- Thread Starter
- #41
If you read my reviews carefully, you see that it is an integrated story to uncover the performance of the speaker. Yes, I always started with the spin but the order for the rest changes. This is due to investigative work/thinking I do prior to writing the review. It is not just a batch blind dump of the graphs. You are seeing how I thought about the measurements to paint a complete picture.Out of curiosity and with respect, why list the PIR 1st.
In this case, I had a quandary. This is the *in room* performance of the speaker:
You see how flat and smooth the on-axis response is? I even zoomed in to same 50 dB scale and it was still much more flat than spin graph. I could not rationalize this. So I performed my listening tests and attempted to correct for on-axis response. There, I realized that it was hard to make a case that the on-axis response in the spin was more correct than above. Then I looked at the PIR. It absolutely told the truth with respect to what I was hearing, i.e., just a bit of boominess at 100 Hz.
This has happened in about 5% of the speakers I test. I correct based on on-axis response in spin and results is not good. Then I use PIR and results there are effective. This speaker is one of those cases.
Put all of these together and you can see now why I led with PIR. It was the most true assessment of the sound of this speaker based on objective measurements and listening tests.
The lesson here is that we are solving a puzzle. Most of the time the spin graph gives you bulk of the information you need. But in other cases, this is not so. As another example, horizontal directivity plays an outsized role here where it may not at all in other types of speakers.
I have explained the same thing about electronic measurements and why I dislike batch generation and dump of graphs. It is important to think through what the overall picture and evidence that backs it.