Palmer ORBIT 11 Cardioid Coaxial 3-way studio monitor (MSRP 799€/899$)

[nbot]

I do not agree. He does not have a contractual obligation to present the speakers in the order he receives. The objectivity is his imparted by his measurements, that's all we care. And if he can manage to measure a speaker faster, because there's a temporary hype, than good for him and for us also

Which brings us to the most important question - when will he have time to review them?

 

[Tell]

And again, that's neither objective nor neutral.

He's quite subjective in his reviews though which would be obvious if you've ever watched any of them (but also backing it up with objective data which is what makes him so good). And why not review speakers that people actually want to see reviewed compared to some obscure ones that noone has ever heard of (that might even be quite bad)?

 

[kma100]

He has entire portions of his house stacked up with cartons full of speaker boxes, has a 6-12 months backlog, but he goes out asking for new speakers to test because they're currently surrounded by clout / hype.

If that's not bias, I don't know what is.

This is a weird take. If there is interest in a newer speaker it makes sense for him to measure. The NFS output isn't biased! Maybe he has mentioned "house stacked up with cartons" and "6-12 months backlog" but he gets to choose what he wants to measure.

 

[Mart68]

He is claiming neutrality and objectivity, is he not?

Not sure he's claiming anything. He gives us the Klippel results (objective, unbiased) and then his personal opinion (subjective, biased - like all opinion).

Up to us to extract what we will from that.

I don't see how skipping Palmer to the front of the queue for testing is compromising objectivity. You'll have to explain that one.

 

[tonyrob]

And again, that's neither objective nor neutral.

In Erin's world , he does whatever he wants. Readers, like me, did not pay a cent for his work. if you do not like, you can leave.

 

[Det15]

I don't see how skipping Palmer to the front of the queue for testing is compromising objectivity. You'll have to explain that one.

Let's say a reviewer receives & tests 2 technically identical products, product A and product B. He gives them both the same score. But he publishes the review of product A a year earlier. That provides publicity, market advantage and sales to product A a whole year before product B.

Within a tightly contested market with constant technical progress, which product gets publicity earlier has monumental impact in how the product is perceived and sold.

So, even with no bias within the contents of the review, delaying or accelerating reviews of certain products or brands can give significant market advantage to a certain product or brand - and that itself is bias / favoritism on part of the reviewer.

 

[TimVG]

Let's say a reviewer receives & tests 2 technically identical products, product A and product B. He gives them both the same score. But he publishes the review of product A a year earlier. That provides publicity, market advantage and sales to product A a whole year before product B.

Within a tightly contested market with constant technical progress, which product gets publicity earlier has monumental impact in how the product is perceived and sold.

So, even with no bias within the contents of the review, delaying or accelerating reviews of certain products or brands can give significant market advantage to a certain product or brand - and that itself is bias / favoritism on part of the reviewer.

But it is a double edged blade, as if the product is not well received, it can give market advantage to other brands. It makes complete sense to forward some products in the queue if there is already a lot of talk about it.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Let's say a reviewer receives & tests 2 technically identical products, product A and product B. He gives them both the same score. But he publishes the review of product A a year earlier. That provides publicity, market advantage and sales to product A a whole year before product B.

Within a tightly contested market with constant technical progress, which product gets publicity earlier has monumental impact in how the product is perceived and sold.

So, even with no bias within the contents of the review, delaying or accelerating reviews of certain products or brands can give significant market advantage to a certain product or brand - and that itself is bias / favoritism on part of the reviewer.

Here's an idea
Start a YouTube channel and review speakers in the order they arrive.
Honestly I don't get why it bothers you

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

If that's not bias, I don't know what is.

No, that is not bias. And you are right - you don't know.

He is claiming neutrality and objectivity, is he not?

No claiming - he is neutral and objecive.

Giving more recognized or better marketed brands or products preferential treatment via accelerated review schedules is not neutral and objective.

Palmer is hardly wildly recognized brand.

Let's say a reviewer receives & tests 2 technically identical products, product A and product B. He gives them both the same score. But he publishes the review of product A a year earlier. That provides publicity, market advantage and sales to product A a whole year before product B.

Both products are similar, but he is publishing them one year apart?! No, he will never do such stupid thing!
You don't have a clue how media (portals, YouTube, magazines..) work. But I do - for 29 years. as a contributing editor of popular science magazine (I did reviews on hi-fi equipment, among other things).

 

[staticV3]

No claiming - he is neutral and objecive.

His data is.
He himself is not as his listening tests are done sighted and uncontrolled.

 

[Vladimir Filevski]

His data is.
He himself is not as his listening tests are done sighted and uncontrolled.

He is neutral and objective in presenting measurements/data. That is all what I need.
Every subjective review can not possibly be neutral and objective, if it is not done as a controled blind test. Do you know any example of periodical reviews/tests of hi-fi loudspeakers done with Klippel (or at least done in anechoic chamber), together with blind subjective tests. No? So, we have to stick with what we have...

 

[Mart68]

Let's say a reviewer receives & tests 2 technically identical products, product A and product B. He gives them both the same score. But he publishes the review of product A a year earlier. That provides publicity, market advantage and sales to product A a whole year before product B.

Within a tightly contested market with constant technical progress, which product gets publicity earlier has monumental impact in how the product is perceived and sold.

So, even with no bias within the contents of the review, delaying or accelerating reviews of certain products or brands can give significant market advantage to a certain product or brand - and that itself is bias / favoritism on part of the reviewer.

Okay I see what you mean and agree that could happen - however he has no obligation to the manufacturer and they have none to him.

Can't see a speaker company sacrificing revenue just to keep Erin happy, so why would he do that for them?

 

[nat1]

Let's say a reviewer receives & tests 2 technically identical products, product A and product B. He gives them both the same score. But he publishes the review of product A a year earlier. That provides publicity, market advantage and sales to product A a whole year before product B.

Within a tightly contested market with constant technical progress, which product gets publicity earlier has monumental impact in how the product is perceived and sold.

So, even with no bias within the contents of the review, delaying or accelerating reviews of certain products or brands can give significant market advantage to a certain product or brand - and that itself is bias / favoritism on part of the reviewer.

None of this is his responsibility and he can show favouritism to a particular brand or speaker if he likes. As long as the data is free from bias there's no issue.

 

[kemmler3D]

He is claiming neutrality and objectivity, is he not?

Giving more recognized or better marketed brands or products preferential treatment via accelerated review schedules is not neutral and objective.

You're correct but unreasonable here IMO. A truly unbiased speaker reviewer, according to this ethos would:

1. Select speakers to test completely at random, from all speakers ever made, and the selection would need to be done by an assistant.

2. Not even look at the speaker before listening to it and writing the ears-on review.

3. Never know how much a speaker cost, even after reviewing it, so as to avoid biasing future reviews.

None of this (or even a partial attempt at this) is really possible or productive for someone that wants to make a living or even beer money reviewing speakers. You may find that motivation unpalatable per se, but Erin even with all the bias he might or might not have is still in the 99th percentile or better in terms of how much useful information he provides readers.

Erin tries to be useful to people who are shopping for speakers today or in the near future. I don't know that trying to avoid letting hype guide the order of reviews helps the average shopper, probably the opposite.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I think Steve Guttenberg and John Darko both review speakers in the order in which they are received.

 

[Salt]

Must the thread's title be renamed to 'Ethical as well as economical aspects of loudspeaker reviews', or wouldn't this be better a completely different thread (to start with)?

 

[KL....]

I received mine today and unfortunately they're going back.

First of all I must emphasize that everything I'm about to write is 100% subjective and I don't have any measurements to share, except that of my room which would be of no use and not fair towards the Orbits. Take everything I say with a grain of salt and a healthy pinch of scepticism. For context, my day gig is being the audio engineer of a concert hall and I also work as a freelance studio engineer. 99% of my freelance work these days is album mastering, for which I've been looking to upgrade my monitoring. I have owned quite a few monitors, including Focal Twins, Dynaudio BM15s and such, and I've currently got a pair of Genelec 8030s with a Dynaudio 9S sub and Dirac room correction. I work in a small-ish room of 13 square meters. It's reasonably well treated, the positioning is meticulously calculated and measured and the frequency response is in the +/-5dB range with a pretty decent waterfall and RT60 graph. It's not perfect, but it's definitely good enough for critical work. The monitors are 1,6 meters away from me, so it's right between near and midfield.

I spent the morning listening to my current setup so I had it in fresh memory. I then replaced the 8030s with the Orbits in the exact same positioning, disconnected the sub and turned off Dirac. The first thing I noticed was the ridiculous bass extension. It really is pretty remarkable for speakers this size, and without measuring I estimated they've got no trouble going to mid-20Hz very cleanly at around 82dB C slow which is on the top range of my normal working volume. The next good thing is the dispersion, they do handle it very well as expected. Now, to the bad. My first impression right after the Genelecs was that although the low end is on a completely different level, the Orbits are nowhere near as detailed and analytical. I really wanted to be blown away, but unfortunately not this time. At this point I fired up REW and took measurements. I got the best results with the rear wall compensation in the second position, and the measurements confirmed that they do go down to 24Hz without any struggle. If your room allows it and you use them mainly for music, you really don't need a sub with the Orbits, which is really impressive.

I then fired up Dirac, made the measurements, re-measured with REW, did my usual adjustments to the target curve (+1,5dB shelf below 100Hz, -0,5dB at 2,4kHz as that's what usually works for me) and gave them another chance. Unfortunately still not impressed. The clarity, punch and stereo image of the 8030s with a sub is just on another level for me. I can pinpoint problems way better with the small 8030's which is a must for my field of work. Spotting things like digital artifacts, distortion where it's unwanted and such is a major part of what I do. Weirdly enough, the Genelecs also excited me quite a bit more, which is usually on the contrary - the more analytical speakers being the less enjoyable to listen to. I spent some time going through my reference albums, after which I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to start integrating the sub into the setup, as the Orbits just weren't for me. I then packed them up somewhat beaten and put the Genelecs back up and checked the same albums just to make sure. Yeah, no question.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they aren't good. They might be perfect for everyone else and measure really well, but after having had the pleasure of working on a lot of different setups from cheap cans to six figure line arrays, this once again reminded me of how personal the choice of monitors is. I'm a bit bummed that I didn't love the Orbits, but on the positive side I was glad to be reminded of how much punch the Genelecs pack for their size and price. Oh well, the search goes on, but for now I'm more than happy going back to my original setup!

PS. Regarding the orange ring, while it doesn't bother me, I think it would be rather hard to cover it completely with something 3D printed without getting in the way of the mid driver surrounds. It's tight.

Thank you, @BVK, you are suggesting that you have meticulously Tuned the Room to the Genelec 8030s, reasonable, and positioned the Palmer ORBIT 11 in the very same positions as the Genelec 8030s? The Genelec 8030s can present/display as Bright and/or Analytical, reasonable, and are light in the Bass region/area although you also utilise the Dynaudio 9S sub and Dirac room correction?

To ask, why would you expect the Palmer ORBIT 11 to sound higher performing than the Genelec 8030, especially under different Testing Conditions/Setup (a Room and Setup tuned for the Genelec 8030 and Dynaudio 9S sub), and especially as the Palmer ORBIT 11 were new, unpacked and then immediately auditioned/compared?

 

[BVK]

Thank you, @BVK, you are suggesting that you have meticulously Tuned the Room to the Genelec 8030s, reasonable, and positioned the Palmer ORBIT 11 in the very same positions as the Genelec 8030s? The Genelec 8030s can present/display as Bright and/or Analytical, reasonable, and are light in the Bass region/area although you also utilise the Dynaudio 9S sub and Dirac room correction?

To ask, why would you expect the Palmer ORBIT 11 to sound higher performing than the Genelec 8030, especially under different Testing Conditions/Setup (a Room and Setup tuned for the Genelec 8030 and Dynaudio 9S sub), and especially as the Palmer ORBIT 11 were new, unpacked and then immediately auditioned/compared?

I'm not sure I understand your question, and I think I was pretty thorough in my initial post. As I already said many many times, they might be excellent speakers but they didn't do it for me in my use case scenario. That should not put you or anyone else off in purchasing a pair or liking them.

FWIW, here's what a dealer said in another thread and I concur:

Sorry understood, there were just a couple of issues with the Palmers, maybe a slight softening of the sound and a slightly ‘thuddy’ bass which none of the other speakers here exhibited even when positioned in exactly the same position.
I need to look into that further, I even compared just one speaker which was interesting, I thought I perceived a deeper soundstage with the C8Cs as a pair but that was diminished somewhat listening to only one channel.
The Palmers don't do a lot wrong, keep relatively near-field a bit of EQ, tremendous value.
Keith

 

[IngMishael]

Holy shit I have had to ignore many weirdos who have reared their ugly heads arguing useless points these past 3 days. tf is going on

 

[Chr1]

Lol.
Tell us how you really feel.