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Can't we all just get along?

Somafunk

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From an analysis of what he states I can see he exudes a total disregard for objective and repeatable measurements, and it’s rather obvious why he refutes the idea of listening to a single speaker in his listening tests, his critique of the klippel measurements is so wrong it’s almost comical so there’s nothing else to say apart from he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about to those with no knowledge.
 
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Cuniberti

Cuniberti

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From an analysis of what he states I can see he exudes a total disregard for objective and repeatable measurements, and it’s rather obvious why he refutes the idea of listening to a single speaker in his listening tests, his critique of the klippel measurements are so wrong it’s almost comical so there’s nothing else to say apart from he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about to those with no knowledge.
Was the power cable being tested plugged into anything? If not why? Why in the hell wouldn't you want to listen to both speakers in a listening test? How is he wrong about Klippel measurements? I want to believe that ASR is doing the objective work I seek.
 

Doodski

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Can you provide a link to this research? Logically, that doesn’t make sense when the goal is to achieve excellent stereo sound.
I can't remember the research doctors name right now that specifies using one speaker. Somebody will chime in on it.
 

abdo123

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Can you provide a link to this research? Logically, that doesn’t make sense when the goal is to achieve excellent stereo sound.
There are no speakers in the world that are designed with the goal to achieve excellent stereo sound.

You’re usually designing speakers in terms of single units.

Any measurements or adjustment you would do are based on mono input.

The only speakers that were designed with the goal to achieve excellent stereo sound from the ground up is the LXmini by Siegfried Linkwitz.
 

ryanosaur

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Can you provide a link to this research? Logically, that doesn’t make sense when the goal is to achieve excellent stereo sound.
When it comes to critical design and Voicing a Speaker, it is not only common but highly recommended to do so in Mono. This is discussed in several of the Speaker design books, IIRC. But also in talking to respected Speaker Designers, they say the same thing.
One example is Dennis Murphy and his work with Jim Salk. I think it was the SS9.5 I had mentioned listening to at a show in 2019 and asked him about it when he mentioned that he had one. I was really excited that he had a pair(!!!) only to have him clarify that he does that work with SINGLE SPEAKERS.
 

ryanosaur

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IIRC @Rick Sykora tried to follow the instructions for the Speaker build as faithfully as possible and documented many of the issues he found with the Kit provided... including the instructions.

Convenient for the designer to say things weren't done correctly.
59570250.jpg
 

hawkeyejw

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There are no speakers in the world that are designed with the goal to achieve excellent stereo sound.

You’re usually designing speakers in terms of single units.

Any measurements or adjustment you do would are based on mono input.

The only speakers that were designed with the goal to achieve excellent stereo sound from the ground up is the LXmini by Dr. Linkwitz.
We’re talking about listening to speakers here and not designing them though, right? Listening to one speaker and making a conclusion on how it will sound set up in a 2 channel listening room seems sort of like telling a car reviewer he can only drive slowly around a closed course when reviewing a car because driving around town introduces too many outside factors. Maybe that’s just me.

Also, I’m sorry but I have to disagree with your assertion that speakers are not designed as a stereo pair. How else do we explain the differences in paired speakers and center channel speakers? Offset tweeters? Designers absolutely make design choices all the time with stereo imaging etc. in mind.

Thanks for providing the names of the researchers, I’ll look to see if I can find publicly published papers on the topic and read them.
 

ryanosaur

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We’re talking about listening to speakers here and not designing them though, right?
No.
Hard no.

How can you even think about asking that about a Speaker Kit. ...being sold on the market and with some of the markups he's putting on the mods?

If it is designed poorly from the get go, it will not perform any differently. If it cannot pass a sniff test to begin, do you really expect us to believe that it will smell like French Vanilla and Strawberries in the end?
 

hawkeyejw

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No.
Hard no.

How can you even think about asking that about a Speaker Kit. ...being sold on the market and with some of the markups he's putting on the mods?

If it is designed poorly from the get go, it will not perform any differently. If it cannot pass a sniff test to begin, do you really expect us to believe that it will smell like French Vanilla and Strawberries in the end?
I’m not sure where your response is coming from. My question was in regards to the practice of listening to a single speaker as a means of providing subjective feedback on how it sounds, when the end user will never listen to the product that way. It’s applicable to every speaker review done on this site, not just the GR LGKs. As I said, that doesn’t make much sense to me but I am interested to learn why it’s considered acceptable or even preferred by many folks here.
 

Micahk

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We’re talking about listening to speakers here and not designing them though, right? Listening to one speaker and making a conclusion on how it will sound set up in a 2 channel listening room seems sort of like telling a car reviewer he can only drive slowly around a closed course when reviewing a car because driving around town introduces too many outside factors. Maybe that’s just me.

Also, I’m sorry but I have to disagree with your assertion that speakers are not designed as a stereo pair. How else do we explain the differences in paired speakers and center channel speakers? Offset tweeters? Designers absolutely make design choices all the time with stereo imaging etc. in mind.

Thanks for providing the names of the researchers, I’ll look to see if I can find publicly published papers on the topic and read them.
Listening to one speaker is purely to test tonal balance and timbre. Floyd Toole is one of the leading researchers in psychoacoustics, essentially created spinorama and was one of the first to highlight the importance of blind listening tests. He’s probably forgotten more about psychoacoustics than most of us have ever learned. AFAIK he and his team at Harman have also probably done the most to correlate data with what we hear.
 

abdo123

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We’re talking about listening to speakers here and not designing them though, right? Listening to one speaker and making a conclusion on how it will sound set up in a 2 channel listening room seems sort of like telling a car reviewer he can only drive slowly around a closed course when reviewing a car because driving around town introduces too many outside factors. Maybe that’s just me.
Not really, it's more like standing on two identical cars with one leg on the roof of one car and the others on the other. While at the same time you're trying to determine how good the experience is driving only one of them.
How else do we explain the differences in paired speakers and center channel speakers?

What differences are we talking about here? because the only thing a typical center speakers adjusts for (horribly) is that it needs to fit under a TV.
Offset tweeters?

That's usually to deal with phase alignment, lobing or diffraction issues. When these issues were solved through other design choices this went out of fashion so quick because keeping two different cabinets in stock was just not worth it. Nothing to do with Stereo.
Designers absolutely make design choices all the time with stereo imaging etc. in mind.
I'm yet to find a meaningful stereo driven design choice out there that is widely adopted by the industry.
 

BDWoody

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that doesn’t make much sense to me but I am interested to learn why it’s considered acceptable or even preferred by many folks here.

Our host did a video on this a while back. It's a place to start.

 

mhardy6647

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The stereo effect is a distraction from the base sound of a speaker. Leading researchers state that using one speaker is the best test for them.
I would certainly agree -- at least to the point that if one loudspeaker playing by itself doesn't sound good in a given environment, adding a second one ain't gonna help!
 
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