This is an issue
@Wolf
As designers we are a little biased towards our babies, that is understandable.
Cognitive biases are very difficult spot in ourselves - it’s much easier for others to spot. Research has shown this- when we are reading something written by someone else, it is much easier to be critical about it, then if we are reading about something we’ve personally written (scientific article, policy etc)
This is the one of the main reasons for peer review in many scientific fields. The gold standard is double blinded randomised trial; and more than one, eg. meta-analysis ; but of course this is very difficult to do for 2 speakers with a large group of people, as much depends on the ancillary equipment and room; and even whether it can be externally valid (ie. holds true in my room or your room or equipment)
@JShadzi I’d love to hear your critique on my cabinetry. Your industrial design and woodworking are amazing and I like looking at what can be achieved without CNC.
And I’m confident when
@Wolf hears something; there’s something to it; so I wouldn’t dismiss it when he critiques any design. I mean Wolf has been doing crossovers by ear and single on-axis measurements with passive crossovers before many of us were doing it with the help of CAD or full 360 degree quasi anechoic measurements and real time DSP for crossover development.
So it would be interesting to understand what he means by what he says. Sometimes one person’s distortion is another person’s “extra detail”. Or maybe due to extra energy around 2-3Khz. Certainly there’s bunching up there:
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it would be interesting to see what the power response or DI is around that region.
And one persons “PR tuned too high” is another person “I’ like it!! Just right amount of punchy bass”
In my professional field it’s a bit rude criticise other people practice. But we all need to be able to do it, and receive it. And there may be safe spaces to do it, or different ways of approaching it, which we all need to all receptive to a) to continue learning b) be made aware of our blind spots c) be accountable and not go rogue and endanger others or ourselves.
In audio you might not endanger someone’s life; but you can certainly diminish the reputation of your whole field by going off the deep end and end up spruiking something false, even if your intentions were good.
One my earliest teachers never said that I did it wrong. He would always say “hmm. That’s one way to do it… are there any other ways to approach it?”I
