Danny Richie's latest...

[DanielT]

Sounds like the old skin effect malarkey…which does exist but only at frequencies well above hearing range and then only very marginally until much much higher frequencies. So yes technically very high frequencies will tend to conduct along the outside of a wire. But this has zero relevance to the frequencies used for audio reproduction or the lengths of wire one could ever use inside a building.

And then he implies the completely bonkers notion that AC electricity conducts “faster” in silver than copper. and that the difference is large enough for a 1ft to say 200ft run of wire that we can hear it. Not to mention the implication that such a difference is audible over issues like crossover phase shifts, diffraction patterns between drivers, room reflections, or even driver alignment.

My conclusion from claims like these is either: 1) person making them has bought so deeply into a mystical belief system that they just can’t see what they are saying is nonsense; 2) they are purposefully lying in a cynical attempt to separate consumers from their cash. Or both. One can believe things honestly but dishonestly use such beliefs.

Danny should watch electroboom’s recent video on skin effect.

Danny and his own concocted theories.

You wrote:Not to mention the implication that such a difference is audible over issues like crossover phase shifts, diffraction patterns between drivers, room reflections, or even driver alignment.

Speaking of phase, I remember Amir making a video about it. If you (you may already know what Amir is talking about) or if anyone else is interested, here it is:

Regarding Amir's no* in the title of the video. Thats a no* except for absolute phase, if I remember correctly what Amir brings up.

Plus the thread on the subject:

Does Phase Distortion/Shift Matter in Audio? (no*)

A viewer of my videos and member he suggested that I do a video commenting on a video that Paul McGown did on audibility of phase shifts. Here is Paul's video which was really about a different question (why we need wideband amplifiers) but turned it into phase being an audible problem: Here...

audiosciencereview.com

 

[Rick Sykora]

Danny has increased his video posts lately. His "Love GR-Research Products?" video got less than 6K views. Most of his upgrade videos get about 3 times that. So, his viewers are much more interested in seeing a speaker teardown than one about improving GR products. This is notable as few are likely to own the speaker being "upgraded". His cult-like followers lean toward subjectivism and regurgitate his litany as if they were laws of physics. When challenged to provide basic technical reasoning or evidence, rather than challenge Danny or admit their own incompetence, they often fall back to the "it sounds good to me" claim.

While I find some of his upgrade videos interesting, the latest videos that pander to audiophile fantasies are more pleas for attention as he attempts to pivot towards doing reviews. Major online reviewers are adding more measurements to their reviews and are likely eating away his peripheral audience. Many younger youtubers have more subscribers and can still cater to the audiophile bling crowd too. Afaik, they also are not censoring negative comments as Danny is known to do.

 

[SIY]

In my eyes he's just a dude who's taken a deep plunge into the placebo rabbit hole.

I don't believe that for a microsecond. Classic second-tier audio huckster.

 

[Killingbeans]

Possibly. I always assume ignorance before dishonesty. Probably more of a coping mechanism than rational thinking

 

[SIY]

Possibly. I always assume ignorance before dishonesty. Probably more of a coping mechanism than rational thinking

After all this time and all the debunking, there's no way I can attribute it to ignorance.

 

[Old_School_Brad]

That works to the advantage of dishonest people.

Jim

But to the benefit of a healthy mind.
You tend to become a bit cynical when you realize it's not like in the movies, where the hero always wins in the end.
I also approach people like this with the mindset of "they're clueless or ignorant until proven otherwise," and, more often than not, I find that to be the case. Whether that's a good thing or not, I'm not entirely sure, but I see it as the lesser of two evils.

 

[Killingbeans]

That works to the advantage of dishonest people.

Jim

Nahh, I won't buy their nonsense regardless. And the dishonesty will become apparent eventually from their arguments and behaviour.

 

[musicforcities]

Danny and his own concocted theories.

You wrote:Not to mention the implication that such a difference is audible over issues like crossover phase shifts, diffraction patterns between drivers, room reflections, or even driver alignment.

Speaking of phase, I remember Amir making a video about it. If you (you may already know what Amir is talking about) or if anyone else is interested, here it is:

Regarding Amir's no* in the title of the video. Thats a no* except for absolute phase, if I remember correctly what Amir brings up.

Plus the thread on the subject:

Does Phase Distortion/Shift Matter in Audio? (no*)

A viewer of my videos and member he suggested that I do a video commenting on a video that Paul McGown did on audibility of phase shifts. Here is Paul's video which was really about a different question (why we need wideband amplifiers) but turned it into phase being an audible problem: Here...

audiosciencereview.com

That is great video. I am not a crossover phase connoisseur. A well designed crossover for a well designed speaker is fine. And Swapping caps etc is just silly.

I have speakers with 36 part crossovers. And speakers (mordaunt short ms-30i) with first order crossovers with nothing but an inductor on the low and a film cap on the tweeter. In each case, drivers and crossover typologies are designed for each other and work very well. The ms30i has issues as any budget speaker does. But changing the crossovers to higher order just deviates from the design intent, solving some issues like beaming and a bit of woofer break up but at the cost of its relatively amazing imaging.

 

[musicforcities]

The problem there, as I have brought up before, is the conundrum implied by all of the above.

The measurement criteria was derived under blind listening conditions, but you will be listening under sighted conditions.

If sighted listening is by nature so unreliable, how are the measurements going to help predict your experience listening sighted to your loudspeakers?

Either the measurements will help predict what you will perceive under sighted listening or they will not.

If not, what use are they?

But if so, it suggests that sighted listening can be usefully accurate. (that under sighted conditions in your home you will accurately perceive the characteristics that made those speakers sound good under blind conditions.).

But we’ve been down this road before…

This statement contains something like a category error. What your saying is analogous to claiming that if there covid infection rates would be lower if there are fewer covid tests done.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Well we have another Klipsch speaker upgrade by Danny. Ofc, he claims there are major flaws. I have contended previously that Danny’s design process is flawed. One major failure is to not baseline his measurements. This is the case for this recent RP-6000F II upgrade. Erin measured and it was reasonably linear in the typical +/- 3 dB sense. Also, it would be bright as is louder above 200 Hz. Ofc, as Danny does not measure below 200 Hz, his new crossover does not address. He also claims the tweeter is out of phase. If so, could do a simple polarity reversal to test? He does not and instead goes on to design an entire new crossover.

It is noteworthy how well Danny has sold his followers on that almost every speaker crossover needs to be upgraded. However, they do not as readily question why so many speakers companies seem to employ incompetent designers? His zoomed scaling is a major staple of his upgrade sell job. He can find a nail almost every time and when he does, he gets out his crossover redesign hammer!


P.S. This speaker has nicely managed directivity, so responds well to eq. See below (after eq) from spinorama.org…

This is a pretty nice result and no need to pay GR or rip apart your speaker.

 

[egellings]

I totally agree. Doctors, lawyers and engineers are usually hard to deal with. Of course not ALL of them, just most of them. Doctors and lawyers know it all and our obviously (in their mind) always the smartest person in the room. Engineers are over the top technical. Generally poor teachers and jump into details that any non-audio person does not understand. But there is hope! Off on the horizon you see a guy mounted on a white horse trotting your way. He seems ten feet tall in the saddle. Once he arrives it is our own famous Amir. He is here to teach non-audio, non-engineers the basics, so they can at the very least make some value judgements and dodge the snake oil. So as I always say there are two types on ASR, the hardcore engineers (who argue with each other) and are fun to read, then the others are regular non-engineer people who just want to make wiser decisions and learn. So, in reality you can learn A LOT on ASR. All the way into high tech engineering if you want to get into it. Long live ASR! Amir for President! Oh wait, I might have gotten carried away.

Professionals are likely competent in their fields of endeavor, but once outside of their chosen field, then they would be no better than the rest of us chickens. Bedawk!

 

[egellings]

This statement contains something like a category error. What your saying is analogous to claiming that if there covid infection rates would be lower if there are fewer covid tests done.

Yep. The more you test, the more you find, so stop testing and the problem goes away.

 

[MattHooper]

Yep. The more you test, the more you find, so stop testing and the problem goes away.

Sneaky. ;-)

 

[egellings]

Sneaky. ;-)

Ours is not to wonder why; just invert, and multiply.

 

[Ktacos]

Well we have another Klipsch speaker upgrade by Danny. Ofc, he claims there are major flaws. I have contended previously that Danny’s design process is flawed. One major failure is to not baseline his measurements. This is the case for this recent RP-6000F II upgrade. Erin measured and it was reasonably linear in the typical +/- 3 dB sense. Also, it would be bright as is louder above 200 Hz. Ofc, as Danny does not measure below 200 Hz, his new crossover does not address. He also claims the tweeter is out of phase. If so, could do a simple polarity reversal to test? He does not and instead goes on to design an entire new crossover.

It is noteworthy how well Danny has sold his followers on that almost every speaker crossover needs to be upgraded. However, they do not as readily question why so many speakers companies seem to employ incompetent designers? His zoomed scaling is a major staple of his upgrade sell job. He can find a nail almost every time and when he does, he gets out his crossover redesign hammer!


P.S. This speaker has nicely managed directivity, so responds well to eq. See below from spinorama.org…

View attachment 408114

This is a pretty nice result and no need to pay GR or rip apart your speaker.

Bonkers to me that anyone would look at this response and say "I can fix this".

 

[Matt_Holland]

Well we have another Klipsch speaker upgrade by Danny. Ofc, he claims there are major flaws. I have contended previously that Danny’s design process is flawed. One major failure is to not baseline his measurements. This is the case for this recent RP-6000F II upgrade. Erin measured and it was reasonably linear in the typical +/- 3 dB sense. Also, it would be bright as is louder above 200 Hz. Ofc, as Danny does not measure below 200 Hz, his new crossover does not address. He also claims the tweeter is out of phase. If so, could do a simple polarity reversal to test? He does not and instead goes on to design an entire new crossover.

It is noteworthy how well Danny has sold his followers on that almost every speaker crossover needs to be upgraded. However, they do not as readily question why so many speakers companies seem to employ incompetent designers? His zoomed scaling is a major staple of his upgrade sell job. He can find a nail almost every time and when he does, he gets out his crossover redesign hammer!


P.S. This speaker has nicely managed directivity, so responds well to eq. See below from spinorama.org…

View attachment 408114

This is a pretty nice result and no need to pay GR or rip apart your speaker.

Is the graph you posted from an EQ’d speaker? The graphs on Erin’s website look much more like what Danny measured.

Erin’s review

 

[Rick Sykora]

Is the graph you posted from an EQ’d speaker? The graphs on Erin’s website look much more like what Danny measured.

Erin’s review

Yes, it is the AFTER eq graph. The graph title does not call this out well, so I updated my post to emphasize.

My point is that the speaker's directivity is good enough to use eq to remediate and NOT waste money on a ($750) crossover upgrade (that may still leave a bass shelf under 200 Hz).

 

[Matt_Holland]

Yes, it is the AFTER eq graph. The graph title does not call this out well, so I updated my post to emphasize.

My point is that the speaker's directivity wis good enough to use eq to remediate and NOT waste money on a crossover upgrade (that may still leave a bass shelf under 200 Hz).

I have called Danny out a few times on his YT channel where his crossover upgrade fixes an on-axis dip only to introduce an off-axis trend for a peak in its place, typically caused by baffle diffraction of the tweeter’s response. I believe the on-axis dip at the crossover point (earlier tweeter roll-off) is often deliberate so as to give a smoother in-room response when diffraction effects can’t be managed in other ways. It also improves power handling of the tweeter, useful in budget designs.

Danny is not incompetent by any stretch but he knows enough to convince the uneducated audiophile.

Some of his upgrades are very good and you can see this in the frequency responses, more often though he messes up the off-axis.

He’s a good salesman for sure. And I am guilty of enjoying his upgrade videos.

 

[kyuu]

Hell, it seems like most of the fix for the R6000F can be accomplished with a shelving filter of -3dB or so from 250Hz up.

 

[Matt_Holland]

Hell, it seems like most of the fix for the R6000F can be accomplished with a shelving filter of -3dB or so from 250Hz up.

Yep. Basically removing the “house” sound.