• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Legal fund for Reviewers/Erin?

Along the same lines with the importance of independent reviews:
I have a habit of looking at tonality on spinorama. I become disapointed when I see a ranking and the only test is from the manufacurer.
I take it with a grain of salt and don't have confidence in any decision support.
Am I wrong for this thinking ?

Not sure if I understand you right, but yes you may be wrong.

A) You shouldn't really give the tonality score much weight, but ideally learn how to read the actual data.

B) Are you saying you don't trust a manufacturer provided measurement? That is fair I suppose, as it could theoretically be falsified. Would be a pretty risk move from a manufacturer to do so though.
 
From Eric's video:
when I see flawed measurements I'm sorry but I am going to call it
Really man you need to adjust to the new reality. Gone is the time when you would write together the reviews with the traditional audio media. I'm sorry too to tell you, but that's how things are right now.

I'm gone give you some advice because you are making things worse the way you are continuing to handle it, not for you, but for the livelihood of the people that are working at your company and may be affected by your actions. Call Paul from PS Audio immediately and write down word by word what you have to do to save the day, he got some bad reviews around here for their products (not their speakers) but at least he was a gentleman about it compared to you. Go for the art side of your speakers, how measurements don't tell the whole story, how real audiophiles listen with their heart and not with measurements, Paul will know what to do. Just drop all legal threats and let it all be forgotten.

And get Dr. Toole book and give it a good reading. Call some of your loyal customers and perform a blind test between one of your speakers and some cost equivalent speaker from manufacturers that get recommended around here. Learn and adjust, as a businesses owner you should know that.
 
Looks like Erin remeasuers. Lets see how big the influence of the 4 holes is.
I'd bet we'll just see some loss of level at very low frequencies near final roll-off, a few dB at most. Almost no impact on the overall picture, in the end.
 
I'd bet we'll just see some loss of level at very low frequencies near final roll-off, a few dB at most. Almost no impact on the overall picture, in the end.

I dont think we will see much. But why gues if we can see.
 
Screenshot_20240411_125540_YouTube.jpg
 
We have no lawsuit… no need for a legal fund… and a guy who digged a pretty big hole at Tekton Design.

In support of the Tekton Design employees, I bought a Tee-Shirt:
1712837464472.jpeg


It’s $20 and can be found in the “Accessories” section at Tekton website.

I‘d like to think that the (modest) profits could be used to improve the measurement capabilities at Tekton.

I swear I won’t review it, but it will fit me well: I’m no golfing panther (not great!), yet, I think I can be enjoyable… postman panther (not terrible).
 
Not every good engineer is also good in puplic relations.
It’s been my experience most engineers are terrible at the empathetic skills needed for good public relations. The public can seldom absorb the fact an engineer is trained to question beliefs and opinions. Beliefs and opinions are inherently very valuable to the general public as that makes up the world they live in. The act of questioning their beliefs alone will trigger irrational emotions and engineers simply can’t handle such subjectivity…

Perception problems are better handled by professionals…:)
 
We have no lawsuit… no need for a legal fund… and a guy who digged a pretty big hole at Tekton Design.

In support of the Tekton Design employees, I bought a Tee-Shirt:
View attachment 362976

It’s $20 and can be found in the “Accessories” section at Tekton website.

I‘d like to think that the (modest) profits could be used to improve the measurement capabilities at Tekton.

I swear I won’t review it, but it will fit me well: I’m no golfing panther (not great!), yet, I think I can be enjoyable… postman panther (not terrible).

Not bad i have a nice evtl. helpfull url.


 
Really man you need to adjust to the new reality. Gone is the time when you would write together the reviews with the traditional audio media. I'm sorry too to tell you, but that's how things are right now.
Yeah.

The new reality for manufacturers should be this:
  • Manufacturers should conduct and publish their own measurements. Instead of harassing reviewers because their measurements are "wrong" you should have your own reference measurements.
  • Accept that the interwebs are a big part of product research these days. Concerned about negative reviews showing up in Google search results? Well maybe you should have a better internet presence of your own.
  • Work with reviewers. Reach out to them before they review your products, don't scramble to do damage control after the fact. Provide review copies when feasible, or at the very least, please let them know that you are ready to assist and collaborate while 100% respecting their independence.
I have some sympathy for manufacturers regarding the measurement-based spec race. It's a brutal game to play, your competitors are going to lie/game the numbers as hard as possible, and many/most of the people looking at these measurements aren't necessarily as knowledgeable as they think they are.

The correlation between better measurements and better listening experience is real but there is a lot of complexity there and it is a FAR from linear 1:1 correlation.

Of course you see this in a lot of different pursuits. ex: If you just look at "gigahertz" then CPUs haven't gotten any faster in the last 25 years, but the reality is that performance is well over an order of magnitude greater. Yet you have a bunch of minimally knowledgeable dorks who known what clock speed is and therefore think they know enough to meaningfully compare CPUs.
 
He has a policy that he takes down speakers for every bad review over a 10 year period? How many bad reviews has he dealt with in this manner? The Ron at NRD incident was just a few years ago. Wonder who else dared to say something negative.
It wasn’t even a bad review. I wonder what the policy is?
 
It’s been my experience most engineers are terrible at the empathetic skills needed for good public relations. The public can seldom absorb the fact an engineer is trained to question beliefs and opinions. Beliefs and opinions are inherently very valuable to the general public as that makes up the world they live in. The act of questioning their beliefs alone will trigger irrational emotions and engineers simply can’t handle such subjectivity…

Perception problems are better handled by professionals…:)
I keep reading stuff like this and it bugs me.

Good engineers are good engineers precisely because they are empathetic, if by that one adopts the definition of feeling what others feel. Being able to crawl inside the user's perspective in understanding use cases and user needs has been a specifically identified mandatory skill going back at least to Bill Hewlett and the HP Way.

What they may or may not be is sympathetic, or able to express the emotions of pity or sorrow at the plight of the suffering. Engineers aren't trained to the notion of questioning beliefs, etc.,--I never heard anything like that in pursuing my two engineering degrees. We were trained to correctly identify the problem and find a design solution that would be safe, efficient, and cost-effective. Most of the questions on tests in engineering school start with the word "given...," followed by the problem definition, and not with specific training in communicating with users to understand the nature of problem in the first place. And most engineers are trained in methodologies to a much greater extent than in the principles of physics and theory on which those methodologies supposedly draw. Good engineers usually must transcend typical engineering training to have a real grasp of underlying theory and to be able to explain themselves to non-engineers.

Engineers who cannot adopt the user's perspective may attract the stereotype precisely because they are held in low esteem by users (and, for that matter, by good engineers). If they are brilliant designers, they may be quite useful, but probably not in the user/customer-facing role, at least early in the process.

Back to this issue. As I have said before, there's nothing really wrong with a person with good ears designing speakers simply to sound good to them, and then marketing them to anyone who will buy them. The problem is in making false claims about them. If they use words that imply measurement, people will (eventually) demand to see those measurements, or they will take it upon themselves to provide their own. If the claim is "we tune these speakers to provide the spectral response that sounds good to us, and we think they will sound good to you also," then there is no claim of measurement begging for refutation.

But also as I have said, even low-cost speakers of good reputation going back half a century (and more) were designed using definable tools and measured in laboratory conditions of one sort or another. They may not perform today in the way Dr. Toole came to recommend, but they made a lot of music that brought a lot of people into the fold of those who enjoy good-sounding playback equipment in their homes.

Of course, the response by the designers of such speakers should be to change the conditions of the test rather than to challenge the tools of measurement within the conditions.

(Also of course, public relations isn't about empathy or challenging dominant paradigms or TRVTH or anything like that. It's about taking what you do and presenting it as the best way to do it in such a way as to expand the market pool rather than contract it.)

For example, a one-off maker who tunes by ear might write the following ad copy: "Our speakers may not be for everyone. And that's fine, because we lovingly handcraft them one pair at a time with our devoted but small staff of eight. But those who have been impressed count themselves among the leading experts in the audio community. Please don't be swayed by measurements from reviewers who are trying to force our special speakers into some generic mold. Listen for yourselves. We think you'll be impressed, too."

That really doesn't take much creativity and there's nothing about that statement that is untruthful, no matter how much folks here (including me, up to a point) might disagree with it.

I don't think what we are seeing is specifically any sort of engineer disease.

Rick "has enjoyed speakers who measured worse than these" Denney
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom