Not sure what you're in a huff about, he's right. Audiophiles get shit talked relentlessly on ASR for the same kind of thing that's happening in the OP. Their subjective experience is routinely dismissed in favor of objective measurements. This review is a rare role reversal, so I'm not surprised to see people calling it out.
I prefer ASR to AudioGon and other subjectivity paradises, but sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade.
For $7500 dollars (or even well below it), this is not a great showing. If this was a non-Harman speaker, it would have got skewered for very little bass , dips in FR and resonances. Justifying this with 'dynamics' and low distortion is what this forum constantly criticizes 'audiophools' for.
Therefore, I have to conclude significant bias in this review for the subjective portion.
I'm quoting these two posts because they are recent, but it's meant to generally address those who take issue with Amir's conclusions.
The problem with all of this is that the measurements aren't bad. They may not be pretty, but they are not
bad. I think they are almost great with one or two flaws. Whether they are worth it in a $7,500 speaker is a somewhat separate discussion considering these are massive speakers
I normally
really hate making this kind of argument but: sometimes I think you need to have some experience measuring a lot of speakers that you actually sit down and listen to get a sense of which issues really matter. (Not saying that everyone in this thread criticizing Amir's impressions has no experience measuring speakers, I don't know.)
But there have been definitely been times I've assumed some kind of measurement anomaly will completely bring down a speaker, when in fact it is barely audible -- and I spend way more time listening to review speakers than Amir does to identify these issues. And then there are very low-Q deviations and small resonances that constantly get ignored by readership so long as the graphs look pretty (also, why are we looking at CSDs again?) that people constantly ignore when interpreting measurements that, in my experience, are far more likely to be heard.
For example, I'd be willing to bet good money that with the Genelec 8030C...
the scoop from 2-4kHz would be nearly audible as the dip from 1-2kHz on the JBL.
Or the scoop from 1-2.5kHz in the 8050B (using Genelec as an example as they are the stereotypical perfect speakers):
That scoop covers a wider range of frequencies, so you're more likely to hear it, even if the effect is smaller. Not just pulling that out of nowhere; this is discussed in Toole's book, and it's what I've noticed in my own listening. And what's that at 900 Hz?? It looks like a resonance!
Even if you disagree with my interpretation of the data, measurements are meant to be a reliable predictor of preference over a large sample of listeners. That's why they're great: Measurements mean you can make a decision for yourself about whether the purchasing risk is worth it, and they help you re-evaluate your biases. It makes sense that many would feel these are not worth it at their price.
But as I've said too many times on this forum, nowhere in the literature are measurements supposed to be a rock-solid rule for predicting what
an individual listener is going to like, especially over a shorter listening period. It doesn't work that way.
So if you're a listener who, like most of us, is just a single person, you provide your individual listening impressions. I mean, what's Amir supposed to say? "I tried really hard not to like this speaker because I thought the measurements weren't pretty. I truly hate the fact I liked these speakers, and that should be illegal! Don't even bother listening to these even though I liked them, because by golly, there's
a dip in the spin!" (On the other hand, Amir didn't like the
similarly-sized 4319, which to me is a more flawed speaker.)
And while I'm at it, I think it's important to caution that measurements should only really be used to compare speakers that either are in the same size class or are being compared within the limitations of the smaller speaker. Otherwise, why don't we all just get Neuman KH80s for living room purposes? We all know Amir likes to listen loud...