Nice Talk with Paul Barton of PSB Speakers

[goat76]

You are talking about speaker auditioning under familiar conditions, if not one's home then some other very familiar location.

What is worthless is trying to judge a speaker (or most any other component) in a hotel room at an audio show.

Well, according to Paul Barton, it only takes about 20 minutes to sort out the speakers from the room. And according to Toole it only takes a few minutes, after that short amount of time the room is obviously something we can call a "familiar condition".

I think a hotel room at an audio show has probably too many abstracting variables to be considered a good demo situation, so that's not what I'm talking about here.

 

[mps]

They're talking about dynamic compression as a result of voice-coil heating in this bit. He's saying that a hpf on the main speakers will lead to less power going to the woofers on the main speakers, and thus less heating in the woofers in the main speakers. This seems reasonable. This refers to the main speakers only, not the subwoofers.

This has nothing to do with filtering the AC power, if that's the impression you got, they're talking about filtering the signal.

Thanks, Charles. When I heard "high-pass filtering your mains," I thought it was talking about power mains but listening more carefully, he immediately clarifies that he means the main loudspeakers.

 

[moonlight rainbow dream]

Here is another longform Paul Barton interview... topic is speaker design and the Imagine T3.

Neat speaker with the cascading 1/2-way woofer roll offs.


reviewed/measured here:

PSB Imagine T3 review

This is PSB's Imagine T3 review. First, the impedance data. This speaker has a 3.5 way structure. I didn't find anything special in the impedance data. Next is SPL/FR. I use a 1m to 5ms window filter when measuring speakers. However, the speaker was too wide for...

www.audiosciencereview.com

SoundStageNetwork.com | SoundStage.com - NRC Measurements: PSB Imagine T3 Loudspeakers

www.soundstagenetwork.com

 

[kemmler3D]

They're talking about dynamic compression as a result of voice-coil heating in this bit. He's saying that a hpf on the main speakers will lead to less power going to the woofers on the main speakers, and thus less heating in the woofers in the main speakers. This seems reasonable. This refers to the main speakers only, not the subwoofers.

This has nothing to do with filtering the AC power, if that's the impression you got, they're talking about filtering the signal.

My opinion on this is that if you're using EQ, you should run the mains full-range.

Reasoning: More sources in the <100hz regime can help even out the peaks and nulls, plus many systems will be SPL-limited in this range, so why give up headroom you already have, unless you have multiple strong subs? I guess if you have 4 subs you don't need the mains to pitch in, but if you're only running 1 or 2 subs, I think the mains should stay in.

The EQ will tend to lower the gain in the overlapping region, leading to less strain on the mains either way.

 

[MattHooper]

That don't make him bullet-proof. LOL

"Tell me you're American without telling me you're American"

 

[Sal1950]

"Tell me you're American without telling me you're American"

And very proud of it.

 

[Axo1989]

"Mr Darko?"
"Yes"
"Berlin Police."
"How can I help you?"
"We've detained an armed man at Brandenburg Airport, we believe you were his intended target."
"What did he say?"
"Nothing that made sense. Do you know [that poster's real name]?"
"No, never heard of them."
"We didn't think so."
"Thank you so much."
"Just doing our job, sir."

 

[fineMen]

They're talking about dynamic compression as a result of voice-coil heating ...

... and so they forget power compression, or better to say general compression with nearly *every* contemporary production (burgeois 'classic' included). Yes, the recording gets 'compressed' right away in the studio, so it can be listened to at home. Otherwise the dynamics was too large, the solo player would appear too silent, and so on.

Again and again those guys loving audio actively refuse to consider the decision making in the studio. As if the recording contains anything else than a fotograph-on-paper version of the real thing, but not the least any original substance. Seems to be a Freud'ian issue. Sigh, what can you do about it?

 

[dsnyder0cnn]

We did both stereo and mono listening.... did the same experiment in mono and stereo (double blind)...when testing in stereo the anchor got better in stereo because stereo masks tonal aspects of a speaker. You get better differentiation between sonic differences of speakers in mono than stereo.

I wonder if he was referring to mono listening with two speakers or one. I suspect the former since a single speaker would probably require moving one of the speakers to the center, etc.

Whenever I encounter a room/system that's new to me, I almost always ask the host to play a mono track to help me get my bearings. I do the same for others when introducing them to my system.

It's my belief that a 2-channel system can never deliver accurate stereo reproduction if mono playback (both speakers playing) is lackluster.

 

[Endibol]

Here is another longform Paul Barton interview... topic is speaker design and the Imagine T3.

Neat speaker with the cascading 1/2-way woofer roll offs.


reviewed/measured here:

PSB Imagine T3 review

This is PSB's Imagine T3 review. First, the impedance data. This speaker has a 3.5 way structure. I didn't find anything special in the impedance data. Next is SPL/FR. I use a 1m to 5ms window filter when measuring speakers. However, the speaker was too wide for...

www.audiosciencereview.com

SoundStageNetwork.com | SoundStage.com - NRC Measurements: PSB Imagine T3 Loudspeakers

www.soundstagenetwork.com

This is a nice interview again. Paul Barton clearly knows what he is talking about.

 

[georgeT]

I use speakers in mono because I listen to speakers not music.

 

[amirm]

I wonder if he was referring to mono listening with two speakers or one.

One speaker.

 

[oscar_dziki]

Haha I thought that only teenagers watch YouTube like that. You proved me wrong.

Anyway the ignorance of Darko and not believing in measurements are just beyond me.
Nevertheless an interesting interview worth listening.

Cmon, the guy does reviews of streamers and claims they sound different from each other. I'd love to produce an audiophile, 1000$ 16GB USB gold stick and send him for a review. To be an audiophile you need ears, not brains apparently

 

[MrB]

I learned long ago that the fastest way to learn a speakers general sound signature was to listen to just 1 speaker. I install audio systems for a living and constantly audition speakers to recommend to my clients.

 

[JonP]

FYI from what I recall, this interview as done October of last year. Anyone watched Darko's current videos to see if he is indeed coming towards measurements?

As a few have commented... could be....

I have seen the ones where he got a new place, spent a lot of time with REW and room treatments, and showing how measuring that tells you where you are and how much you improved things. And recently he touted spending money on room treatments would be more important than spending it on a higher end amp, or even a better speaker... assuming you have capable stuff already.
So, looks like he is flirting with it...

 

[JonP]

Then you forget about the boomboxes, that were all in one... Those were made by Philips first in 1966 and called the Norelco 22RL962, with an Radio and a cassette player.

And before that you had the big consoles like what is probally one of the first, the RCA Radiola Model 60 from 1929

Heh... like that console, made the year my Dad was born!

I went to the Edison Lab / Museum in New Jersey one time... lots of cool things on display, including a horn speaker thing from the Teens or earlier, I think it was even coaxial! (Small horn coming out of a big one) It was a true dynamic driver device, and even had a crossover! Sometimes, things have been around longer than you think!

 

[LtMandella]

As some of you may know, Paul Barton was there at National Research Institute when Dr. Toole started doing his research on speakers. In this interview with Darko, he fills in some of the details about that experience. It is about 50 minutes and sadly, I don't know how to speed it up on Soundcloud. But is very well worth a listen:

Interview with Paul Barton

As an aside, Darko without mentioning my name, asks Paul about listening to speakers to mono. To his surprised, Paul confirms why this is better and explains why. There are other moments where Darko has no choice but to accept the technical points Paul is making about importance of measurements, etc.

Here are some bits I transcribed if you don't want to listen to it:
---
Before you were introduced to dr. Toole were you designing by ear? Yes, I was designing based on early days ..... pink noise listening to it and music... when I took the first speaker to Ottawa [at NRC], there were clearly things that could be improved based on theory that speaker is a window.... flat frequency response and dispersion are all a factor."

"[measurements at NRC] put a microscope on what I was doing... correlating measurements with listener preference."

1. Most of the people most of the time agree on relative quality of a group of loudspeaker. There is no personal taste when it comes to asking what sounds the most natural. That is the goal to make the recording exactly the musician intended.

2. Properly interpreted set of objective measurements correlate strongly with listener preferences. You can see the measurements and predict how listeners will prefer.

[3] Musical tastes and experience is not material.

When listeners go into the room, it will take a few minutes for listeners to adjust to the acoustics of the room. After that, they are able to sort out the speakers from room.

We did both stereo and mono listening.... did the same experiment in mono and stereo (double blind)...when testing in stereo the anchor got better in stereo because stereo masks tonal aspects of a speaker. You get better differentiation between sonic differences of speakers in mono than stereo. Most of stereo imaging we hear is in the recording, not the room.

The final tuning is done by ear, i.e. ratio of highs to lows. Darko summarizing: "95% is done with measurements last bit is done by ear." Tuning is still done using measurements. Subjecting himself to double blind as he tweaks.

"We can measure everything... but the scale of it you judge by ear."

RE: Speedup. Copy and paste the url into VLC "media/open network stream" dialogue. Press play. VLC supports speed adjustment of playback stream.

 

[Jeromeof]

It's available as a podcast and most podcast applications have speedup options - I used the Podcasts Application as its available on both IOS and Android (and the Web though without the speedup features) and I often switch between mobile devices:

Inside the PSB Passif 50 (& more) w/ Paul Barton - Darko.Audio podcast

with PSB's Paul Barton. This episode is bro…

pca.st

As well as speedup options Podcast has a brilliant feature call 'trim silence' - I usually find this knocks about 10% / 20% of the time off most podcasts.

 

[peterhaslund]

As an amateur myself it's just amazing what complete non-professionals will opine on this matter. I own the Imagine T3s, and they do sound uncoloured and wide ranging to me, but I rather trust Paul. What would be the argument against somebody who did measurements and double blindfold to eliminate the human error? Please, get real, people.