GR Research Speaker Upgrade Review (Sierra-2EX V2) [Video]

[DatSpeakerTho]

LOL. Assuming he has a fixed measurement setup somewhere, it would still take a couple of hours to make accurate horizontal and vertical measurements. It's impossible to properly setup and align a speaker in 5 min. Just making sure everything is at a fixed distance, aligning the mic with the intended measurement axis, verifying all of this.. can take half an hour -easily- before making a single measurement. Then repeat this for vertical measurements, IF you have a jig that can support floorstanders (challenging!). Then taking nearfield measurements, merging.. you'll have spent half a day before you know. This is assuming you have a fixed setup consisting of a turntable and a microphone. Need to set up from scratch? Add another couple of hours.

Even then, as said, it's impossible to match anechoic or NFS resolution in the midrange even with a decent time window (8ms). Can we get close, sure, especially if there are not high Q anomalies anywhere. Measuring directional behaviour in the low range is impossible altogether this way. We also miss all of the oblique angles, something perhaps not crucial, but often overlooked - adding again to the resolution.

Five minutes - what an absolute tool. How does this guy have 90k subscribers?

Eh idk, I can setup my rig really fast, probably 10 minutes. Doesnt take an hour to capture to full hor and vertical 180 degress for a two way. I do short sweeps.

Danny sucks but setting up a speaker for measurement isnt hard. With near field merges and gating my data closely matches klippel.

 

[TimVG]

Eh idk, I can setup my rig really fast, probably 10 minutes. Doesnt take an hour to capture to full hor and vertical 180 degress for a two way. I do short sweeps.

Danny sucks but setting up a speaker for measurement isnt hard. With near field merges and gating my data closely matches klippel.

It's not the duration of the sweeps, it's making sure phase relation between horizontal and vertical measurements is consistent for crossover development. Which is essential to what GR does. This requires meticulous setting up, which takes time.

 

[Randolf]

OK, solved the problem of how Danny builds the crossover, yet not in finished form to fit int he speaker. Look at this video from Jay Iyagi after he visited him:

I have queued the timecode to the frame where we see he has spread out all the parts with jumper wire and such. I think he then measures them and calls it done. Never mind all the cheesy wires and such.

Ah cheap crocodile clips with cables, thats what every electronic DIY (including me) has in its drawer, no fancy super copper cables, tube connectors, …, just crocodiles clipped on "cheasy" push on connectors, maybe even evil ferro magnetic stuff envolved . Danny would probably say this is ok, because it doesn't has an effect on the measurement and he probably is right here. A proper DIY style crossover upgrade attempt however requires more:

• 360 degrees horizontal and vertical time gated measurement on a rotary table of entire speaker and each individual driver
• Nearfield measurement of woofer and port
• Mearging both accurately taking diffraction into account
• Reeingineer the original crossover, including measureing the exact values using a DSR meter.
• Putting eveything in VituixCAD to see if the measured total response matches the VituixCAD Simulation of crossover with individual drivers
• Check if this overal matches other high Quality measurements of the Speaker
• If everything worked well so far you can be optimistic that you have a valid simulation of the speaker in VituixCAD
• Now you can try to find a better crossover using the simulation
• Finally build the new crossover and measure speaker with it again.
• Do a direct Mono A/B comparison listening test.
• If possible do a direct Stereo A/B comparsion, unfortunately this requires a second pair of speakers.
• Finally you can play with crossover parts quality to your likeing, which would require long listening sessions and easily becomes very subjective and expensive.

You can do all of this as DIY with effordable measurement gear, REW and VituixCAD. But it is quite a lot of effort. I have done most of it once for my little KEF Q350 just for fun and learning. It is probably very hard to make money out of this as a buisiness. Danny just did a small fraction of all of this. If you want to upgrade your speaker find an ambitious DIY or try it yourself. Don't send it to Danny and buy one of his often very expensive upgrade kits, chanches are good you gain little or nothing except a huge bunch of copper.

 

[Ropeburn]

Danny would probably say this is ok, because it doesn't has an effect on the measurement and he probably is right here. A proper DIY style crossover upgrade attempt however requires more:

He would probably be right - and then turn around and call some properly soldered cables in a speaker cheesy.

He's not always wrong, infact he's often right. There's only so much you can get wrong with tinkerer level knowledge.

It's rather the blatant inconsistency and utter intellectual dishonesty that makes me think of him as a clown.

 

[Paul7777x]

He would probably be right - and then turn around and call some properly soldered cables in a speaker cheesy.

He's not always wrong, infact he's often right. There's only so much you can get wrong with tinkerer level knowledge.

It's rather the blatant inconsistency and utter intellectual dishonesty that makes me think of him as a clown.

As above… but I’d also add his arrogance, poor manners and contempt for others that raises him to the level of shining turd.

 

[DatSpeakerTho]

It's not the duration of the sweeps, it's making sure phase relation between horizontal and vertical measurements is consistent for crossover development. Which is essential to what GR does. This requires meticulous setting up, which takes time.

I dont find this hard either, just use a laser. Some folks have a good process down so good they cab knock things out quick and accurately. lots of people buuld measurement rigs that can trivialize the data collection. Whatever Im sure someone will tell me I am wrong Anyway.

 

[TimVG]

I dont find this hard either, just use a laser. Some folks have a good process down so good they cab knock things out quick and accurately. lots of people buuld measurement rigs that can trivialize the data collection. Whatever Im sure someone will tell me I am wrong Anyway.

I do use a laser. And all the more power to you if you can get it done in less time than I can. I need my crossover sims, based on driver measurements, to match reality as good as possible, and to me that means spending time before the first measurement. If one has a permanent rig that simplifies things somewhat, but no way anyone can do all of this in the time GR claims.

 

[Chaos01]

In another video. Andrew complained about small variations that Klippel shows to be false (we discussed it in another thread). I challenge that as there are many sources of interference from port and diffraction as to cause these small variations. Gated measurements he uses likely hide them.

Andrew's motivation is similar to Danny. Both want a justification to not own one. None of their complaints has merit.

Hi @amirm, do you remember which other Video with Sir Jones that was and in what other thread you discussed it?
I was wondering about that but it seems that even Jones missunderstood some of the klippel technique and math while i read some of His 1m and 3m distance measurements- arguments that Show he did Not know everything about the klippel. Mabye i or someone could summarise His mistakes and correct them, i Hope he is more Open to learn something new and If someone Like Erin would explain him how klippel works and what He get wrong.
Sayed that, even If there would be some diviations or mistakes in a klippel measurements, they would be way, waay less then in the way Danny measures..

 

[amirm]

Hi @amirm, do you remember which other Video with Sir Jones that was and in what other thread you discussed it?

I am 99% sure it is this video. But when I skimmed through it just now, couldn't find the same wording I recall. Still, you can hear him talk about what he thinks of measurements:

 

[amirm]

I was wondering about that but it seems that even Jones missunderstood some of the klippel technique and math while i read some of His 1m and 3m distance measurements- arguments that Show he did Not know everything about the klippel. Mabye i or someone could summarise His mistakes and correct them, i Hope he is more Open to learn something new and If someone Like Erin would explain him how klippel works and what He get wrong.

It is a criticism I have heard from another industry veteran. Namely, they think the woofer prior to crossover should produce a smooth response. That Klippel shows small variations, doesn't make sense to them. Yet, you can see from my reviews that there are sources of resonance, especially output from the port, that cause that response to not be smooth.

 

[Randolf]

Hi @amirm, do you remember which other Video with Sir Jones that was and in what other thread you discussed it?
I was wondering about that but it seems that even Jones missunderstood some of the klippel technique and math while i read some of His 1m and 3m distance measurements- arguments that Show he did Not know everything about the klippel. Mabye i or someone could summarise His mistakes and correct them, i Hope he is more Open to learn something new and If someone Like Erin would explain him how klippel works and what He get wrong.
Sayed that, even If there would be some diviations or mistakes in a klippel measurements, they would be way, waay less then in the way Danny measures..

You can use AI (chatgpt...) to find out a litte more about Andrew Jones thinking on measuring and Klippel. It pointed me to this podcast:

An Interview Andrew Jones On Measurements, The Harman Curve And The New 888 - pt.AUDIO

pt.AUDIO - An Interview Andrew Jones On Measurements, The Harman Curve And The New 888

pt.audio

From 50:33- 56:25 it a little bit more specific on Klippel and measurements, e.g.:

"And I said, even the Klippel system does not measure the far field response of the speaker. It measures multiple near field and through mathematics derives what it says the far field response is while measuring in the room and rejecting some of the reflections that come back. But look at any Klippel curve that someone's done and that. And all these wiggles in the, you know, 200-800 Hz region, let's say all those wiggles, they're not the speaker. They're remnants of processing out what the room is doing to that microphone. So when you got that and you see these wiggles, are those little resonances in the speaker or is it something from the room? You don't know until you eliminate it and measure it a different way and do this. So it's not easy to know what you're doing when you're measuring something." (transcript done by rileo)

 

[Andysu]

It is a criticism I have heard from another industry veteran. Namely, they think the woofer prior to crossover should produce a smooth response. That Klippel shows small variations, doesn't make sense to them. Yet, you can see from my reviews that there are sources of resonance, especially output from the port, that cause that response to not be smooth.

did you do a direct frequency sweep with the passive crossover and individual sweeps of each speaker driver

 

[TVodhanel]

Cross reference this https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=18 to klippel data sets. Looks like a couple-few dozen at a glance. The 2-3 I had time to check where the arendals. They actually looked(at a quick glance) smoother on the klippel.

Tom V.
Team Power.

 

[escape2]

Danny's response video. I haven't watched it yet...

 

[Sonny1]

@amirm not sure if you have seen this but ol Danny has posted a response video to your video. I’m still working through it but it’s on in the background. More drama from the snake oil crowd.

I enjoyed your video and hope you provide another “debunking” video.

 

[Ropeburn]

Danny's response video. I haven't watched it yet...

I can totally live with no summary this time. Let the games begin

 

[Bruce Morgen]

I didn't watch this undoubtedly disingenuous retort, but I decided to take a shot in a (likely soon to be nuked) comment anyway: "Wherein audio's most obviously underqualified charlatan overdoses on "copium".

 

[Paul7777x]

… better wire??? What?

Apart from his horrible ego and blindingly obvious Dunning Kruger issues, he just loves to hear himself. Yuk.

 

[DMill]

Is there an Audio Theory Review site? Sounds cool. Can someone send me a link?

 

[Ropeburn]

Is there an Audio Theory Review site? Sounds cool. Can someone send me a link?

It's obviously full of flat earthers.