EQ elsewhere.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

Speaker 1 - least variability, most bass extension.

Oh boy. … this is fun. What if I win ?

 

[Rick Sykora]

I don't agree, especially at this level zooming, without having off axis / directivities measurements you cannot choose a loudspeaker as for example on some designs you have some dips on axis that disappear off axis and are not significantly audible. In the other case FR problems can be easily EQed if the directivity is smooth but you cannot correct directivity problems. Also in my experience in upmost cases loudspeakers with a smooth directivity and some on-axis ripples sound better then the other way around, which is reflected also in the Harman score. Even LW is correlated better to perceived sound than on-axis measurements.
So coming back to the title of this thread "Can you choose a great speaker by its frequency response?" my answer is "No, if it is in that small tolerance band and if off-axis/directivites are not shown." Of course if the FR responses of some loudspeaker had a much higher tolerance band or were dropping off much earlier, the chances to be not preferred would be significant.

Pretty sure I covered this in my initial post, but if you would be more comfortable with which speaker is better, that'll work too.

Will see how this goes and maybe consider adding another dimension next time. For this round, all you get is the graphs I posted. If you are choosing to not choose, I get it, but rarely do we get to make decisions with all the data. No purchase required either.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Speaker 1 - least variability, most bass extension.

Oh boy. … this is fun. What if I win ?

guess it mainly depends on how you feel about your decision when I reveal the speakers!

 

[aarons915]

You can't choose a great speaker by an on-axis frequency plot no but if you have a complete CTA-2034 suite of measurements you most certainly can. All of the subjectively best sounding speakers are also backed up by good measurements.

 

[Thomas_A]

Speaker one. Against a wall.

 

[Rick Sykora]

You can't choose a great speaker by an on-axis frequency plot no but if you have a complete CTA-2034 suite of measurements you most certainly can. All of the subjectively best sounding speakers are also backed up by good measurements.

No disagreement, but that is not the spirit of the OP. Not all speakers have a full suite of measurements available and very few even have a simple published FR plot. Just to restate, these are all considered great (highly regarded) speakers btw.

Am giving you more data than you generally would have today in most cases. Less than 5 years ago, ASR did not measure speakers and you would have a lot fewer measured speakers.

So, still going to abstain?

 

[HarmonicTHD]

guess it mainly depends on how you feel about your decision when I reveal the speakers!

Now you scaring me

Just kidding …

Whatever the outcome, it will be insightful.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Now you are scaring me

Just kidding …

Whatever the outcome, it will be insightful.

As I said, they are all highly-regarded speakers. So no wrong answers.

 

[Aerith Gainsborough]

I take Speaker 1. It may need +0.5dB below 200Hz but otherwise it seems well behaved and close to flat on axis, which is what I prefer.

Speaker 2 has a significant downward slope on axis, might sound a little warm.

Speaker 3 looks inconsistent to me.

But you said "3 highly regarded" models, so there probably aren't any wrong picks. One can make every FR graph look horrible or super good by scaling the Y-Axis. I'd say that it's virtually impossible to make good judgments with data like that.

Oh boy, the reveal is going to be fun.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

No disagreement, but that is not the spirit of the OP. Not all speakers have a full suite of measurements available and very few even have a simple published FR plot. Just to restate, these are all considered great (highly regarded) speakers btw.

Am giving you more data than you generally would have today in most cases. Less than 5 years ago, ASR did not measure speakers and you would have a lot fewer measured speakers.

So, still going to abstain?

I could imagine it is difficult to select the best speaker on FR only, but easier to weed out „bad“ speakers when trying to narrow down a list of speakers one is interested in to audition or even to buy.

When I see some of Erin’s videos and him describing how hard it is sometimes to correlate the perceived listening experience with the Klippel results, I am sure that this little experiment will also reveal some of these difficulties. Either way looking forward to it.

Just scared, I picked the FR30 and would have to backpaddle on my challenges of it.

 

[JustJones]

$6 Trifecta Box

 

[DMill]

Ill play and say speaker 1 too. At the scale I’m guessing we are looking what looks like bass rolling off a bit is probably nothing.

 

[Darkscience]

When is the reveal?

 

[Rick Sykora]

When is the reveal?

I thought I would let it go through the weekend. So maybe do the reveal late Sunday or early Monday.

 

[DSJR]

No idea really, but old experience worries me about measured excesses in the lower hundred Hz with a roll-off below 100Hz as you can get a tubby sounding 'warmth' in the mid bass. The massively expanded scale fools me though so it may be nothing at all

 

[sonitus mirus]

If the speakers are highly regarded, I probably can't afford them or they are not a good fit for the room size I typically listen to music in a majority of my time. Though, I bet I could get close with cheaper speakers and an affordable amp with a bit of EQ and room correction.

 

[aarons915]

No disagreement, but that is not the spirit of the OP. Not all speakers have a full suite of measurements available and very few even have a simple published FR plot. Just to restate, these are all considered great (highly regarded) speakers btw.

Am giving you more data than you generally would have today in most cases. Less than 5 years ago, ASR did not measure speakers and you would have a lot fewer measured speakers.

So, still going to abstain?

True, we're very lucky to finally have good measurements being much more common. I wouldn't even try to pick the "best" speaker based on an on-axis response, the listening window would be much better but even then I think you at least need that plus the early reflections to get a good idea on a speakers sound quality. I've EQ'd speakers to be flat in the listening window and they sound quite a bit different to each other due to the differing directivity and resulting early reflections.

 

[C-H]

I'll take Speaker 1 with Audyssey room correction.

 

[Killingbeans]

Speaker #2 please. Just because it's the one most resembling a straight line, IMO.