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

[Power Pop 23]

Just finished spot watching this latest video at 1.75x speed. The amount of blind arrogant confidence is mind bending. This court jester made an "offer" to Dave to sell his parts and crossover design with "no loyalty" such that Dave can use it in the speakers he sells at OEM pricing.

I nearly fell off of my chair laughing.

Like I said before you have to have confidence to be a con artist. He sure does have quite of bit of manufactured confidence for sure.

I prefer the version filmed in 1955......

 

[Buckeye Amps]

I think you meant Theorem?

No, I meant theory (but I understand theorem is also appropriate depending on the area/topic, i.e. used a lot more frequently in mathematics)

 

[dfuller]

Just finished spot watching this latest video at 1.75x speed. The amount of blind arrogant confidence is mind bending. This court jester made an "offer" to Dave to sell his parts and crossover design with "no loyalty" such that Dave can use it in the speakers he sells at OEM pricing.

I nearly fell off of my chair laughing.

Like I said before you have to have confidence to be a con artist. He sure does have quite of bit of manufactured confidence for sure.

What clown shoes nonsense is this?

 

[MBWORLDZ]

GR Research finally strike back lol. He said your review was totally BS. OMG

The bad things about GR Research is, instead of using his own parts, he will only buy other company's parts. Especially cables. I found his 24 Strand DIY Speaker Cable on ebay a while back, it costs like $30 bucks for 2x 6ft. And they are shipped from China. LOL.

Also he is a rude person. I owned a pair of Wharfedale EVO4 Speakers, Some one sent him a pair for review, he said Wharfedale using a some super cheap components to built the crossover. And he invented his own. When I asked him would I be able to tell the different with his kit. He goes "If I can't , then I must be deaf". WTF?

When I google their address 1716 Texowa Rd, Iowa Park, TX 76367
Their office looks like in a desert.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

GR Research finally strike back lol. He said your review was totally BS. OMG

The bad things about GR Research is, instead of using his own parts, he will only buy other company's parts. Especially cables. I found his 24 Strand DIY Speaker Cable on ebay a while back, it costs like $30 bucks for 2x 6ft. And they are shipped from China. LOL.

Also he is a rude person. I owned a pair of Wharfedale EVO4 Speakers, Some one sent him a pair for review, he said Wharfedale using a some super cheap components to built the crossover. And he invented his own. When I asked him would I be able to tell the different with his kit. He goes "If I can't , then I must be deaf". WTF?

When I google their address 1716 Texowa Rd, Iowa Park, TX 76367
Their office looks like in a desert.

already posted

 

[diddley]

Charlatan Danny is at it again, he deserves to be put out of business claiming and screwing with false claims and perfectly designed speakers.
I watched a couple of minutes, but I can't stand it to hear his rambles and insults.
So I refrain from any comments further, until I feel safe again to post something here because I got RickS on my back.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

already posted

Several times...

 

[PristineSound]

I prefer the version filmed in 1955......

View attachment 531648

Looks like a younger version of Danny.

 

[DanTheMan]

You can tell that he doesn't understand how the FFT works. Amir should probably do a point for point reply on everything Danny states incorrectly in the video--all the positions he states incorrectly, the alternative facts he presents, and then all the psychoacoustic research Danny either ignore or doesn't know. Somehow his Shadiness needs to get shut down. I do realize it's fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 

[tw 2022]

That is his immature way of trying to make fun and attack ASR.

I watched enough of the vid to hear him call asr "flat earthers".... first thought that went through my mind was : "project much Danny" ?

 

[Bruce Morgen]

I watched enough of the vid to hear him call asr "flat earthers".... first thought that went through my mind was : "project much Danny" ?

Dude's got more projection going on than a ten-screen movie theater.

 

[PristineSound]

Amir should probably do a point for point reply on everything Danny states incorrectly in the video

Is that a joke, you want Amir to make a 6 hour long video just to cover half of the things he got wrong?

What kind of person are you to put Amir through such torture?

 

[voodooless]

My AI friends tldr of the video:

He’s not rebutting the evidence — he’s arguing for an exemption from the normal rules of evidence.

And more detailed:

Yes. And once you do that, the “rebuttal” pretty much collapses.

1) “I’m not a reviewer”​

That’s fine for his workshop process. It is not fine as an exemption once he starts making public claims about what Amir supposedly got wrong.


If you are publicly arguing that a review-style measurement is misleading, then you are implicitly entering reviewer territory. You do not get to say:

• “I’m not a reviewer”
  and at the same time
• “your review methodology is invalid, mine is the right way to judge this.”

That is special pleading. He wants freedom from reviewer standards while still criticizing a reviewer from a supposedly more authoritative position.

2) “I only care about 200 Hz and up”​

Again, valid for his own crossover workflow, maybe. Not valid as an exemption in a rebuttal.


Why not?
Because once the claim becomes:

• “Amir ruined / misrepresented / misunderstood this speaker”
  then the whole speaker matters, not just the part of the graph he personally likes to work on.

He explicitly says below 200 Hz “doesn’t really concern” him because it’s not what he can change, and he wants to zoom in on the part he cares about. That’s a workshop convenience, not a full-performance basis for overruling a review.

3) “1/3-octave smoothing is industry standard”​

Even if you grant that as a display choice, it does not excuse using a more smoothed view to downplay visible problems while criticizing someone for showing them more clearly.


Smoothing is not evil. But when the dispute is about whether the modification improved or worsened behavior, less smoothing can expose issues that 1/3-octave smoothing conceals. So “I smoothed it because that’s what I like to look at” is not an exemption from scrutiny. It is just a preference for a lower-information presentation in that context.

4) “Gating doesn’t reduce resolution”​

This one is only partly true, and it does not save his argument.


He is right that gating is not just some fake low-resolution trick. But shorter time windows do trade low-frequency resolution / reliability for reflection rejection. That is exactly why he says he stops around 200 Hz. So he can’t simultaneously argue:

• gating changes nothing important
  while also relying on it to justify not showing below 200 Hz.

So this exemption fails because he wants the rhetorical upside of gating with none of the interpretive limitations.

5) “Stored energy / spectral decay matters more than harmonic distortion”​

Maybe sometimes. But he does not get an exemption merely by asserting a hierarchy of metrics.


If he wants to say:

• “this notch / this dip / this redesign is better because it reduces audibly important stored energy”

then he has to show:

• the before/after change clearly,
• that it is not offset by worse behavior elsewhere,
• and ideally that it is actually audible.

Instead, he mostly just declares that ringing is “way easier to hear” and more important than the distortion result Amir showed. That is an unsupported prioritization, not an exemption.

6) “There’s no industry standard for measuring distortion, so it’s easily manipulated”​

This is probably the weakest exemption of the lot.


Even if methods differ, that does not make distortion data meaningless. It definitely does not justify:

• dismissing unfavorable distortion results,
• while still using other measurements he prefers as decisive.

You don’t get to say:

• “trust my spectral decay and smoothing choices”
  but also
• “don’t trust his distortion measurements because distortion is too manipulable.”

That is classic selective skepticism.

7) “The version Amir measured isn’t the current one”​

This is the strongest exemption in principle — if true.


If Amir really measured a superseded version and presented it as the current product, then that matters.


But even here, it only gets him so far:

• it does not validate his broader claims about parts, cables, power cords, etc.
• it does not prove the original mod was good
• it does not prove his measurement philosophy is superior
• it only means the specific sample/version may not represent the current offer

So even his best exemption is limited. It narrows the scope of the criticism at most; it does not vindicate the whole worldview.

Bottom line​

All of his exemptions are really versions of the same move:


“Judge me by the subset of methods and metrics that support my design choices, but don’t judge me by the broader standards used to evaluate the actual result.”


That’s why they fail.

 

[kimmosto]

I suggest you follow the same. Magnifying the vertical axis to then complain about variations is not proper, even though the level of exaggeration was not large.

Harman's image you attached looks shrunken vertically, e.g. font is flat. It does not follow IEC 60263 and CTA-2034-A R-2020 specifying 25 dB/decade aspect ratio. I understand that because 50 dB span would be unnecessary high also with 25 dB/decade, and response variations of their products look more flat to get better marketing result. Harman, JBL and Samsung (, Magico, Sonos, PMC, Yamaha, Dutch&Dutch, Purifi, ...) have license to my simulator, and none of those have ever complained that it does not do it right and usable. Aspect ratio is configurable to some IEC 60263 value or 16:9 or full for display. 16:9 with 40 dB span is quite close to standard, and suitable for publishing in a table with charts which don't have any standard to follow.

I suggest you update aspect ratio to standard and use 40 dB or even 30 dB span to save space on web page when it's possible. Then you have compatibility with other publishers who respect the standard.

 

[kimmosto]

The crossover mod measured here screwed up the on-axis response and the off-axis.

Ok. We probably had some misunderstanding. Speaker individual modified with Danny's kit is so poor that it's not interesting at all.
I've been talking about original. It's not perfect, but good enough to stay as is. Interesting point for me is that is there any potential to improve for anyone including the manufacturer. Ribbons without wave guide usually have some weaknesses, but also strengths. Top octave could be slightly warm to maintain more linear power balance. Danny's mod. had tiny (max +1.2 dB) more pressure at top octave which is okay. Mid treble could be a bit lower to make on-axis and horizontal early reflections flatter. Directivity will change at XO range so some compromise is unavoidable; typically more on-axis pressure below, and less above XO. I would not change anything with passive XO because it's too expensive and difficult modification compared to changes obtained.

 

[Bruce Morgen]

I would not change anything with passive XO because it's too expensive and difficult modification compared to changes obtained.

There's no ROI -- AKA "bang for the buck" -- in these sort of passive crossover tweaks. A DSP-based solution makes much more sense for adjusting FR, and stuff like additional enclosure bracing and/or resonance muting don't require advice from the likes of Danny Richie.

 

[Paul7777x]

Just finished spot watching this latest video at 1.75x speed. The amount of blind arrogant confidence is mind bending. This court jester made an "offer" to Dave to sell his parts and crossover design with "no loyalty" such that Dave can use it in the speakers he sells at OEM pricing.

I nearly fell off of my chair laughing.

Like I said before you have to have confidence to be a con artist. He sure does have quite of bit of manufactured confidence for sure.

I see what you mean by the ‘confidence’ of the con man, but I’m not so sure it isn’t simply wilful ignorance of his own rather feeble limitations.

He comes across as someone terrified to acknowledge a single error he’s made in case his entire large, but fragile, ego collapses.

And he’s in far too deep to retreat and start again even if he could learn how.

 

[amirm]

Harman's image you attached looks shrunken vertically, e.g. font is flat. It does not follow IEC 60263 and CTA-2034-A R-2020 specifying 25 dB/decade aspect ratio. I understand that because 50 dB span would be unnecessary high also with 25 dB/decade, and response variations of their products look more flat to get better marketing result. Harman, JBL and Samsung (, Magico, Sonos, PMC, Yamaha, Dutch&Dutch, Purifi, ...) have license to my simulator, and none of those have ever complained that it does not do it right and usable. Aspect ratio is configurable to some IEC 60263 value or 16:9 or full for display. 16:9 with 40 dB span is quite close to standard, and suitable for publishing in a table with charts which don't have any standard to follow.

I suggest you update aspect ratio to standard and use 40 dB or even 30 dB span to save space on web page when it's possible. Then you have compatibility with other publishers who respect the standard.

No. I suggest *you* follow the standard. From IEC60263-2020:

"4.1 Decibel vs. log frequency plots
For graphs in which the y-axis depicts a level (in decibels) plotted versus logarithmic frequencyon the x-axis, the aspect ratio shall be 10 dB/decade, 20 dB/decade, 25 dB/decade or 50 dB/decade."

And this example graph:

There is no allowance for 40 dB. CEA/CTA-2034 have adopted the last spec: 50 dB. Their example clearly shows this. Don't go picking random stuff, making this job harder than it already is for people making comparisons. Good grief...

 

[Geert]

Which, as a scientist, makes me laugh at Danny because it isn't even a good attack. A theory in science is a very well established, substantiated, accepted explanation of a thing.

Later in the video he argues that ASR has all these theories that never have been tested Just like his flat earthers accusation, pure psychological projection. Since Danny loves AI: ”It serves as a way to avoid uncomfortable truths, protect the ego, and, in some cases, strengthen personal beliefs by framing others as the problem”.

 

[kimmosto]

And this example graph:
View attachment 531697

CEA/CTA-2034 have adopted the last spec: 50 dB. Their example clearly shows this. Don't go picking random stuff, making this job harder than it already is for people making comparisons. Good grief...

That graph is 25 dB/decade. As already said, they did show 50 dB span, but with aspect ratio of 25 dB/decade so text and Figure 4 in CTA-2034-A R-2020 are in conflict. Just reminding again that your 32 dB/decade is in conflict with both standards.

Comparability of the content is relevant. Not how high the canvas is. For example, these three with different spans have the same data, aspect ratio and width i.e. they have the same shape and are comparable. Just useless empty space between DIs and others is different.

The last one follows CTA-2034-A R-2020 the most literally, but it's also the least effective due to useless space. Why should we consume more server space and force users to scroll vertically if there is no reason?
Good grief...