-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Do We Want All Speakers To Sound The Same ?
- Thread starter MattHooper
- Start date
Well if blind folded sound don’t sound different to you, it’s perfectly fine just to choose the best looking or most wallet friendly ones
OP
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2019
- Messages
- 7,337
- Likes
- 12,303
- Thread Starter
- #183
Ok. Then....
But if our sighted impressions will screw up the sound so much, why expect to perceive the "sound we liked" during the blind test when listening sighted?
Can we detect "poor, better, good, great" sound in sighted conditions, or not? If not...again...what does it matter if we detected them in the blind tests?
We aren't listening blinded at home.
I agree with that. It's a reasonable approach. But, as I say, you can't get there by starting with the idea our sighted listening is completely unreliable. For the reasons I've been giving. If our sighted impressions are too unreliable, then the results of blind listening can never port over to what we'll experience when we listen to the speakers in normal cited conditions. That's all
I would say personally I do prefer blind test data, or say it this way, I try a few tone curve and determined I don't really like the extra flavour and prefer anechoically neutral speakers, that's starting point, then I do the sighted/biased choice, which aspects of design I like more and within budget.Ok. Then....
But if our sighted impressions will screw up the sound so much, why expect to perceive the "sound we liked" during the blind test when listening sighted?
Can we detect "poor, better, good, great" sound in sighted conditions, or not? If not...again...what does it matter if we detected them in the blind tests?
We aren't listening blinded at home.
I agree with that. It's a reasonable approach. But, as I say, you can't get there by starting with the idea our sighted listening is completely unreliable. For the reasons I've been giving. If our sighted impressions are too unreliable, then the results of blind listening can never port over to what we'll experience when we listen to the speakers in normal cited conditions. That's all
for sighted listening test more often than not we can't detect not too great a difference in sound, unless one is say really distorted, really boomy or so, worse still our brain do run in and adapt to the sound, that's what all those marketing claims of hundreds of hours running in with you in the room for it to "sound the best"
Thing is: I believe we know what we prefer in the sighted difference, like which looks better, wood vs metal vs plastic, powered vs passive or even textures in the drivers, so just to say if you value look/brand more than pure sound, just go for that, it's our own money and it's perfectly fine to get what makes one happy, and don't forget, even in my approach of looking at the tone (measurements) and then do subjective choice for look etc. I am still biased as not choosing the absolutely best measuring one in the batch, but what I consider "I can't discern" and then go full into my bias of value and look. when the new toy syndrome kicks in I doubt anyone would regret their choice be it from sighted listening or objective approach, but it would hard to tell in a few months or years will one regret. You know, when one gets used to the look in your home, it's easier for that few songs to really highlight the flaws like piercing highs or so
Just to add, it's like in ideal world, all speakers should sound the same which is really true to the source without distortion and limiter kicking in, so that the speaker choice will be based on pure taste on the artistic design rather than the sound constraining my appreciation of the design.Ok. Then....
But if our sighted impressions will screw up the sound so much, why expect to perceive the "sound we liked" during the blind test when listening sighted?
Can we detect "poor, better, good, great" sound in sighted conditions, or not? If not...again...what does it matter if we detected them in the blind tests?
We aren't listening blinded at home.
I agree with that. It's a reasonable approach. But, as I say, you can't get there by starting with the idea our sighted listening is completely unreliable. For the reasons I've been giving. If our sighted impressions are too unreliable, then the results of blind listening can never port over to what we'll experience when we listen to the speakers in normal cited conditions. That's all
For example I would really appreciate Focal design over Genelec for look alone, their active price range is similar plus measurements are both in the "good enough" ballpark for me. But then I google for the focal shape 50 and 8030C for reliability or so and found the Focal have multiple reports in various forums of the standby mode working weirdly plus it uses class AB amp without a massive heatsink at the back, that puts me on a hold as I don't want to part with the new toy for months plus the shipping cost to and forth when it goes bad. next up I asked my wife would she keep putting stuffs leaning on the side of the speaker and when she says yes, the sideway passive radiator is a ban, and here I go, from the short list to final purchase of 8030C, after a year I still don't regret and just enjoy the tidal stream all night long. Maybe I would be similarly satisifisied with the focal and it may last similarly long, but hey, who knows? I only know it will get me trouble convincing my wife to put her stuff else where and that is extra trouble, why bother?
I just don’t believe non-audible stimuli provide a stationary (unchanging, predictable) effect. No real way to prove it. But the upgrade treadmill and high-end audio’s changing visual fashions are consistent with non-stationary sighted and confirmation biases.
Last edited:
well I did mentioned it is by measurement to get my own shortlist for the objectively good enough for my use and budget, and for the importance of blind test is what it gave the result for the preference of anechoically neutral speaker, which the directivity gives good enough EQ fine tune ability to me, I never said always go for the best measured one, rather, good enough in transparency and then go for personal sighted preference. I am on the objective camp where the speaker is to be objectively better, the better, evaluating the performance in blind test in a massive scale is important, not the single day blind test.@YSC
Your way of choosing speakers is as much a pre-made choice as any other sighted parameter. Did you do a blind test to come up with the choice of speakers you have now, I don't think you did, but still telling others how important it is doing it blind.
Personal constrain and preference is another issue. I am always telling others that objective better is important in evaluating speaker, not choosing a speaker for anyone.
Just to say for example, I won't say the 8030C is better than the D&D 8C, the Buchardt A500, KEF LS50 wireless etc. they are in same ball park of objective neutrality but these either have better extension, or better vertical directivity. I read the objective data and get the best I would accept in asthetic or reliability and price, but if my choice is the best sounding speaker in that range? highly likely not, but I don't tell others they say the 8030C is bass shy or distorts in high SPL that they are wrong, coz my own listening exp don't have those issues
well I did mentioned it is by measurement to get my own shortlist for the objectively good enough for my use and budget, and for the importance of blind test is what it gave the result for the preference of anechoically neutral speaker, which the directivity gives good enough EQ fine tune ability to me, I never said always go for the best measured one, rather, good enough in transparency and then go for personal sighted preference. I am on the objective camp where the speaker is to be objectively better, the better, evaluating the performance in blind test in a massive scale is important, not the single day blind test.
Personal constrain and preference is another issue. I am always telling others that objective better is important in evaluating speaker, not choosing a speaker for anyone.
Just to say for example, I won't say the 8030C is better than the D&D 8C, the Buchardt A500, KEF LS50 wireless etc. they are in same ball park of objective neutrality but these either have better extension, or better vertical directivity. I read the objective data and get the best I would accept in asthetic or reliability and price, but if my choice is the best sounding speaker in that range? highly likely not, but I don't tell others they say the 8030C is bass shy or distorts in high SPL that they are wrong, coz my own listening exp don't have those issues
Blind testing is not done to make sure the speakers are anechoically neutral, it’s done to make sure which one YOU prefer. The way you are doing it is not any better than someone just choosing between B&W speakers because they have a pre set assumption they love the house sound of that brand.
You should also do a blind test, otherwise you can’t be sure about the speakers you choose between.
Last edited:
what? I didn't say ppl should buy speaker with blind test themselves, I only stated that we should prefer the objectively better ones with anechoically neutral FR and good directivity, which, by the blind test done by the researches, is what most ppl prefer in a good room, case closed. I am always the camp to choose the short list with measurements, not blind/sighted tests.
if possible, a blind test done in my setup, my home of course could give the final answer of the exact model that I liked most, but then, the good enough is my key and I personally would not go deeper in the money burning way, what's wrong with that? the difference between the house sound approach vs neutral speaker with good EQ response via directivity? stated multiple times, is that a good speaker with controlled directivity could dial in the house curve easily, where on with poor directivity will sound akward with EQ above schroeder frequency.
Hopefully not! But as I said, the focus at home is different from that in the showroom.
So if you advocate sighted listening as the last refinement in evaluating speakers, it should be done at the individual people's homes. The visual perspective should then include the inventory. As I come to the inventory, what about the listening chair?
But you already mentioned the solution for the stated problem. If all speakers were equally good, then the consumer would have two problems left to solve. Which specimen would fit the room's acoustic best, and which would fit the room's visual outfit best. The first problem shall be solved with an activated logical brain, the latter by letting the relaxed intuition flow.
In other words, why not seperating the task of chosing a luxury product of no further importance in two distinctive steps, given that all contenders are equally worth the money in terms of their technical operation?
All I want is a speaker with quality enough components and design, so it CAN provide an accurate enough representation of the source material, and as such responds well to EQ, so I can then dial in my own personal taste which is MOST DEFINITELY NOT a completely flat response.
Personal preference is real, a speakers ability to achieve that is the search
well I would say it is possible, but with my music mainly on streaming music with different era's recording and differnet in mixing preference, what I choose is to get it to the target curve in bass and as neutral as possible so I would enjoy the music itself, not music+house sound in every single music I get into, it is indeed a eutopia unachievable at least in my lifetime, but then, when not sure which music I would prefer what house sound, the logical choice is to minimize the addition flavour, and frankly speaking, from my year long daily usage, I found that I prefer different curves with a few music varies with conditions, that's when I just set in a few curves I prefer and activate it by a click, so I do the flavour in tonal balance when wanted, not the speaker designer
It is perfectly possible to prefer coloured loudspeakers, after all it is what most people have become accustomed to for the last forty years.
I have been told many times that colouration is preferred because woodwinds sound woodier etc etc .
Keith
I have been told many times that colouration is preferred because woodwinds sound woodier etc etc .
Keith
One must be more brutal here: It is not that when we are listening sighted, we hear this or that according to what our eyes see and the sound just stays that way forever. Sound is still sound, what our brain however makes out of it changes from situation.
Our vision is dominant over our hearing, biologically, and influences how we rate our sonic perceptions. When you buy the speaker with an eccentric frequency response, but it had these diamond membrane woofers and the high gloss finish, sighted, they sounded good, because your brain was imagining how they would decorate your livelihood and make you appear respected and a gentleman of good taste. Another day, you find asking yourself if they make you appear like a prick, your eyes look upon them negatively and they do not suite the room as good as previously thought. Now you hear this etching sound and it creeps to your mind, nagging. Why did I buy them?
The sound is a hard fact, as is the interdependence of vision and hearing. But it is not that we can simply hear what we want because we derive it from visual imagination. The sound is there, and as soon as our established mental image of the speaker collapses, we can perceive it again with our hearing.
I am the proud owner of a chipboard monkey coffin with a 10-inch PA driver, compression driver and waveguide. A very simple speaker. It is driven by a DSP amplifier. I am limited by gated indoor measurements, and due to the low resolution at lower frequencies, there is always some doubt if I had actually set up everything correctly. This is going for about two years now. And I have made changes to the filters throughout the time.
Recently, I read a post by @kimmosto how waveguides would create a closed in sound. And yes: I was looking at the 90x45 waveguide and I could hear it: no spaciousness, very contained. I knew, and I could see it, it was this speaker construction. I had clearly invested in the wrong approach. The lack of openness, I reasoned, is also because it is lacking a dedicated midrange. And waveguides after all are not as useful. However there was an issue with the waveguide causing this: How could I then enjoy so much the Genelec 8030A at the broadcasting office? They have a waveguide. Obviously it must be the dome tweeter I thought.
After some more time living in painful doubts, I thought: So you had slightly reduced the airy frequency range from 3k to 8k. What if below that, some energy was missing? I added a 0.3 dB boost around 1.7 kHz with a low Q PEQ, where there might be some energy missing because of the crossover at 1.25 kHz. It sounded so gorgeous! It just opened up the whole presentation.
And so I once again had to discard an assumption that I had created from written knowledge, projected onto the speaker as visual object. This is so hard to learn, and it has happened so many times already. Bass, anechoic bass vs. room gain, low mids, obviously the 1k region, 3 to 8k presence region, lastly the airy bit above. I had found etching sound to be exceptionally clear, boomy setups to be full, anemic setups to be precise, closed-in setups to be balanced. All the time, the ears where slower than my pre-established concept of what they would be hearing, and they were patient and accepting my ignorance for weeks over weeks. Until, finally, my brain gave room for their perceptions and I heard something wrong and needed to find out what it was.
The same here. My previous big waveguide/horn setup sounded exceptionally airy, but distant, while the more common dome tweeter approach, currently in evaluation, closes me in. I think it is the famous 'immersion'?
Anyway, it is advisable to not take common generalisations too seriously.
Only that I had found out that it was not the case. But what you describe as immersion might well be the width of the pattern, as many speakers with dome tweeters are constructed to radiate wider than horn speakers. This means more early reflections, more spacial cues from your own room inserted into the playback of the recording, which is detrimental to the image of the original recording but sounds more engulfing.
The wild card is the micing used in the recording process. Some recording engineers are great at capturing the real sound, some not so much.
We want them to all sound the same; a perfect reproduction that we can butcher to suit, if we so choose.
You have two speaker cabs that are exactly alike (A and B), they both measure perfectly, but B has a tweeter with a slight tear in it.
B measures poorly as compared to A, and sounds like garbage, to boot. No one would prefer it over A.
My contention is that listeners only "prefer" some speakers because they haven't experienced speakers that measure better.
And, any listener that thinks they prefer a B speaker can be "educated" to prefer A.
But hey, since all speakers are perfect and sound the same, who would know the difference? There'll be no other object to place in comparison.
Better yet, we have perfect sounding ear buds. We all have them; they're inexpensive; they're implanted at birth. We all hear the same music the same way- a blue-tooth kind of thing.
Even better, no ear buds are needed. A user simply puts a box (a streaming amp) down anywhere in the living space, rubs it to turn it on, and voila, perfect sound to what the user perceives as his/her ears, via "brain waves".
Since speakers now all sound the same, and they're all perfect, we wouldn't care a whit. We'd find some other imperfection that affected our lives and agonize over solutions to that issue. This is what humans do.
That speakers used to sound different from each other would be only a memory, and at that, a memory that all except the one we use now were inferior.
You have two speaker cabs that are exactly alike (A and B), they both measure perfectly, but B has a tweeter with a slight tear in it.
B measures poorly as compared to A, and sounds like garbage, to boot. No one would prefer it over A.
My contention is that listeners only "prefer" some speakers because they haven't experienced speakers that measure better.
And, any listener that thinks they prefer a B speaker can be "educated" to prefer A.
But hey, since all speakers are perfect and sound the same, who would know the difference? There'll be no other object to place in comparison.
Better yet, we have perfect sounding ear buds. We all have them; they're inexpensive; they're implanted at birth. We all hear the same music the same way- a blue-tooth kind of thing.
Even better, no ear buds are needed. A user simply puts a box (a streaming amp) down anywhere in the living space, rubs it to turn it on, and voila, perfect sound to what the user perceives as his/her ears, via "brain waves".
Since speakers now all sound the same, and they're all perfect, we wouldn't care a whit. We'd find some other imperfection that affected our lives and agonize over solutions to that issue. This is what humans do.
That speakers used to sound different from each other would be only a memory, and at that, a memory that all except the one we use now were inferior.
Similar threads
