They are not so. We have no reference for what is correct. That only comes from multi-way comparison of a few speakers. If you were right, I could dispense with measuring and just listen.
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Danny Richie's latest...
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Testing with more than one speaker strongly pulls in room effects. This renders the results meaningless to others with different rooms.
Further, much of the spatial aspects of stereo is in the content, not in the system setup. Have a sound pan hard left. That get reproduced correctly in any stereo system.
My God, on ASR you also have to confront the annoying people who want to be right and force you to argue constantly... but they don't care. Then they will reproach you for wanting to be right all the time, or for wanting to impose your views, when no, we are never right when we say what is is, it is they who are always wrong to deny what is East. THE only advantage of these exchanges and the only reason why we waste our time is that people of good will who read them quickly form their opinion and that no one is fooled.
One of my favorite recordings is Schumann's Carnival played by Sergei Rachmaninoff recorded in Berlin in 1928: the sound is scratchy, there is neither bass nor treble, but it is sublime... because a genius is playing... The music transcends its quality of reproduction, otherwise our ancestors would no more have cried while listening to 78 rpm records than Sniper (1) the little dog would have stuck his nose in the horn of the phonograph to listen to his master's voice...
Musicality is a word to banish from any assessment of hi-fi equipment. It in the way musicians play...
Because in the days of acoustic 78 rpm, there were already more or less good devices... and no ASR to separate the wheat from the chaff.
(1) the spell checker strikes again: Nipper of course
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Old_School_Brad
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In this case, what's technically "correct" doesn’t always match personal preferences, and that's understandable. I agree with the importance of objective measurements. It's valuable to know what you enjoy from experience and how that aligns with the data. Making this connection provides highly valuable insights.
I’m not suggesting that you, or any reviewer, can draw meaningful conclusions from in-room stereo listening experiences. This type of evaluation is only truly valuable when done in the listener’s own room. I’m not questioning your work in any way.
That said, it seems clear to me that the user in question doesn't favor speakers that perform well according to measurements. While that's a valid preference, the approach in this thread is less constructive..
From Sean Olive (bolding mine):
"In summary, the sighted and blind loudspeaker listening tests in this study produced significantly different sound quality ratings. The psychological biases in the sighted tests were sufficiently strong that listeners were largely unresponsive to real changes in sound quality caused by acoustical interactions between the loudspeaker, its position in the room, and the program material. In other words, if you want to obtain an accurate and reliable measure of how the audio product truly sounds, the listening test must be done blind. It’s time the audio industry grow up and acknowledge this fact, if it wants to retain the trust and respect of consumers. It may already be too late according to Stereophile magazine founder, Gordon Holt, who lamented in a recent interview:
“Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me..”"
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/#:~:text=In summary, the,embarrassment for me..”
He did also find that people could prefer a different speaker when listening blind to what speaker they preferred when listening sighted.
Which is really quite scary when you think about it.
Trouble is the practical implementation is almost non-existent. We can't easily do blind testing when choosing a speaker, and we'll listen sighted in normal use, with the bias intact.
So back to using the measurements to choose.
Which is really quite scary when you think about it.
Trouble is the practical implementation is almost non-existent. We can't easily do blind testing when choosing a speaker, and we'll listen sighted in normal use, with the bias intact.
So back to using the measurements to choose.
So back to using the measurements to choose.
At least to narrow things down. I bought my speakers without listening to them first, but it wasn't quite a random shot in the dark.
Old_School_Brad
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I think it largely depends on how significant the differences between the loudspeakers are. I have a copy of Toole’s book and looked into the experiment in question. The two speakers, which were almost identical except for having different crossovers tuned for separate markets, were consistently chosen over the other two systems in both the blind and sighted tests by a considerable margin. I won’t directly quote from the book to avoid any copyright issues.
However, when the test moved to different room positions, the results shifted, and one of the other systems became the preferred choice. As we know, room acoustics significantly influence the sound, so it’s not surprising that certain speakers perform better in some positions than others. Given that preference is strongly influenced by bass response, it’s easy to see how some speakers could trigger room modes and perform worse, while others do better. One of the other systems was a satellite and subwoofer setup BTW.
In any case, the results of the initial test align with my belief that a sighted test, conducted with speakers in the same room and position, can still be reliable as long as the differences between the speakers are substantial. The user mentioned having had both the KEF R3 and a pair from GR Research. While I may be making some assumptions here, I tend to believe that KEF produces speakers with greater neutrality, lower distortion, and less resonance than GR Research. Given these differences, we’re likely dealing with two very different sounding speaker pairs.
I have no problem with his preference for the GR Research speakers. An issue arises when one uses a personal and subjective experience to convince others they're wrong.
I agree, providing the test is conducted over a long period of time (half a day or more) and uses a wide variety of programme. A quick A-B with a couple of songs can lead to a bad decision.
What is the GR Research speaker in question? Not that awful single driver thing? Some of his other designs do look quite promising.
Old_School_Brad
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I’m not sure. I looked through the thread but couldn’t determine which one he has or had. I don't think he wrote it.
Right - I don't recall seeing it either so just thought I may have missed it.
He did also find that people could prefer a different speaker when listening blind to what speaker they preferred when listening sighted.
Which is really quite scary when you think about it.
Trouble is the practical implementation is almost non-existent. We can't easily do blind testing when choosing a speaker, and we'll listen sighted in normal use, with the bias intact.
So back to using the measurements to choose.
...and back to the original thread topic as Danny really dumped on the new SVS Evolution bookshelf recently. It was so critical that made me wonder why the owner sent to GR if they found them so objectionable, So searched for some measurements (SVS only posts specs) and found only his. Here is the FR he posted using his usual zoomed in scale...
Admittedly, this does look ugly but if you look at it on a more 50 dB typical scaling, the speaker appears to meet its +/- 3 dB spec (as usual, Danny does not measure below 200 Hz)...
After some of his analysis (even tries replacing the woofer), Danny appears to declare the speaker unfixable. But unsurprisingly, he does manage to create an upgraded crossover! To his credit, it does flatten the response nicely, but this comes with a ~$400 upcharge over the original cost of the speaker pair ($1200).
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Old_School_Brad
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The "pre-upgrade" graph has a Y-axis scale from 104 to 78 dB, but after the "upgrade," it shifts to 120 to 63 dB. It's still within a +/- 3 dB range, right?
He has NX-Oticas. Can find it here,,,
Here are Danny's posted measurements...
Not all that great for a $3000 kit (but it is his usual scaling), More confusingly, The NX-Tremes have the exact same posted measurements. The only 3rd party measures are for a comparable GR open baffle are from Amir's testing of a center channel. It did not fare well. 
P.S. The response under 1.2 kHz appears to be resonating badly (also indicated on the posted CSD). Power response is very uneven above that. Not going to EQ around it. Am sure it gets lavished with typical Danny superlatives. Much better alternatives can be found by gainphile and demonstrate a what a well-designed Ob is capable of achieving...
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So open baffles - yes that's going to be a lot different to a KEF in many, many ways.
All is explained. Not my cup of tea but I know people who love their OBs.
The "pre-upgrade" graph has a Y-axis scale from 104 to 78 dB, but after the "upgrade," it shifts to 120 to 63 dB. It's still within a +/- 3 dB range, right?
Yes, but both graphs are the original speaker response as measured by Danny. He uses a 25 dB scale whereas the standard industry is 50 dB.
My earlier post shows this roughly, I will make it clearer.
Old_School_Brad
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Oh, I understood it as the top one being the original and the bottom one showing the corrected crossover.
I understand, but was only trying to show how Danny makes the response look worse by manipulating the scale. To be fair, he does post his own speakers to the same scale.
P.S. Amir shows the same scaling game at the start of post #225
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