Complaint thread about speaker measurements

[edechamps]

Dac's and Amps are nice, but speakers are somehow different.

No surprises there. When it comes to perceived audio quality, DACs and amps rarely matter. For the first time Amir is measuring the one piece of audio equipment that has tremendous impact on our enjoyment of reproduced sound. It's completely normal and expected that people will be much more passionate about speakers than electronics; that behavior is entirely rational.

 

[digicidal]

Okay, I'll bring a laptop and a Umik. Who is bringing the speakers? And someone will need to bring an amp.

I'd be happy to bring one - the problem is, all of them that would meet the weight limit for carry-on luggage... won't pass the "restorer-john smell test"... cuz those are all class-d.

 

[restorer-john]

I can’t speak for Amir, but if it I simply a question of purchasing a license and adding another automated procedure I can’t see that being an issue, I am sure we would all contribute financially to that wouldn’t we Wombat/restorer John?

Absolutely no chance Keith. This is Amir's party and that's been made abundantly clear. This forum in no way benefits me, nor do I derive any income from it. I have no vested commercial interests, and apart from several quality members I have become friendly with, I take ASR for what it is.

My contribution here to date has been primarily factual, historical and technical. I have a vast repository of documentation, parts, tons (actually) of HiFi equipment, sales and repair experience over many decades. Members can take or leave what I say and my strong opinions, but I'll help diagnose and remotely repair things for people just for fun, and for free. I've done the same for nearly 20 years on other websites and helped many hundreds of people to keep their vintage gear alive. When I save another classic from the landfill, that puts a smile on my face (maybe not yours Keith).

In relation to money, I will say, the entire premise of group sourcing or constant panhandling for money is something that makes my stomach turn. I'd rather give my limited discretionary dollars to a farmer who has just had his entire herd of cattle incinerated, or a family who have nothing after a bush-fire wiped out their entire community.

 

[restorer-john]

I'd be happy to bring one - the problem is, all of them that would meet the weight limit for carry-on luggage... won't pass the "restorer-john smell test"... cuz those are all class-d.

They will be fine, as long as they don't mind extremely high power, high frequency impulses...

 

[Blumlein 88]

I am not seeing any responses. I'm going to just assume you're speaking to the puritee audio guy. yeah, his name is keith... blocked him ages ago. He's got your typical high and mighty I'm king of the world and I know better then you attitude that every dealer I've met seems to have (save one). He thinks he knows better then you and will go out of his way to impress on you why you're wrong. Just ignore him wombat.

Oh, this is uncalled for in my opinion. I've not seen Keith the way you are describing him.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Absolutely no chance Keith. This is Amir's party and that's been made abundantly clear. This forum in no way benefits me, nor do I derive any income from it. I have no vested commercial interests, and apart from several quality members I have become friendly with, I take ASR for what it is.

My contribution here to date has been primarily factual, historical and technical. I have a vast repository of documentation, parts, tons (actually) of HiFi equipment, sales and repair experience over many decades. Members can take or leave what I say and my strong opinions, but I'll help diagnose and remotely repair things for people just for fun, and for free. I've done the same for nearly 20 years on other websites and helped many hundreds of people to keep their vintage gear alive. When I save another classic from the landfill, that puts a smile on my face (maybe not yours Keith).

In relation to money, I will say, the entire premise of group sourcing or constant panhandling for money is something that makes my stomach turn. I'd rather give my limited discretionary dollars to a farmer who has just had his entire herd of cattle incinerated, or a family who have nothing after a bush-fire wiped out their entire community.

I value your contributions here.

I don't agree with your last paragraph about "panhandling". The forum can be independent in the sense of not relying on advertisers. Most forums end up influenced by the ads that are necessary. Without ads someone has to foot the bill. Amir has certainly done that. In order that the forum can provide something others don't (almost something no one does) he asks for contributions to run the forum and purchase the test gear. One isn't compelled to give a thing to be a member and post to the forum.

It certainly is true the forum isn't very much without member participation. It is much better with the participation of members like yourself. Amir is not turning participation into money via advertising. It is more a variation on crowdsourcing. Perhaps one would like to see a basic annual accounting of contributions and basic expenditures for paying members. I'm pretty sure so far the balance would be heavily in the red. It really is a simple proposal as it stands. If you feel the forum and its members and its activities are of value to you, then give whatever you feel that value is to keep it relatively independent. And you still can participate with no contribution at all. Nothing is perfect in this world, but that doesn't seem too bad to me.

 

[PierreV]

@Purité Audio, as an outsider, I see a big difference between your contributions and @restorer-john. For ages, you have been, in a way, promoting your business here - you are a passionate, honest dealer, I get that - so no harm done or meant. In fact, if I was local to you, I almost certainly would have visited you and purchased a couple of things from you. OTOH, in terms of information, you value to me has been somewhat limited. Yes, you told me I would get better sound than what I have in smaller boxes with Kii Threes, then with not so smaller boxes with Kii Threes plus bass modules, then definitely even better with D&D 8Cs. That's about it...

OTOH, I did derive a lot of value from users like John. The information provided in the many "please help me fix" threads have been very interesting. Attacking him, or others only contributes to the polarization of the current mood.

If financing this site or monetizing the traffic matters, I have no problem with advertisements being shown on the site btw, or even it becoming a subscription-based site, or a partly closed site (pay for full measurement reports for example). The business model, if any, is for Amir to decide and should not be used as an ad-hominem conduit down the road.

Everyone has different opinions on monetization. For example, for ages (now mostly retired) I had a model based on a free unlimited offer and a much more expensive paying offer. Once I had made my decision to offer a free version of my stuff, it was obvious - at least to me - that I was not going to complain about it. Having third parties complain on my behalf would have seemed beyond strange. And yes, we had internal discussions on conversion rates, adding features to the more expensive versions to improve it. At times we questioned the rationale for a free version, but we never attacked free users (who were getting support as well btw) on the basis of a decision we made.

 

[Purité Audio]

Absolutely no chance Keith. This is Amir's party and that's been made abundantly clear. This forum in no way benefits me, nor do I derive any income from it. I have no vested commercial interests, and apart from several quality members I have become friendly with, I take ASR for what it is.

My contribution here to date has been primarily factual, historical and technical. I have a vast repository of documentation, parts, tons (actually) of HiFi equipment, sales and repair experience over many decades. Members can take or leave what I say and my strong opinions, but I'll help diagnose and remotely repair things for people just for fun, and for free. I've done the same for nearly 20 years on other websites and helped many hundreds of people to keep their vintage gear alive. When I save another classic from the landfill, that puts a smile on my face (maybe not yours Keith).

In relation to money, I will say, the entire premise of group sourcing or constant panhandling for money is something that makes my stomach turn. I'd rather give my limited discretionary dollars to a farmer who has just had his entire herd of cattle incinerated, or a family who have nothing after a bush-fire wiped out their entire community.

I must admit I do have a vested interest , from the moment Amir told me about this place I wanted to see it succeed, a community passionate about what is really important for high quality reproduction , not the usual forums supported by BS advertising where the owner’s prime concern is the revenue stream.
A self funding community is the only way to ensure that the measurements and reviews are completely independent.
I don’t have the technical knowledge to contribute in any meaningful way but I thoroughly enjoy reading the contributions of those that have.

Keith

 

[DonH56]

I am not seeing any responses. I'm going to just assume you're speaking to the puritee audio guy. yeah, his name is keith... blocked him ages ago. He's got your typical high and mighty I'm king of the world and I know better then you attitude that every dealer I've met seems to have (save one). He thinks he knows better then you and will go out of his way to impress on you why you're wrong. Just ignore him wombat.

Not been my experience with Keith on ASR. He is a dealer, and is completely up-front about it, as he is about his relatively low (relative to guys like Scott and JJ) technical level.

 

[direstraitsfan98]

Ok I deleted the offending post. Regarding the toxic dealer behavour, I now realize I was confusing him with someone else. However, his constant shilling of products he sells was bothering me. I do find that kind of behavour toxic in it's own way. Hence the block.

 

[Purité Audio]

Substantially lower than relatively !
But that is what makes ASR a joy, guys like you.
Keith

 

[pma]

testing the performance of the amplifiers in powered loudspeakers in the loudspeakers you review?

I think this should be done because interaction with non-linear speaker impedance is at least interesting and not only speaker output impedance, but also impedance of speaker cables plays the game. Yes distortion is often in orders lower than that on the acoustical speaker side, but not always - especially if the the amp produces forests of high order harmonics or is incapable to drive impedance dips. Measured at 3Vrms - the things start to happen at higher voltage levels.

 

[HammerSandwich]

Should @amirm also disassemble DACs to measure, e.g., PSU ripple & jitter between receiver & converter?

IMO, it makes more sense to treat non-DIY products as black boxes. Pay some attention to their interfacing requirements - IOW impedances & sensitivities matter - but assess the entire product's performance as a whole.

 

[spacevector]

@amirm I have noticed that the graph used for showing sensitivity looks identical to the on-axis response. Perhaps its one less graph for you to generate, annotate and post. Just drop a line about measured vs specified sensitivity after discussing the spinorama.

 

[carlob]

I think we are in a forum where this kind of measurements are made available thanks to the money and time of just one person so this treatment is a bit unfair. I would start saying thank you first without assuming something is owed to the members of the forum. Maybe the methodology needs a bit of refinement but it was clear since the beginning that the focus was on spinorama. If you want other things tested you can 1) ask (not pretend) 2) do it yourself 3) pay somebody or do without that specific test as we all did until a couple of weeks ago.

That said, as a selfish preference, I'd like to see reviews of speakers that are currently sold and not old stuff (the Harbeth review is very interesting but that speaker was two generations ago and the 30.2 currently sold measure differently). Also I would (even more selfishly ) like to see less reviews of mini monitor speakers and more of real beefy speakers that you listen to from a couple of meters...

 

[Thomas savage]

I think Amir is best placed in management to comment/reply re the content of this thread. Sorry Thomas, nothing personal. Do I need to keep adding disclaimers?

There's been no moderation in this thread to my knowledge.

Some friendly advice, don't try and manage this place or suggest who should or shouldn't.

Have fun reading and try and make positive contributions . Sitting in judgement over folks, well that jobs taken .

Your welcome to send in your CV if you want the job though.

 

[Thomas savage]

I think we are in a forum where this kind of measurements are made available thanks to the money and time of just one person so this treatment is a bit unfair. I would start saying thank you first without assuming something is owed to the members of the forum. Maybe the methodology needs a bit of refinement but it was clear since the beginning that the focus was on spinorama. If you want other things tested you can 1) ask (not pretend) 2) do it yourself 3) pay somebody or do without that specific test as we all did until a couple of weeks ago.

That said, as a selfish preference, I'd like to see reviews of speakers that are currently sold and not old stuff (the Harbeth review is very interesting but that speaker was two generations ago and the 30.2 currently sold measure differently). Also I would (even more selfishly ) like to see less reviews of mini monitor speakers and more of real beefy speakers that you listen to from a couple of meters...

I think there's a few who seem to have Passion for certain speaker measurements, they could if so passionate about it conduct them themselves.

You know , if you don't like the lunch your Mrs makes quit complaining and make your own.

 

[SmackDaddies]

If already mentioned, I apologize.

For listening tests (the ear test, not the measurements), I think it is important to listen to speakers in the method they are built for - Nearfield Speakers should not be listened to in a large room. Speakers with limited frequency range should not be criticized for limited bass. Recognized, yes, but also that it is part of their design parameters.

 

[Absolute]

I think it should be up to the dealers and manufacturers to inform customers about the intended usage and limitations of a speaker, so all kinds of SPL, amplifier, long term compression testing etc is just interesting and not necessary.
At least not at this point. I spend some time around local hifi-shops because I like all things audio and I can honestly say I've never heard any customer asking about max spl, long-term spl, performance of the amplifier in an active speaker or power handling. In fact, I've never even considered it myself for my own purchases because it's just not relevant for most people in most homes.
So I don't see the need to test for everything possible. People in general are very generous when they're spending other people's time and money!

 

[restorer-john]

At least not at this point. I spend some time around local hifi-shops because I like all things audio and I can honestly say I've never heard any customer asking about max spl, long-term spl, performance of the amplifier in an active speaker or power handling.

Power handling on expensive passive loudspeakers is most important. Expensive passive speakers are likely to have high powered amplification attached and are more likely to be used at higher levels for longer periods, often with dynamic and transient-content music.

Many years ago, I was tasked with inspecting damaged drivers for warranty claims to make determinations on whether they were factory faults (and covered under warranty) or user abuse (not covered under warranty). The more expensive the speaker, the more likely the "audiophiles" would damage them. There were always the guys who got drunk and played their $5000 speakers all night with huge power amps and just plain cooked them, but it was the guys who should have known better who vaporized tweeter lead-in wires regularly or damaged a woofer with their latest "torture test" CD. You can imagine the conversations. "but it was only a few seconds" or "I paid $5K for these, they are supposed to be the best" etc.

Midranges and tweeters in better speakers are generally faster and lighter, use thinner gauge VC wire, aluminium wire, edge wound copper ribbon, light weight formers and small magnet structures. Ferrofluid is rarely used these days and drivers have less thermal mass for "riding out" dissipation events. In addition, proper midranges are less common and tweeters are being asked to do duty much further down the spectrum than they once did. That means more dissipation and potentially more failures.

Woofers on the other hand have improved out of sight. It's really hard to destroy modern woofers. Better adhesives, exotic former materials and tighter tolerances mean much better usable lives.

It's all these small speakers with or without amplification where the rated power handling needs to be looked at. Any speaker can take transient events 10 or 20 times (or more) over their continuous rating, but we are seeing speaker ratings that bear no relationship whatsoever to their true capability. A 1.5" voice coil can only get rid of so much heat, and it isn't that much to be honest. The blatant deception in the speaker market needs to called for what it is.

So recommendations on fitness for purpose based on testing should be addressed. Non-destructive limit testing will help, if it can be done at a reasonable cost.