ErinsAudioCorner

[hardisj]

Dooooooods. You guys are great. I seriously appreciate it!

 

[sweetchaos]

Let's keep this party going.

 

[hardisj]

I was just trying to do some comparisons between some speakers I have tested and thought I should make it easier on myself by putting some of the basics from the results in to a spreadsheet. It's hard to really capture the overall performance of a speaker with a few metrics but this captures some of the big stats sensitivity, ±1.5dB and ±3dB response region on-axis and max SPL.

Feel free to give it a look. I realize I could add some other factors but I don't want this to become additional work. Besides, you need to look at the data to get the whole story. For example, horizontal and vertical dispersion @ 10kHz is just a snapshot. It could be much worse at the crossover. But defining and assigning a metric to that is kind of odd because it will vary at different frequencies and you can't easily throw that in a single cell or set of cells without the sheet becoming pointless as a "quick look".

And, yea, I would like to add some graphs to these such as on-axis, listening window and other data but honestly, I just don't have the time to do that.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iHiinala9exYa8dv32RoXi2QRqcmUc7troJgCXnrWtM/edit?usp=sharing

 

[hardisj]

View attachment 85586

I legit love that song.

 

[hardisj]

Seriously, you guys, I don't know how else to say "thank you" but ... thank you. These donations are unexpected and unsolicited but extremely, extremely helpful. I'll post up why shortly.

 

[Nusse]

.

 

[sweetchaos]

$10 overbudget, so I'll just make coffee at home for a bit and save $ on the coffee runs.

Donated $160usd so far.

 

[sweetchaos]

How much money would we have wasted if not for reputable reviewers like Amir or Erin?

Think of the donations as money that would have otherwise be wasted on awful measuring gear (that's usually overhyped by the so called "gurus" of the audio industry). Instead, the donations are contributing towards a cause that will save us from overspending anyway.
Seriously, if we haven't found a community like ASR, and by the extension Erin as well, how much money would we have wasted towards questionable gear? I'm guessing in the thousands of dollars.

If you understand and appreciate that, I'm sure donations will never stop coming.
-My 2 cents.

 

[Absolute]

I'm too retarded to figure out how to screenshot and/or find those screenshots after the event, but 30 USD sent your way @hardisj

 

[hardisj]

I am at a loss for words. I just don’t know how to keep saying I truly appreciate it. But I hope that conveys my gratitude.

I used some of the donation money to purchase this hand truck to help me haul the big boy subwoofers to their test location. Would have thrown my back out getting these down the front porch steps and in to the garage without this thing and I would have likely tried without your contributions. So, my back thanks you. As does my wife.

 

[Absolute]

It's a true pleasure because of your beautiful personality as well as the excellent high-quality information you gift us.

 

[MZKM]

I was just trying to do some comparisons between some speakers I have tested and thought I should make it easier on myself by putting some of the basics from the results in to a spreadsheet. It's hard to really capture the overall performance of a speaker with a few metrics but this captures some of the big stats sensitivity, ±1.5dB and ±3dB response region on-axis and max SPL.

Feel free to give it a look. I realize I could add some other factors but I don't want this to become additional work. Besides, you need to look at the data to get the whole story. For example, horizontal and vertical dispersion @ 10kHz is just a snapshot. It could be much worse at the crossover. But defining and assigning a metric to that is kind of odd because it will vary at different frequencies and you can't easily throw that in a single cell or set of cells without the sheet becoming pointless as a "quick look".

And, yea, I would like to add some graphs to these such as on-axis, listening window and other data but honestly, I just don't have the time to do that.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iHiinala9exYa8dv32RoXi2QRqcmUc7troJgCXnrWtM/edit?usp=sharing


View attachment 85588

I would ditch the frequency range a speaker is linear in. I would simply calculate the +/- in a range. I for instance do this on the rated range as well as 80Hz-20kHz.
I have been meaning to do another range, also starting at 80Hz, but limiting the high frequencies, to maybe 16kHz or 18kHz.

As for the 10kHz dispersion, that’s a good metric.

I would scrap F3 & F10 and simplify it to just F6.

Also, for my speaker selector shareable sheet, I made the distinction between port placement, as some people may not care if sealed or front ported, but do care about rear-ported because they need to place a speaker very close to the front wall. Some speakers are both (maybe front for the woofer and rear for the midrange), so I‘d just call it rear-ported, so it can be filter out. I don’t state if it’s a 2/3/etc. way (don’t see the need, as hopefully a better controlled directivity speaker will have a higher preference rating), I do state if it’s a monopole or dipole/Omni though.

_____

Why did the BMR have less max SPL when a crossover was added? Cool to see a ~10dB increase in some speakers, that’s very substantial.

 

[Certainkindoffool]

How much money would we have wasted if not for reputable reviewers like Amir or Erin?

Think of the donations as money that would have otherwise be wasted on awful measuring gear (that's usually overhyped by the so called "gurus" of the audio industry). Instead, the donations are contributing towards a cause that will save us from overspending anyway.
Seriously, if we haven't found a community like ASR, and by the extension Erin as well, how much money would we have wasted towards questionable gear? I'm guessing in the thousands of dollars.

If you understand and appreciate that, I'm sure donations will never stop coming.
-My 2 cents.

I would probably go a different direction with this. Until I knew exactly what performance I could get with my dollar and where - I was very comfortable making small audio purchases of products that could be easily resold, and flipping them when they didn't make me happy.

These objective analysts are entirely responsible for my annual audio budget having increased several fold this last year.

Not complaining though. Thanks!

 

[spacevector]

Feel free to give it a look. I realize I could add some other factors but I don't want this to become additional work. Besides, you need to look at the data to get the whole story. For example, horizontal and vertical dispersion @ 10kHz is just a snapshot. It could be much worse at the crossover. But defining and assigning a metric to that is kind of odd because it will vary at different frequencies and you can't easily throw that in a single cell or set of cells without the sheet becoming pointless as a "quick look".

Hi Erin, For the dispersion metric, I have a suggestion for you. How about you define it as the angular region where the frequency response remains between, say, +/-3dB of on-axis response. You can eyeball this from the normalized responses you publish.

For example, for the Selah Purezza, to me horizontal coverage is +/-45 degrees and vertical coverage is +/-5 degrees.

Buchardt A400 looks like horizontal coverage of +/-40 degrees and vertical coverage of +5/-10 degrees.

 

[hardisj]

I don't want to get too bogged down in having to include a lot of information on a sheet when its intent was really to be a quick look comparison. Mainly, I wanted it for sensitivity, rolloff and dispersion characteristics. The problem with dispersion is binning it in to a single metric. As I mentioned earlier, it may be n degrees at 10kHz but with a poor crossover, it may be much less in the crossover region. So, I like the idea of using ±3dB. I am going to provide that within the range of 1 to 10kHz, though, as I feel that should catch most speakers' crossover region (midrange/tweeter, that is). I have to say, though, that it looks like a hot mess when I start adding all this stuff... so I may not keep it. I don't want 10 different columns... at that point it's easier for someone to just look at the graphs themselves.

I have also added the port location (as I did with my CEA-2010 subwoofer testing) per @MZKM request. I like having F3 and F10 to understand how steep the rolloff if. A single F6 value doesn't characterize the LF slope well enough for what I would want to know.


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iHiinala9exYa8dv32RoXi2QRqcmUc7troJgCXnrWtM/edit#gid=0

 

[hardisj]

Why did the BMR have less max SPL when a crossover was added? Cool to see a ~10dB increase in some speakers, that’s very substantial.

Fixed. Typo in the sheet. The Selah has about the same limits in either test. Both caused by compression but at different frequencies. Interesting stuff. But I've seen that in other cases as well.

 

[hardisj]

I would ditch the frequency range a speaker is linear in. I would simply calculate the +/- in a range. I for instance do this on the rated range as well as 80Hz-20kHz.
I have been meaning to do another range, also starting at 80Hz, but limiting the high frequencies, to maybe 16kHz or 18kHz.

I can do that.

I think 16kHz makes more sense. It doesn't penalize the top end rolloff too heavily (where mic placement may be very crucial) but it doesn't promote poorer speakers who lose linearity >10kHz.

I'm leaving my ±1.5dB and ±3dB regions for now while I sleep on how I want this to look. But I added your request.

 

[hardisj]

I colored the headers of like items just so it would help make things not seem to all run together as well and hopefully signal to the viewer those items are grouped together for one reason or another. And got rid of the individual cell colors.

 

[KaiserSoze]

I don't want to get too bogged down in having to include a lot of information on a sheet when its intent was really to be a quick look comparison. Mainly, I wanted it for sensitivity, rolloff and dispersion characteristics. The problem with dispersion is binning it in to a single metric. As I mentioned earlier, it may be n degrees at 10kHz but with a poor crossover, it may be much less in the crossover region. So, I like the idea of using ±3dB. I am going to provide that within the range of 1 to 10kHz, though, as I feel that should catch most speakers' crossover region (midrange/tweeter, that is). I have to say, though, that it looks like a hot mess when I start adding all this stuff... so I may not keep it. I don't want 10 different columns... at that point it's easier for someone to just look at the graphs themselves.

I have also added the port location (as I did with my CEA-2010 subwoofer testing) per @MZKM request. I like having F3 and F10 to understand how steep the rolloff if. A single F6 value doesn't characterize the LF slope well enough for what I would want to know.


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iHiinala9exYa8dv32RoXi2QRqcmUc7troJgCXnrWtM/edit#gid=0

As F3 was once overhead speaking to F10, "You complete me!"

 

[hardisj]

As F3 was once overhead speaking to F10, "You complete me!"