Are you still refusing to evaluate speakers in pairs? I continue to maintain those sort of subjective evaluations are meaningless and not useful to the consumer.
I think there is nothing subjective in measuring and listening just one speaker, and is logistically obvious. However, two reasons why you may have a point about measuring a pair... Firstly, two samples double the chance of catching something wrong in QC, even if they are presumably from the same batch, and we have seen QC issues aplenty surfacing here, certainly too much for comfort from consumer perspective.
Secondly, there is already discordance of some speakers with the subjective experience in mono vs what Amir expected drom the data. Even someone so bent on objectivity like Amir has aknowledged when he takes a listen afterwards and finds something he wasn't really expecting... So, those measurements tell us most, but not everything that is relevant to the way we perceive sound reproduced by transducers (not even taking in account room and psycoacoustics aspects wich are major influences). But the crux here, is that it always amazes me the trick our brain pulls when I hear a mono speaker or earphone, and then put the other on: the sudden illusion of a sonic scene is crazy, even more striking than going from 2D to quality 3D images for me ( I am familiar with those in medical imagery). That illusion is fundamental to me when I listen, almost so as a balanced frequency response and only happens when another transducer is in play. I would rather have a pair of speakers with minor issues in frequency response but that creates soundstage, or should I say, lays down the foundation from my wich my ear apparattus/brain processing creates such, than the reverse. So, if we see some speakers/headphones that from the measurements should sound the same in mono, and in mono already shows subjective discordance with data for even an objectivist to remark on, what can we expect when some of the tecnhical aspects we already know are relevant to the creation of that illusion (individual sensitivity and frequency response matching, phase response absolute and relative between both units for example), are neither taken in account in measurements, nor subjectively tested at the end..? Not so much as a tottaly wrecked FR, but a lot anyway..
Yes, mono is nice, but stereo is what it is all about for me, and I believe most. One of the most important aspects of that sepaker enjoyement gets left out, it seems.
However, all in all, I understand Amir position in this.
You and I are not managing schedulling, contacting, pick up and deliveries, hauling gear up and down and in and out , measuring the whole thing twice, fronting and managing this show, so Amir's decision is an obvious one. Gets the most relevant techical aspects in far more reliable, in-depth and breadth done than any other site I am aware of (no boot licking here intended, just tell it like I see it, ok? ) in what should be logistically already rather troublesome, but would be so much more if it had go double the trouble for every speaker and slow things down...At least headphones don't suffer from this.
