pref score with sub

[chicofi]

Hi - first off, I have been eating up all of the great info on ASR - thanks for everyone who's contributing to this fantastic site.
It makes lots of sense and makes me think up more questions to which it has answers.

The one thing that I keep coming back to that's weird is the "Pref Score w/ Sub" ranking on the speakers.
In the spirit of ASR, there must be some rationale behind this number yet I haven't found it.

Some speakers leapfrog others when the mystery sub is added to them. Their flaws melt away somehow. What sub is it? What eq was performed?

I'd love it if there was a sticky post that explained what's going on with this number.

Thanks!

 

[617]

I'm not the most knowledgeable, but the preference score is derived from a formula which came from experiments at Harman. Many factors influence preference score, and two of the most important are smoothness of the in room frequency response and the bass response (quality and quantity.) A speaker with a low preference score which then becomes a high preference score with a sub is one which excels in every category except bass response.

Basically, people like deep powerful bass, but most speakers of small size are not capable of delivering it, and many of the best designs don't even pretend to. This is a good design decision in my opinion.

 

[Ron Texas]

30% of the enjoyment of music is in the low bass. This was determined in the research of Toole and Olive conducted over decades at Harman. Their work shows about a 65% preference among listeners in blind tests. It's the gold standard in the field.

 

[chicofi]

I accept all of that! I'm a bass player
But the leap from a carefully performed analysis of a speaker (i.e. amirm's review) to a sub score still seems mysterious to me.
Is this done in a controlled environment with sub added to the test station or is this an analysis done "on paper" based on the original speaker's measure results? And if it's the latter, then this is a score based on an "idealized" sub. right?

 

[617]

I accept all of that! I'm a bass player
But the leap from a carefully performed analysis of a speaker (i.e. amirm's review) to a sub score still seems mysterious to me.
Is this done in a controlled environment with sub added to the test station or is this an analysis done "on paper" based on the original speaker's measure results? And if it's the latter, then this is a score based on an "idealized" sub. right?

That is accurate, yes. Bass in audio reproduction is sort of a seperate issue from the rest of the spectrum since the wavelengths tend to be so much bigger. The best way to achieve bass (or reproduction up to the Schroeder frequency of your room) is distributed multiple subwoofers. The period of bass frequencies is so long that the soundwaves bounce around a bunch before even one period, so all you really need to worry about is steady state response.

 

[chicofi]

Thanks!

 

[MZKM]

The formula has a section for bass extension.

Since a good deal of people cross over to subs, especially for home theater, the bass extension of the speakers is generally not important. So, that calculation simply “ignores” that aspect by giving all speakers the same bass extension, that way the only thing impacting their score is the flatness of the on-axis, the flatness of the listening window, and the “smoothness“ of the PIR.

Some speakers will leapfrog as their bass natively is not deep, but it excels everywhere else. A speaker may not jump up too much as it already had really deep bass natively