Harbeth Monitor 30 Speaker Review

[amirm]

I would like to take that listening test, is it possible?

It used to be years ago if you were in Northridge (southern california) and had a contact there. Today, only the Harman dealers get to participate in that test or if you are buying an expensive system and your dealer can arrange a tour as part of it.

 

[Spocko]

Visual stimuli does have a huge impact on sound perception. There is an AES Presentation on Audio Myths by Ethan Winer that has some killer demonstrations on this.

It’s on YouTube, for some reason I’m not able to paste the URL here.

One part of the difference in live music perception compared to recording is related to this. I think the visual impact increases overall “perceptual dynamic range.”

Another factor, and this is related, is we can filter out ambient sound because our brains can distinguish between the source of sound, reflected sound, and extraneous sounds.

When music is recorded this information is lost. Listening to a recording of an event you will hear much more room ambience and all sorts of other sounds you don’t notice live.

This absolutely explains why home theater AVR can completely ignore sound quality without consequences for movies.

 

[b1daly]

It used to be years ago if you were in Northridge (southern california) and had a contact there. Today, only the Harman dealers get to participate in that test or if you are buying an expensive system and your dealer can arrange a tour as part of it.

How are the speaker level matched?

It seems like that would be tricky. With a wide-band source, if levels were matched on RMS level, it seems like a speaker with extended bass response would be perceptually quieter. On the other hand, if you matched only across the spectrums both speakers shared, the extended bass speaker would sound louder. Is it some kind of average? Or is precise level matching not as critical as it is in comparisons on electronic devices?

I'm having a serious jones to have spinorama data on the various speakers I have, to see if I'm crazy I think I'm going a little crazy...

 

[Putter]

Crazier still, I actually prefer the sound quality from my home stereo than in most live situations (intimate small jazz/acoustic venues, not symphony halls) where the room is always less than ideal and the noise floor is always high with people whispering/breathing/farting/shuffling. Honestly, there is no way I'm going to hear the parting lips of the singer or the chord changes of a guitarist in a live situation with the same level of clarity as compared to my home stereo system.

I think in part it's because you have control over the event. If it's too loud you can turn it down. Try moving a few rows back at a concert, you might get thrown out or at least escorted back to your seat. Also at least for many in this forum you've customized the sound to your listening location in terms of speaker locations. At home you're listening to the best performance or at least what the musician(s) hopes is their best performance. Oh and you can get up and stretch your legs and make popcorn or get a beer after a song or movement.

 

[Floyd Toole]

I need to read more about it, but from my understanding they did comparative preference testing. That is an unusual form of listening. It asks the listener to consider which speaker “sounds better” compared to another. Their listening training reinforced a thesis about which speaker sounds better.

If you haven't done so, you need to read my book. I just dipped into this thread after a long absence and this popped up. The resolution of your dilemma is that listeners in these tests show more evidence of responding negatively to flaws, than responding positively to virtues. As you correctly point out, the listeners have no knowledge of how a recording "should" sound. But, it turns out that most listeners have an instinct about recognizing how a recording "should not" sound - responding to the characteristics of reproduced sound that are not "normal" for live sounds.

In the multiple-comparison tests I started in 1966 at the NRCC and that have continued since at Harman (A vs B vs C vs D, not just A vs B) it is easy to recognize and separate the timbral characters of different loudspeakers as distinct from the common factor, the recording, whatever it is. This is why the most revealing program material exhibits wide bandwidth and a dense spectrum (complex instrumentation vs. simplicity; wide bandwidth vs simple spectra like voice or solo instruments).

So, as I say in the book, evidence is that listeners tell us that the highest rated loudspeaker is the least flawed, not the most virtuous, although that is precisely what is meant. Looking at decades of listener response sheets yields enormous volumes of critical comments, some quite colorful, and slim volumes of compliments, mostly versions of "sounds good". Of course subjective reviewers have added to the verbiage with terms that often are meaningless, but poetic. "High resolution" loudspeakers turn out to be the ones with the fewest timbral distractions - it is not an independent variable.

Further analysis showed that the dominant flaw has been resonances, which alter the timbral signature of whatever sound is being reproduced.

The Harman listener training (which you can download and experience yourself) has ONLY to do with recognizing and describing resonances so that useful information can be fed back to the designers, helping them to find and fix audible problems. So, if there is a bias introduced by such training, it is that those trained listeners are very adept at hearing and describing loudspeakers that are not timbrally neutral. Is this a problem? I think not.

 

[dshreter]

Further analysis showed that the dominant flaw has been resonances, which alter the timbral signature of whatever sound is being reproduced.

A great deal of energy has gone into analysis of the spinorama of various speakers. How does this relate to identifying resonances, and what are the best methodologies for measuring and visualizing resonance response?

 

[Floyd Toole]

A great deal of energy has gone into analysis of the spinorama of various speakers. How does this relate to identifying resonances, and what are the best methodologies for measuring and visualizing resonance response?

As is described in my book, in spinoramas resonances are identified by humps or bumps that are similar in all or most of the curves - which start with on-axis in isolation and progress through increasing spatial averages including full sphere sound power. A ripple in the on-axis curve may be acoustical interference ( not very audible, or inaudible) but if it replicates in spatially averaged measurements it is almost certainly evidence of a resonance. The time domain evidence alone is a poor indicator of audibility. See the book, e.g. Section 4.6.3, or Toole, F. E. and Olive, S.E. (1988). “The modification of timbre by resonances: perception and measurement”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., 36, pp. 122-142.

 

[Crazy_Nate]

Interesting looking impedance curves. Looks like several cabinet resonances? Can you do a more zoomed in spectral decay plot? Might be able to see if any of the tiny bumps on the impedances coincide with the long decays on the spectral pot.

 

[amirm]

Can you do a more zoomed in spectral decay plot? Might be able to see if any of the tiny bumps on the impedances coincide with the long decays on the spectral pot.

The spectral decay plots are bogus for the most part. I can window the response to get completely different picture. I can change the graph parameters and get completely different picture. I can change the window function and get a different picture. And I can set the floor (min) of the graph and get completely different picture.

If you know what you want out of a CSD plot in advance, you could use it a bit but it just isn't a reliable method to show anything useful since parameters rarely if ever are documented.

 

[Crazy_Nate]

The spectral decay plots are bogus for the most part. I can window the response to get completely different picture. I can change the graph parameters and get completely different picture. I can change the window function and get a different picture. And I can set the floor (min) of the graph and get completely different picture.

If you know what you want out of a CSD plot in advance, you could use it a bit but it just isn't a reliable method to show anything useful since parameters rarely if ever are documented.

So, you think you might have a problem with your fixturing for the test and then you say it's not really useful of a plot anyways. Perhaps you should drop the plot?

But again, going back to the impedance curve, it looks like this cabinet is resonating. Am I interpreting that correctly?

 

[amirm]

So, you think you might have a problem with your fixturing for the test and then you say it's not really useful of a plot anyways. Perhaps you should drop the plot?

I said nothing about the fixture. What I said applies to any means of calculating CSD. If you don't understand what I explained about it, you better not trust any if them. Latest reviews don't have CSD.

 

[Spocko]

If you haven't done so, you need to read my book. I just dipped into this thread after a long absence and this popped up. The resolution of your dilemma is that listeners in these tests show more evidence of responding negatively to flaws, than responding positively to virtues. As you correctly point out, the listeners have no knowledge of how a recording "should" sound. But, it turns out that most listeners have an instinct about recognizing how a recording "should not" sound - responding to the characteristics of reproduced sound that are not "normal" for live sounds.

In the multiple-comparison tests I started in 1966 at the NRCC and that have continued since at Harman (A vs B vs C vs D, not just A vs B) it is easy to recognize and separate the timbral characters of different loudspeakers as distinct from the common factor, the recording, whatever it is. This is why the most revealing program material exhibits wide bandwidth and a dense spectrum (complex instrumentation vs. simplicity; wide bandwidth vs simple spectra like voice or solo instruments).

So, as I say in the book, evidence is that listeners tell us that the highest rated loudspeaker is the least flawed, not the most virtuous, although that is precisely what is meant. Looking at decades of listener response sheets yields enormous volumes of critical comments, some quite colorful, and slim volumes of compliments, mostly versions of "sounds good". Of course subjective reviewers have added to the verbiage with terms that often are meaningless, but poetic. "High resolution" loudspeakers turn out to be the ones with the fewest timbral distractions - it is not an independent variable.

Further analysis showed that the dominant flaw has been resonances, which alter the timbral signature of whatever sound is being reproduced.

The Harman listener training (which you can download and experience yourself) has ONLY to do with recognizing and describing resonances so that useful information can be fed back to the designers, helping them to find and fix audible problems. So, if there is a bias introduced by such training, it is that those trained listeners are very adept at hearing and describing loudspeakers that are not timbrally neutral. Is this a problem? I think not.

Interesting so the listening tests are less about what sounds good and more about excluding the objectionable?

 

[sergeauckland]

Interesting so the listening tests are less about what sounds good and more about excluding the objectionable?

I think ALL listening tests are about that. Lots of things sound good, a few sound bad, and in the absence of measurements, as most people don't have any or not available at the time, then all one has to go on is the elimination of the bad.

Personally, as long as I eliminate the bad, then choosing the good can be done on non-audio grounds like looks, ergonomics, facilities etc, as I would be happy enough with any that sounded 'not bad.'

When I was a dealer I tried very hard not to lose patience with those that spend ages listening to the (often inaudible) minutiae of sound quality whilst ignoring gross issue like build quality or lack of facilities.

S

 

[Juhazi]

As is described in my book, in spinoramas resonances are identified by humps or bumps that are similar in all or most of the curves - which start with on-axis in isolation and progress through increasing spatial averages including full sphere sound power. A ripple in the on-axis curve may be acoustical interference ( not very audible, or inaudible) but if it replicates in spatially averaged measurements it is almost certainly evidence of a resonance. The time domain evidence alone is a poor indicator of audibility. See the book, e.g. Section 4.6.3, or Toole, F. E. and Olive, S.E. (1988). “The modification of timbre by resonances: perception and measurement”, J. Audio Eng. Soc., 36, pp. 122-142.

Sorry to interfere (or resonate?), but Olive et al. published this in 1997 https://www.researchgate.net/public...n_thresholds_of_resonances_at_low_frequencies
New experimental data on the detection thresholds of low-frequency resonances and antiresonances are presented. Using an adaptive procedure known as the up-down transformed response (UDTR) rule, the 70.7% detection thresholds were measured for a single added resonance (peak and notch) for different Q values and center frequencies. The signals included pink noise and pulses auditioned through earphones. The results show that detection thresholds are affected in complicated ways by Q, center frequency, and signal type. This makes their detection difficult to predict using current hearing models and frequency response measurements.

It's actually about low freq and headphones, but anyway. So, ripples in response are poor indicators too!
Measurements at listening spot will show room modes and room resonances, a different story.

Like Amir said, CSD or decay is tricky to analyze, different parameters change the graphic plot dramatically. Anyone interested can test this easily with freeware Room EQ Wizard. Most important is to do loudspeaker decay analysis of nearfield measurement (less than an inch from membrane of driver unit in question) and to analyze only first few milliseconds (tens for low freq). Any further away or longer time span will get corrupted by room modes. Anyway, I don't concider CSD a basic measurement, but a way to look at some specific problems in a loudspeaker, like the Harbeth 30.

Here my measurements with same parameters, REW indoor measurements. ER18DXT's box is 27mm thick MDF with bracing and stuffing. JBL's box is 9mm particle board, with a lateral crossbrace and some stuffing added afterwards. Nearfield and ER18 at 1m too.

 

[Doodski]

When I was a dealer I tried very hard not to lose patience with those that spend ages listening to the (often inaudible) minutiae of sound quality whilst ignoring gross issue like build quality or lack of facilities.

That sounds like a opportunity to up-sell >@^_*@<

 

[sergeauckland]

That sounds like a opportunity to up-sell >@^_*@<

My problem in those days was a complete inability to 'upsell'. My normal mode was to tell them that what they had was perfectly good, and they should go away and buy more music.

I was not a successful dealer........

S

 

[Doodski]

My problem in those days was a complete inability to 'upsell'. My normal mode was to tell them that what they had was perfectly good, and they should go away and buy more music.

I was not a successful dealer........

S

I was nicknamed by my workmates as the "entertainer" because I would spend hours with customers in the sound rooms and on the main floor. Gab gab gab... Some customers became friends. I always up-sold even if it meant telling them to come back when they have more money. Most did come back. That method worked very well for me.

 

[Dialectic]

My problem in those days was a complete inability to 'upsell'. My normal mode was to tell them that what they had was perfectly good, and they should go away and buy more music.

I was not a successful dealer........

S

Doing my best to heed this advice.

 

[Purité Audio]

Let the equipment sell itself, would be my advice, but the most important advice don’t ever think about retailing Hi-FI.
Keith

 

[Doodski]

Let the equipment sell itself, would be my advice, but the most important advice don’t ever think about retailing Hi-FI.
Keith

Very competitive business retailing Hi-Fi. I worked for 5 years on straight commission and did well. I saw lots of peeps come and go or just gave up on sales as a occupation. I tried it again after I got a formal electronics education and I just couldn't dunk the sales like I had previously.