Monaural Speaker Recordings - Blind Testing Six Speakers for Fun

[JakeK]

I'm surprised the big JBL didn't sound better. Room acoustics playing a part!

 

[GXAlan]

Yeah. It does show how speaker preference isn’t so easy. These are all my speakers, and I enjoy using them for different reasons.

Going back to the car audio thread, you can see how really poor speaker drivers can sound great in a “controlled room.” The BMW has the aftermarket Match 7UP BMW DSP amp with the generic downloadable tuning for all Gran Turismo BMW’s (not specific to the 6 series).

The 708P have a laser focus imaging that makes poor recordings sound thin and I wonder if that affects the preference as well. What I need to do is get a stereo binaural mic to record the experience in these different rooms.

 

[dasdoing]

hard to take a conclusion here, other than that a family room is a terrible room, and that BMW interiors can have surprising clarity

 

[GXAlan]

hard to take a conclusion here, other than that a family room is a terrible room, and that BMW interiors can have surprising clarity

Which is actually a really important conclusion since in many cases, the bigger room is where you usually put the most expensive speakers or home theater.

I really think we need stereo comparisons, despite the better ability to assess frequency response tonality in mono. But I hope the test just encourages people to keep an open mind for experimentation. The highest scoring speaker may not be your preferred speaker in your preferred room.

Next comparison would have to be same speaker, different rooms, with and without Dirac.

 

[Palladium]

I also heard the Neumann KH120 II in an REW'ed pro audio showroom at ~73dB nearfield, and it didn't impressed me much either over my current 305P which is now in my office's storeroom. The 305Ps are also very badly positioned and only 1.5 feet spaced apart due to space constraints.

The KH120 at my comfortable SPL levels had slightly more midrange and less treble, and that's about it.

 

[dasdoing]

I really think we need stereo comparisons, despite the better ability to assess frequency response tonality in mono.

I think the best you can do without special equipment like a dummy head is to record left and right speaker speratly and than join them into a stereo file.
than maybe playing around with an addition of a cross-talk to that file.

I have also beein thinking that for these kind of test changing the microphone pattern would be better. our ears are more cardioid (?) than quase-omni. the problem is getting the cardioid mic into neutral. but it could be corrected to the response of the measurement mic at same position

 

[Dumdum]

Yeah. It does show how speaker preference isn’t so easy. These are all my speakers, and I enjoy using them for different reasons.

Going back to the car audio thread, you can see how really poor speaker drivers can sound great in a “controlled room.” The BMW has the aftermarket Match 7UP BMW DSP amp with the generic downloadable tuning for all Gran Turismo BMW’s (not specific to the 6 series).

The 708P have a laser focus imaging that makes poor recordings sound thin and I wonder if that affects the preference as well. What I need to do is get a stereo binaural mic to record the experience in these different rooms.

Unless the match has been tuned for the individual vehicle it won’t be optimal, the generic tunes for a gt car will need to be different for 4 or 6 series for example

It would be worth getting that setup tuned and bring out the best in it

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