Why? It is what is attainable. Interestingly, for the author, what was most important in the "Is it real or is it memorex" test was room acoustics and not speakers/amps. It would be interesting to know which were used however.Interesting for sure, but of little help for practical comparison here
Please name a few commercially available recordings, acoustic guitar, sax, trumpet ... that have this special "gestalt" for the readers to listen to and evaluate on their own system. I prefer anything that is available on Deezer.
Anecdotally, a professional oboist told me many times, that he can't stand recordings of his instrument. He always argues with the engineers, but they are quite stubborn in polishing the sound beyond recognition. A pianist, not in the recording business, doesn't care about the sound of recordings at all--it's sh*te anyway, she says. She listens to them for reference regarding interpretation in respect to timing and such, but never 'tone'. The precious sweet sound from the stereo is for the naive.Some recording engineers are great at capturing the real sound, some not so much.
but many artists, often less well known but highly talented, make recordings in their own studios that they are happy enough with to release. A Bluegrass artist friend comes to mind.Anecdotally, a professional oboist told me many times, that he can't stand recordings of his instrument. He always argues with the engineers, but they are quite stubborn in polishing the sound beyond recognition. A pianist, not in the recording business, doesn't care about the sound of recordings at all--it's sh*te anyway, she says. She listens to them for reference regarding interpretation in respect to timing and such, but never 'tone'. The precious sweet sound from the stereo is for the naive.
In that sense the audiophile might be right in saying, that many recordings are badly done. But more often it is because his speciality speakers, unforgiving in revealing defects in cables, amps, recording (all the same), are sounded, 'voiced' as they say. Sometimes studio engineers also follow the audiophile narrative. We need the standard for a 'home curve' identical in the studio and at home. A standard like with screws (metric!
Sure, the recoding process shall convey the musical intentions. The how-to cannot be prescribed. But regarding the tool, nothing else is a loudspeaker, we could agree on a standard. I personally think that the development of the technical possibilities is mostly through. Very much like with aeroplanes for commercial use, or internal combustion machines.It's an art, and obviously everybody has their own ideas about what the recording process is or is not. That's not likely to be standardized.
Well, I don't have a dog in this race, since my speakers are DIY. But I'll observe that, after a lot of trying different things, my in-room response looks remarkably like the in-room response Amir recommends.Sure, the recoding process shall convey the musical intentions. The how-to cannot be prescribed. But regarding the tool, nothing else is a loudspeaker, we could agree on a standard. I personally think that the development of the technical possibilities is mostly through. Very much like with aeroplanes for commercial use, or internal combustion machines.
A lot of sophistry to legitimise conflating non-auditory stimuli and auditory stimuli, to rationalise fetishising esoteric cottage industry designs, and in irrational fear of engineering informed by (psycho)acoustics disrupting this fetishisation and status signalling of one as a connoisseur belonging to a special few. It seems utterly bizarre to me to see someone tie themselves up in making loudspeakers seem much more arcane than in actuality with some pseudo-intellectual tract.
It's OK with me, especially in that you actually read my post, so thank you, but you took the one statement out of my post, and replied to it out of context with the rest of my post. It was only a part of my reply to the question "Do we want all speakers to sound the same?" So the single statement wasn't intended to stand on its own.
I'm not able to get my head around your discussion of the speakers, though. You know that the Devore's don't measure as well as the Performa F228be, but you didn't buy either of them, you bought Thiels and Josephs, but you don't know how they measure compared to the two you mention auditioning, so how do you know that you don't actually prefer the better measuring speaker?
In any event, if we want all speakers to sound the same, what criteria will "we" (who?) use? Scientific measurement? Which measures? Who decides? Does a final decision on the speaker specs rule out incremental improvements over time? If not, voila, we have at least two speakers, A and B, and they don't sound the same. Now what?
which Joseph speaker did you ended up using? I did a quick search they seems to be pretty flat and with ok directivity, but some have boosted bass and some with a midbass dip. with such I suspect it's the bass response in room making you feel so, like if you put them really near front wall/corner, the Revel will have bloated and mudd bass due to massive bass hump while the josepth with a mid bass dip can make it sound cleaner, opposite can be possible if the joseph have a bass bump and you put it in the location where the bass is cancelled out a bit, for the on axis response and limited directivity plot on stereophile it don't seem like much is different from the revelI was aware of the context. However, if someone is making a sound argument every premise has to hold up.
It's like if I argued
1. My contention is that many North Americans only like McDonalds burgers because they haven't experienced eating a home-made burger.
But:
2. They could be educated to prefer home made burgers.
That first premise is likely false. Many people who eat at Mcdonald's have likely made or eaten home-made burgers. Adding the second premise doesn't make the first premise any less false.
Similarly I felt you were starting with, at least in many cases, a likely a false premise: "My contention is that listeners only "prefer" some speakers because they haven't experienced speakers that measure better." That was a pretty unequivocal statement, which is why I mentioned there are numerous exceptions (from what I've seen). Of course I'm referring to how most people hear speakers: casual listening, not rigorous blind testing.
As to the idea people can be educated out of their current preference is, I suppose, plausible in some cases. Hasn't worked for my wife though - 22 years of being married to an audiophile and she still prefers listening on her laptop :_)
Stereophile has measurements for both the Joseph Perspective and Revel Performa speakers. If I'd only gone on the measurements, using the criteria many hear use, I suppose I would have just chosen the Performa's. Except I auditioned both pretty exensively and highly preferred the Joseph speakers. (I also preferred the Devores to the Performa...though again, there was a question mark about whether I'd get along with the Devores over the long run in my home).
Good questions!
Please name a few commercially available recordings, acoustic guitar, sax, trumpet ... that have this special "gestalt" for the readers to listen to and evaluate on their own system. I prefer anything that is available on Deezer.
which Joseph speaker did you ended up using? I did a quick search they seems to be pretty flat and with ok directivity, but some have boosted bass and some with a midbass dip. with such I suspect it's the bass response in room making you feel so, like if you put them really near front wall/corner, the Revel will have bloated and mudd bass due to massive bass hump while the josepth with a mid bass dip can make it sound cleaner, opposite can be possible if the joseph have a bass bump and you put it in the location where the bass is cancelled out a bit, for the on axis response and limited directivity plot on stereophile it don't seem like much is different from the revel
Well from stereophile it have a upward tilting treble, which, would explain the vivid and apparent clarity and is a typical showroom tuningI own the Joseph Audio Perspective speakers. (And Thiel 2.7).
From my experience (and the experience of many others), both the Devore and Joseph speakers need quite a bit of room to "breath" in terms of being away from the back wall. Otherwise the bass overwhelms.
However I was able to manipulate seating and speaker positioning when I auditioned the Devore, Joseph and Revel speakers. All pulled well out from the back wall, and away from side-walls. The Revels sounded VERY even and balanced. The Devores still rich in the bass. The Joseph closer to the Revels, but still a little richer in the mid bass. One of the main things that attracted me to the Joseph speakers when I encountered them at an audio shop was a particular type of clarity and smoothness. Other speakers sounded, for lack of better word, a tad "grainy" in comparison. Listening to instruments played on the Josephs was like looking at colorful pebbles at the bottom of the stream, where the water had been cleaned of all silt, so the colors seemed so clean and vivid. In that same sense, the exact timbral qualities of voices, acoustic instruments etc sounded so clearly revealed and"free of distortion" and grain or mechanical/electronic artifact, that I was continually blown away. I just did not get this impression to the same degree on the Revel (or the Devore). And it's this "pure/clear/grainless" character that, I later found out, was cited by most reviewers of the Joseph speakers, as well as many listeners and owners. I don't think it's magic - any audible differences will be somewhere in the measurements. But...it's kind of subtle thing that I personally wouldn't be able to tell from the measurements of the Revel/Joseph speakers. I mean, I heard "competent" sound from the Revels, but I could take or leave the listening experience. Whereas I couldn't tear myself away from the Joseph speakers when listening. I still can't whenever I sit down in front of them. This kind of stuff gets a shrug and an eye-roll around here, so...I'm left to choose speakers as I hear them. Which is fine by me.
I think that for some reason you won't grasp the whole, you seem to want to pick one piece and put a hole in it.I was aware of the context. However, if someone is making a sound argument every premise has to hold up.
It's like if I argued
1. My contention is that many North Americans only like McDonalds burgers because they haven't experienced eating a home-made burger.
But:
2. They could be educated to prefer home made burgers.
That first premise is likely false. Many people who eat at Mcdonald's have likely made or eaten home-made burgers. Adding the second premise doesn't make the first premise any less false.
Similarly I felt you were starting with, at least in many cases, a likely a false premise: "My contention is that listeners only "prefer" some speakers because they haven't experienced speakers that measure better." That was a pretty unequivocal statement, which is why I mentioned there are numerous exceptions (from what I've seen). Of course I'm referring to how most people hear speakers: casual listening, not rigorous blind testing.
As to the idea people can be educated out of their current preference is, I suppose, plausible in some cases. Hasn't worked for my wife though - 22 years of being married to an audiophile and she still prefers listening on her laptop :_)
Stereophile has measurements for both the Joseph Perspective and Revel Performa speakers. If I'd only gone on the measurements, using the criteria many hear use, I suppose I would have just chosen the Performa's. Except I auditioned both pretty exensively and highly preferred the Joseph speakers. (I also preferred the Devores to the Performa...though again, there was a question mark about whether I'd get along with the Devores over the long run in my home).
Good questions!
Well from stereophile it have a upward tilting treble, which, would explain the vivid and apparent clarity and is a typical showroom tuning
I think that for some reason you won't grasp the whole, you seem to want to pick one piece and put a hole in it.
It's not at all like your burgers; the point is , that you agree that there will only be a reference-burger, no MacDonald's burgers exist, so you will be educated to believe that home-made burgers are the best, or you won't be eating burgers. Get it? It's not about your wife's laptop, or your guitars, or the speakers you did or didn't buy, or the fact that cymbals from different manufacturers all sound a little bit different. It's about whether we want all speakers to sound the same. You asked the question in opening this thread; I slapped together a quasi-futuristic scenario illustrating perhaps one possible answer to your question for someone maybe to think about. So I did that.
As an aside, it's now interesting to me that I've never "referred" to my own acoustic guitar playing tones when evaluating speakers, as picky as I am about their tone.
See you in the next thread .
By now it seems more like sighted bias than anything, but as long as you feel happy, you can go whatever direction u goYep. Though I've heard the newer version which is less tipped up and it has the same "super clean" quality. I also have listened to plenty of speakers that have a treble emphasis (e.g. B&W, some Focal, Kudos speakers and a bunch of others) and those didn't strike me as having the specific "grain-free" sound I'm trying to describe. In fact I suffer from Tinnitus and hyperacusis, which means my ears are VERY sensitive and don't do well with obvious high frequency peaks in most speakers. Had I seen the measurements first I might have written off these speakers. Yet, there is something about the sense of low grain/low distortion in the sound of the Josephs that actually allowed me to turn them up louder than I do for other speakers, without discomfort. Something I'd have to hear for myself, and not what I might have predicted from the measurements.
By now it seems more like sighted bias than anything, but as long as you feel happy, you can go whatever direction u go