Message to golden-eared audiophiles posting at ASR for the first time...

[Synaesthetica]

Going from page 1 and skipping directly to this page has been a blast. “You can’t trust your own ears” to how to make root beer. Love it.

 

[Theodore8]

The biggest shortcoming of subjective review is how adjectives describing tonal quality lacks any usable "degree". Let's take food reviews as an example because these are always purely subjective without measurements. When I say a food is "spicy, sweet, salty or too hot", the reader has zero context. What if I love spicy food and when something is "too spicy" for me that may also mean that if I think it's "just right" it could be too spicy for you. Alternatively, I cannot stand eating food that is a touch too sweet so when I complain that a drink is "too sweet", I know for certain my daughter would respond "no, it's perfect!" and so forth. Now on to sound - my wife and son cannot stand the sound of metal knives and forks scratching the surface of a ceramic dish as it literally sends shivers up their spines whereas I can hear it but am not bothered by it at all. So you see where I'm going here - the problem of subjective reviews is twofold:

(1) A "review" by its nature suggests that their subjective impressions are somehow universally applicable when in fact it's merely stating the reviewer's personal eccentricities, tastes preferences or biases, and even if the subjective impressions are a useful guide, the very words used to describe the subjectivity lacks any standard of measure; when a reviewer says there's an annoying bit of sibilance, we have no context of whether he's hyper sensitive to sibilance or not, and maybe 20 years ago he was hypersensitive but today he can no longer notice it unless it's punched up by 6dB! Many reviewers have been in this game for 20 years - have their hearing changed at all over the years? Absolutely - age, experience, injury - life happens.

(2) What if the reviewer chooses the wrong music and does not catch issues in the speaker simply because his musical selection does not bring out those flaws? We have Stereophile reviews where subjective speaker reviews are followed by JA's measurements and the two are not consistent - in this most recent Stereophile review of the Alumine Three, Herb Reichert's glowing love for this speaker is at odds with John Atkinson's measurements (audible resonance near 1kHz):

HR: "the almost fullrange Alumine Threes made this type of music play bigger, more distinctly, more open, easier to follow, and more interesting than it did with my Falcons or DeVores…delivered a bigger "sound" fueled by more undistorted volume, more unrestrained dynamics, more absolute clarity, and of course, more and deeper and less distorted bass...I never imagined how much previously undelivered recorded information the Stenheim Alumine Threes would bring into my room. Or how powerful and compelling this newly discovered information would be."

JA: I was puzzled by the resonant peak in the port's output and by the small peak/dip just above 1kHz, but to be fair, any audible consequences of these resonances will depend on the music being played. [emphasis added]

And so ultimately, subjective reviews are limited to the reviewer not knowing what music to play in order to bring out the best or worst in a speaker and if you the prospective consumer happen to play the wrong music, well, don't blame the reviewer because he didn't catch it with his selection of esoteric audiophile review music.

I had the opportunity to listen to a set of Stenheim Alumine Three in a fully carpeted and high-ceiling room. It was the first time that I experienced how a speaker's internal "resonance" can affect the subjective listening experience -- at least for me. I perceived it like a repetition of the sound with an extremely short, nearly imperceptible, delay. It felt wrong, but I was not able to describe it. Only later, when I read the review, did I guess what was happening.

At the same time, while muddling the sound, this resonance appeared to convey an unusual feeling of "being there". Ex-post, I can see how this particular effect could fool the uninformed into thinking that these speakers convey a somehow "live", "enveloping" sound.

That said, the speakers delivered great soundstage. But I get that with my Kali LP-6 monitors at $400 a pair.

 

[Purité Audio]

The Steinheim designers brought their very first design to me ( Swiss connection with Weiss I guess) but they had a very noticeable resonance which just wasn’t right.
I don’t know how they couldn’t have picked it up, designing in isolation perhaps.
Keith

 

[Sal1950]

The Steinheim designers brought their very first design to me ( Swiss connection with Weiss I guess) but they had a very noticeable resonance which just wasn’t right.

"The Stenheim Alumine Three's measured performance indicates that this loudspeaker combines high sensitivity with a generally easy-to-drive impedance and mostly smooth, even behavior in the frequency domain. I was puzzled by the resonant peak in the port's output and by the small peak/dip just above 1kHz, but to be fair, any audible consequences of these resonances will depend on the music being played.—John Atkinson"

I've read John write this to justify a speakers problems before. Doesn't the audibility of the failings from any speaker depend on the music being played? Curious? LOL
More to Keith's post, is the resonance a product of purposeful voicing? I've never heard them and have no opinion on how that resonance might effect the final subjective sound ?

 

[JimA84]

Hello friend. Hey, listen...we know how it is. Believe me, most of us have been there too. You've spent years toiling in the muck of audiophilia. You read ALL the reviews. You watched ALL the youtube videos. You visited ALL the other forums where everything always makes a difference. You bought the cables and the little bridge thingies for them to sit upon and the benefits were magical. You bought the $1000 IEMs that only truly sang after 250 hours of burn-in. Not 200 hours...or 225 hours, but 250 hours! It must be that for the magic to appear! You converted your entire music library to super high res and enjoyed the blissful new details that never were revealed by the awful, cludgy mess that was 16/44 cd. Never have your ears been assaulted by the likes of bluetooth audio or lossy mp3! You searched endlessly for the perfect dac...the dac that truly brought the magic! You bought one after another, each more expensive than the last, searching for the one, true dac that sounded better than all the rest...

And then you arrived here...and posted about your dac discovery, and were told that a dac shouldn't sound like anything at all! Suddenly your audio reality came crashing down around you. How can this be? Why shouldn't a dac sound great?? Why would expensive dacs even exist if they all sound the same??? Wounded, you lash out angrily! It's idiocy! It's retarded! These people have dead ears! It hurts. We understand. It's been a long time and you've spent a lot of money, all for naught. But once the pain diminishes and you've had time to deal with your emotions just give it some thought. Do some reading here and once your ban is lifted, maybe ask a few questions. Instead of locking your eyes shut against the bright light of objectivity...just open them up a little. Just a squint! Let a bit of that light in and bask in a warm, tubey glow that actually means something! Perhaps, as with many of us, a weight will begin to lift off your shoulders. Perhaps there is freedom in this new reality! You might discover that there is a different way...a way that wields real magic. A way that actually answers questions and reveals truth while at the same time leaving your wallet fat and happy! Welcome my friend. Welcome to ASR where the truth shall set you free!

There are other brands than Golden Ear.

 

[ryanmh1]

"The Stenheim Alumine Three's measured performance indicates that this loudspeaker combines high sensitivity with a generally easy-to-drive impedance and mostly smooth, even behavior in the frequency domain. I was puzzled by the resonant peak in the port's output and by the small peak/dip just above 1kHz, but to be fair, any audible consequences of these resonances will depend on the music being played.—John Atkinson"

I've read John write this to justify a speakers problems before. Doesn't the audibility of the failings from any speaker depend on the music being played? Curious? LOL
More to Keith's post, is the resonance a product of purposeful voicing? I've never heard them and have no opinion on how that resonance might effect the final subjective sound ?

I don't think that was justifying the problem. It's more his way of being somewhat diplomatic while excusing/explaining how a reviewer didn't hear something fairly obvious, short of calling him tone-deaf. From an engineering perspective, the scary thing is that this was obvious on the impedance plot. Something a $130 Dayton DATS easily picked up. Either something let go internally that was supposed to damp it, or the design was just massively flawed. No one engineers an apparent port resonance into a speaker on purpose. I accidentally "engineered" one into a subwoofer once. Hoo boy. That sucker range like a bell and so does this $30,000 speaker, and the reviewer just.... didn't hear it. Now, if this is really some sort of non-port resonance that is only excited by playing a 250Hz tone and it then also resonates at 250Hz, it might be easier to miss.

 

[Sal1950]

No one engineers an apparent port resonance into a speaker on purpose.

Uh huh

 

[ryanmh1]

He's absolutely right. The saddest part is that in groups of the technically knowledgeable, the "audiophool" crowd is a laughing stock of discussion with their belief in things like the sound of power cords, digital cables, and all the rest of the snake-oil in our hobby.

A forgotten piece of audio lore: In the early 2000s, when Jim Bongiorno (of SAE and GAS fame) was designing the "Ampzilla II" which was his effort to create a truly unique amplifier that got rid of all sorts of distortion via what was, at the time (and to a degree, still is today), a fairly innovative and unique topology, he welded a power cord to his $10,000 amplifier. Literally welded the sucker to it to keep the connection as low resistance, failure-proof as possible. The magazines and reviewers and buyers all had fits because they couldn't use their $1000 cords with it. So he replaced it with an IEC socket.

 

[Mnyb]

A forgotten piece of audio lore: In the early 2000s, when Jim Bongiorno (of SAE and GAS fame) was designing the "Ampzilla II" which was his effort to create a truly unique amplifier that got rid of all sorts of distortion via what was, at the time (and to a degree, still is today), a fairly innovative and unique topology, he welded a power cord to his $10,000 amplifier. Literally welded the sucker to it to keep the connection as low resistance, failure-proof as possible. The magazines and reviewers and buyers all had fits because they couldn't use their $1000 cords with it. So he replaced it with an IEC socket.

Kudos to manufacturers who uses a captive power cord that can’t be replaced and an internal power supply
That way no aftermarket PSU or power cord.

Hopefully more speaker manufacturers ditch their biwire ( or even triwire ) terminals. They are only there so the dealers can sell two sets of cables.

 

[Sal1950]

Kudos to manufacturers who uses a captive power cord that can’t be replaced and an internal power supply

I'm mostly with you but external power supply's do have their advantages.
Like not placing large radiated hum fields inside the case close to sensitive circuits.
DC only, inside some stuff is a good thing.

 

[antcollinet]

I'm mostly with you but external power supply's do have their advantages.
Like not placing large radiated hum fields inside the case close to sensitive circuits.
DC only, inside some stuff is a good thing.

IEC pluggable mains leads are also useful, if for nothing more than feeding them through the back of cabinets.

Especially when you have a big FO UK plug on the business end.

 

[Flaesh]

Hopefully more speaker manufacturers ditch their biwire ( or even triwire ) terminals

 

[Mnyb]

View attachment 394388

But on the M2 it’s needed as the speakers are biamped with an external crossover and EQ. That’s not the case with 99.9% of speakers that have biwire terminals ?

 

[Sal1950]

Hopefully more speaker manufacturers ditch their biwire ( or even triwire ) terminals. They are only there so the dealers can sell two sets of cables.

Well, I never used them myself, and they do add a small amount to the build cost.
OTOH, their are some folks who right or wrongly, believe in their value.
Manufacturers are not going to remove them if doing so might cost them sales..