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JBL 4367 Review (was M2 'review')

RayDunzl

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When did the 4367 become "over" $20,000?

LOUDSPEAKERS OF THE YEAR $10,000-$20,000
DALI EPICON 6


LOUDSPEAKERS OF THE YEAR OVER $20,000
JBL 4367

Oh. Australian Dollars. They count differently.
 

RayDunzl

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Previous Years:

2015 - Kyron Audio Kronos (>$20,00)
2014 - Wilson Audio Alexia (but $10,000 was the breakpoint)
2013 - B&W 802 Diamond (but $5,000 was the breakpoint)
2012 - MartinLogan Ethos
2011 - no list, have to wade though a multimedia display... bah
2010 - Whatmough Signature P33 (but $2500 was the breakpoint)
2009 - Elac FS 249 Stereo Speakers
2008 - Legend Acoustics Kumbar Wirri
2007 - Jamo R 909

I detect some serious inflation.
 
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watchnerd

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Actually, they'e very pro-hifi. Anti "high-end," perhaps. Maybe it's because I started out, many years ago, with Altec Lansing Valencias, but I don't find them all that unattractive. They're easier for me to look at than a lot of high-end speakers. Some of which look like robots from the first run of Battlestar Gallactica...

I think the 4367 and 4429 both look retro cool, very classic mid-century modern.
 

watchnerd

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That thread is now just another opportunity for all the bored subjectivists to jerk off about caps.

19vpv0.jpg
 

amirm

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Is this accessible to the general public, or only Harman dealers? If so, where?
The software is free and you can use it to train yourself: http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/

Now applying that to actual speaker evaluation requires an invitation to Harman, being a dealer or world class acoustician. On occasion Sean Olive invites other people to attend in his tests.
 

fas42

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And I note in the manual the only real reference to the impact of distortion is this:
Coloration refers to an unnatural distortion in the timbre of sounds usually
associated with the presence of undesirable medium and narrow band
resonances in the playback chain and/or listening room.

which you are then invited train for, to detect. Since all the distortions which are crucial to believability in reproduction, that I've come across, have nothing to do with "undesirable medium and narrow band resonances" I don't see this as being of much use for learning to hear anomalies.
 

Sal1950

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There used to be the Philips Golden Ear training program. I found it to be an excellent resource a couple years ago. For some reason Philips took it down a some time back, too bad.
 

Cosmik

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The software is free and you can use it to train yourself: http://harmanhowtolisten.blogspot.com/

Now applying that to actual speaker evaluation requires an invitation to Harman, being a dealer or world class acoustician. On occasion Sean Olive invites other people to attend in his tests.
Is this the one where they recommend listening to a single speaker?

If so, that suggests that there is nothing important about the 'holographic' effect from two stereo speakers i.e. what we might call "imaging", or that it is affected by 'quality'. Just supposing for a moment that this effect has never really been heard to its full extent until the invention of DSP-based active speakers, it is easy to see how the training of listeners based on old technology, and the veneration of their Golden Eared abilities, could hamper progress.
 

Sal1950

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Is this the one where they recommend listening to a single speaker?
Don't know
If so, that suggests that there is nothing important about the 'holographic' effect from two stereo speakers i.e. what we might call "imaging", or that it is affected by 'quality'.
But in the end "imaging" is nothing more than a amusing parlor trick that has little or nothing to do with SQ or High Fidelity.

The qualities taught in the Philips Golden Ear training were, of which I would have put the Spatial Impression at the bottom of importance.

Timbre: Differences in tone or the frequency of content of music
Details: The lack of treble, distortion, or noise that can mask the fine details
Spatial Impression: The depth and spaciousness of the sound field
Bass: The quality of low frequencies
Loudness: The perception of sound power, from quiet to loud
 
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Cosmik

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Don't know

But in the end "imaging" is nothing more than a amusing parlor trick that has little or nothing to do with SQ or High Fidelity.

The qualities taught in the Philips Golden Ear training were, of which I would have put the Spatial Impression at the bottom of importance.
It could be chick and egg: if previous technology couldn't create a powerful image, it would be put at the bottom of the list and regarded as a myth or dismissed as a parlor trick.
 

amirm

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Is this the one where they recommend listening to a single speaker?
No, this is just software you run on your computer. It plays a piece of music and then changes the response using a parametric EQ. Your job is to guess what change has been made.

It starts easy with broad large changes but keeps getting more difficult as the bandwidth shrinks. First time I ran it I could only get to level 3. With a bit of practice I got to level 6 or 7. I stopped there. Sean said that to be a trained listener you need to get up to level 11 or something like that. He himself could sail well past me. Even with that bit of training I found my ears to become much more sensitive to frequency response variations of rooms and speakers.

Just download and run it.
 

FrantzM

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No, this is just software you run on your computer. It plays a piece of music and then changes the response using a parametric EQ. Your job is to guess what change has been made.

It starts easy with broad large changes but keeps getting more difficult as the bandwidth shrinks. First time I ran it I could only get to level 3. With a bit of practice I got to level 6 or 7. I stopped there. Sean said that to be a trained listener you need to get up to level 11 or something like that. He himself could sail well past me. Even with that bit of training I found my ears to become much more sensitive to frequency response variations of rooms and speakers.

Just download and run it.
Humbling piece of software ... We audiophiles think so much of our hearing ... Level 3 is harder than the number would suggest ...
 

Sal1950

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No, this is just software you run on your computer. It plays a piece of music and then changes the response using a parametric EQ. Your job is to guess what change has been made.
It can all end up being a viscous circle. You listen so critically you not only become constantly dissatisfied with your gear but with your recordings themselves. Then you may end up being a "delusional believer" thinking you hear all manner of things in sighted listening, insisting that blind testing itself is flawed and to "trust your ears only".
" Yep. my Nordorst $6k power cable made day/night differences in the imaging and PRAT of my system. Even the wife called from the kitchen asking what I changed." o_O
Dangerous stuff this listener training. :p
 

amirm

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If so, that suggests that there is nothing important about the 'holographic' effect from two stereo speakers i.e. what we might call "imaging", or that it is affected by 'quality'.
No, it doesn't say that. It says that speakers by far vary in their frequency response between them. That frequency response error is there whether you listen in mono or stereo. It is just that stereo makes the experience more "pretty" causing the listener to become less critical of frequency response errors. This was demonstrated by running the same test with 1 to 5 speakers and seeing that the complaints from listeners reduced about the same speakers as the number of speakers went up.

Here is the research: https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conventions/?elib=14622

It is a rather difficult paper to read because the topic starts with preferences for different room equalization systems. But then takes that data and tests it against three playback configurations: mono, stereo and surround. This graph summarizes listener preferences:

upload_2016-12-24_9-16-32.png



Taking No Eq which garnered the worst preference scores we see that in mono listeners were far more critical giving it a very low score of 2.75. Whereas the same setup in surround got it nearly a score of 5.

When we do these expensive tests we like to optimize the situation with the most revealing setup we can as to ease the pain on listeners. Testing in mono is just one of those methods (critical content and trained listeners are the others).

Note that Harman also does testing in multi-channel but simply found it unnecessary for speaker design after much research. Here is their multi-channel lab:

upload_2016-12-24_9-20-14.png


Multiple speakers can be shuffled at the same time (normally behind a curtain) to evaluate their collective performance. But as I mentioned, they found this is just not necessary.
 

fas42

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Don't know

But in the end "imaging" is nothing more than a amusing parlor trick that has little or nothing to do with SQ or High Fidelity.
Imaging always comes as part of the package if the system is working at a quality level - it would be totally impossible not to be aware of spatial aspects ... just relate it to listening to live sound, meaning no PA nonsense! In fact, highly engineered recordings have enormous amounts of spatial information, far more than the "real thing"! Listening to a band doing one of these 'produced' tracks, live, would be a huge letdown ...
 

RayDunzl

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