Revel Salon2 vs Genelec 8351B - Blind Test Preparations

[echopraxia]

I would definitely include that as a test.

This makes me wonder also what other very narrowly scoped tests might make sense. I know that narrowly scoped tests may be more difficult to extrapolate to music listening enjoyment, but in addition to regular music tests I think it’s worth it due to how much easier and quicker and repeatable such tests are (since the difference will either be very obvious very quickly, or if there is no difference the test can be more easily time bounded as a result).

In contrast, one of the things that makes blind music tests so hard is that often there’s no clear winner, and it is often difficult for untrained listeners to really describe the differences that they do hear.

 

[DonH56]

Thanks for your answer, but i didn´t mean to question why someone would use subs. I absolutely get the advatages. What i meant with my probably poorly translated (from german to english) question was: If you are already sure that you will use subs, would you buy a speaker like the Salon2? They seem to have much more than "fairly" deep bass. And i thought, maybe they are meant for people who don´t use subs?
The context was my interest in a comparison between "Genelec + sub" vs. "Salon2 without sub". Maybe this could be an interesting test with regard to the "quasi-religious" controversity you mentioned?

The reasons are in my post, and the advantages apply no matter the main speakers. I own Salon2's now, owned subs before them and after, and have used subs with other "full-range" systems. Many people will argue against subs when using speakers that play deeply, but I argue for them. Why is the list in my previous post:

1. Lower distortion and deeper bass (my subs attain ~7 Hz -3 dB in my room);
2. I can place the main speakers for best imaging and subs for best (smoothest, deepest) bass response -- those positions rarely overlap;
3. Less demand on the main amplifiers;
4. A desire for deeper bass than even "large" speakers can provide;
5. Since crossovers are not brick walls dropping instantly to 0 on either side, speakers that can play an octave below the crossover are advantageous to provide a seamless transition, even when the power in the speaker is 1/10th or less that at the crossover.

HTH - Don

 

[richard12511]

I will, but I am going to give it some time so I don’t feel rushed. I was planning to do this soon but instead I will wait and consider various options, including even maybe building a rotating turn table and visually opaque screen/curtain etc.

My reasoning for this is simple: I’m already pretty satisfied with what I’ve personally learned from my sighted comparisons this weekend. Therefore, a blind test at this point would be for the benefit of others, not me. I do want to do this, but as a result I also want to make sure I do this right. I know I will never please everyone, but for a test of speakers at this level of near perfection, and given the amount of work it will already require to host a blind test, I will want to go as far as I possibly can in terms of rigorous controls to ensure the test is truly blind. Maybe even double blind.

I agree. I say go ahead with doing the test, but take your time. Don't feel any pressure to rush and get it done soon. Given the importance and cost of this test, I think quality is far more important than speed.

 

[watchnerd]

Isn't the Salon 2 overdue for an update at this point?

I think it's 12 years old by now...

 

[Duke]

YES.

I think you and I have a different definition of what constitutes a "change in order of preference". Not trying to be a smart@$$, it just looks to me like we're using different definitions.

For the record, I agree with Toole that "people are much, much fussier about what they hear, and like and don't like, when they listen to just a single loudspeaker than they are when they're listening to stereo." I have been using mono listening since the early 80's during the crossover design stage.

He then goes on to say, "We occasionally have done comparisons in stereo as well just to prove the point to questioning persons, and every time the ones that win the mono tests win the stereo tests. There has been no exception to that rule. There is nothing special about stereophony."

Not that Toole's point is unclear, but even in the tiny three-speaker sample size, I think we see a change in the order of preference in Spatial Quality (the KEF overtakes the Rega in stereo).

If "Sound Quality" outweighs "Spatial Quality", then clearly the Rega wins overall in both mono and stereo. If "Sound Quality" and "Spatial Quality" are weighted equally, then Rega still wins both, but shares the win with KEF in stereo. So what Toole said is true in either case.

Toole has access to all of the data, and I can only see data for these three speakers. Based on my limited information, it looks to me like there is enough movement in the scores that it might matter in some cases. And to reiterate what I said before, what most interests me is WHY the scores for the Quad moved up so much. Is that what always happens to the lowest-scoring-in-mono speaker in any stereo test, or was the amount of movement in the Quad's score unusual, and if so, what acoustic and/or psychoacoustic factors might be in play?

 

[patate91]

If flaws are less noticeable, or even impossible the hear with stereo listening, can we still say they are flaws? Especially if flaws are perceived in a way the product was not intented to be used? When I overclock a computer's cpu it get too warm, no one will say the CPU, or his thermal management is flawed.

I guess it provide a certain peace of mind.

 

[DJBonoBobo]

The reasons are in my post, and the advantages apply no matter the main speakers. I own Salon2's now, owned subs before them and after, and have used subs with other "full-range" systems. Many people will argue against subs when using speakers that play deeply, but I argue for them. Why is the list in my previous post:

1. Lower distortion and deeper bass (my subs attain ~7 Hz -3 dB in my room);
2. I can place the main speakers for best imaging and subs for best (smoothest, deepest) bass response -- those positions rarely overlap;
3. Less demand on the main amplifiers;
4. A desire for deeper bass than even "large" speakers can provide;
5. Since crossovers are not brick walls dropping instantly to 0 on either side, speakers that can play an octave below the crossover are advantageous to provide a seamless transition, even when the power in the speaker is 1/10th or less that at the crossover.

HTH - Don

I agree to all of that, but it´s still not what i meant. My question is not if using subs has advantages for people with full range speakers like the Salon2. My question is, if full range speakers like the Salon2 have advantages for people with subs. (Over using a much smaller and cheaper main speaker with still "fairly" deep bass). So maybe it´s indeed more interesting to test the "Salon2 + subs" vs. "8351 + subs" instead of "Salon2 without sub" vs. "8351 + sub"?

 

[Duke]

What is usually not mentioned when these results are cited? How did they come about.

Thank you for your in-depth and well-illustrated post, I think you make many excellent points, in particular about the absence of early sidewall reflections in the Harman/Olive mono test configuration.

For the record, I am extremely grateful to Floyd Toole and Harman for making this much information available to us. I'm sure it's frustrating for them when someone like me looks at a small piece of their data (which they did not have to disclose) and questions their conclusions.

 

[DonH56]

I agree to all of that, but it´s still not what i meant. My question is not if using subs has advantages for people with full range speakers like the Salon2. My question is, if full range speakers like the Salon2 have advantages for people with subs. (Over using a much smaller and cheaper main speaker with still "fairly" deep bass). So maybe it´s indeed more interesting to test the "Salon2 + subs" vs. "8351 + subs" instead of "Salon2 without sub" vs. "8351 + sub"?

Possibly... If you cross to subs at 80 Hz, a typical 12 dB/octave electrical crossover will be putting only perhaps 1/10th the power to the mains at 40 Hz, but that can still be a fair amount of power. It is also about 1/2 as loud as the sub so is still a significant (though not dominant) contributor to the sound. Any distortion is going to appear at 80 Hz and higher, where it can be more audible. Some people prefer a lower crossover so mains that go even lower are required. My rule of thumb is to have the -3 dB frequency of the mains an octave (factor of two) lower than the crossover.

Having mains that can go significantly lower than the crossover means lower distortion at the crossover point (remembering that even the best speakers usually have pretty high distortion when driven hard near their LF cutoff) and generally greater power handling, headroom for peaks, etc. I prefer having the extra bass, but chances are if the Salon2's were good to "only" 30 or 40 Hz (3 dB) they'd still be good enough for me in the bass. Bass-wise, my Maggies (35 Hz) were "deep enough", so if the argument is that you can get sufficient bass from them instead of Salon2's I would tend to agree. F208's go to about 30 Hz and are cheaper. Of course, there are other reasons to choose large speakers, and I chose them as much or more for their midrange and up than for their deep, deep bass.

HTH - Don

 

[watchnerd]

but chances are if the Salon2's were good to "only" 30 or 40 Hz (3 dB) they'd still be good enough for me in the bass.

My Contour 20s specify a -3 dB point at 39 Hz. Stereophile measured a port tuning of 32 Hz.

Seems to work okay with an 80 Hz high pass.

 

[echopraxia]

Possibly... If you cross to subs at 80 Hz, a typical 12 dB/octave electrical crossover will be putting only perhaps 1/10th the power to the mains at 40 Hz, but that can still be a fair amount of power. It is also about 1/2 as loud as the sub so is still a significant (though not dominant) contributor to the sound. Any distortion is going to appear at 80 Hz and higher, where it can be more audible. Some people prefer a lower crossover so mains that go even lower are required. My rule of thumb is to have the -3 dB frequency of the mains an octave (factor of two) lower than the crossover.

Having mains that can go significantly lower than the crossover means lower distortion at the crossover point (remembering that even the best speakers usually have pretty high distortion when driven hard near their LF cutoff) and generally greater power handling, headroom for peaks, etc. I prefer having the extra bass, but chances are if the Salon2's were good to "only" 30 or 40 Hz (3 dB) they'd still be good enough for me in the bass. Bass-wise, my Maggies (35 Hz) were "deep enough", so if the argument is that you can get sufficient bass from them instead of Salon2's I would tend to agree. F208's go to about 30 Hz and are cheaper. Of course, there are other reasons to choose large speakers, and I chose them as much or more for their midrange and up than for their deep, deep bass.

HTH - Don

To add to this, I also appreciate a room tuning with a nice smooth downward sloped frequency response. I’m not talking about any cheap boomy one-note bass here obviously, but a rich warm and bottom weighted frequency response that is very pleasant to listen to. In contrast, if I don’t configure the settings of my Genelec’s room equalization to apply a downward sloped overall target curve, it sounds harsh and bright. And as we know, research shows that humans prefer this downward sloping in room response.

But to this point, I’ve measured cases where even an acoustic track played at 80dbA (e.g. sounds moderately but not unpleasantly loud) will measure 100db dbC due to the bass. That’s a HUGE difference, where in this case you want to maintain perhaps 20db headroom not even for dynamic peaks but just for bass power on “warmly mastered” tracks combined with a bass weighty room tuning.

In this case, if I want to really turn up the volume without clipping or damaging the speakers, it’s nice having the headroom to do so.

For example, a guest listening to my system was enjoying it a lot and kept asking me to increase the volume until it reached 118db. I had to cover my ears, but I’m not gonna deny them their enjoyment if they want it louder (as long as it’s not long term exposure, since anyways the A-weighted SPL was closer to 100dbA so not too dangerous for short exposure — many live concerts are worse). Even though I don’t really listen that loud myself, it’s nice to have the ability. My main point here is that I rather doubt the Salon2’s would safely push 120db of deep bass in this room. Granted, I don’t really know this for sure, but I think with some basic calculations that would at least require some really extreme woofer displacement from the Salon2’s that seems unlikely even if the amp had the power to make that happen.

So to answer the question, this is an example of why you’d combine them with subs: the ability to handle extreme SPL occasionally, and to extend down to 10hz as well which can be nice for tactile subsonics in some recordings, as well as movies.

 

[echopraxia]

Isn't the Salon 2 overdue for an update at this point?

I think it's 12 years old by now...

Absolutely, but could you elaborate? Not sure what your point is and how it relates to this thread.

Note that a pair of Genelec 8351B’s plus a single Genelec 7370A subwoofer (recommenced for the 8351B’s) costs not much less than what I bought my Salon2’s for (discounted from MSRP, obviously).

In a sense then, 2x 8351B + 7370A would really not be an unfair comparison in terms of price.

 

[amirm]

I'm still digesting the discussion, but wanted to point out in the meantime that if we're using the Toole paper from the 1980's to draw conclusions about the validity of mono testing, there are two big time problems I see (at least at first glance)
- only 3 speakers were tested
- the speakers were early 1980's technology

There was a much more recent test in 2008:

Olive Sean E., Hess Sean, Devantier Allan,
”Comparison of Loudspeaker-Room Equalization
Preferences for Multichannel, Stereo, and Mono
Reproductions: Are Listeners More Discriminating
in Mono?” presented at the 124th Convention of the
Audio Engineering Society, preprint 7492, (May
2008).

Listeners were far more picky about the flaws in the "No EQ" mode when in mono (blue) versus stereo (red) and multi-channel (square). Indeed in Multichannel test listeners barely cared about these large tonality differences.

 

[q3cpma]

There was a much more recent test in 2008:

Olive Sean E., Hess Sean, Devantier Allan,
”Comparison of Loudspeaker-Room Equalization
Preferences for Multichannel, Stereo, and Mono
Reproductions: Are Listeners More Discriminating
in Mono?” presented at the 124th Convention of the
Audio Engineering Society, preprint 7492, (May
2008).

View attachment 79625

Listeners were far more picky about the flaws in the "No EQ" mode when in mono (blue) versus stereo (red) and multi-channel (square). Indeed in Multichannel test listeners barely cared about these large tonality differences.

The elephant in the room is still being ignored: why do these flaws matter in any way if they're not perceived in stereo?

Let's test the comfort of car seats by driving in our birthday suit, I'm sure the different materials will provide much more comments and different ratings; like the searing leather vs cool mesh in summer.

 

[thewas]

Would be also interesting to know which loudspeakers were used in the test, that is if they had rather similar directivities which would make the test in regard to the discussion here rather less important.

What I find more interesting and important though in this quotation of the paper is the slight preference of direct sound EQ to the PIR based one which could be interesting in other topics in which it could be linked:

 

[amirm]

Would be also interesting to know which loudspeakers where used in the test, that is if they had rather similar directivities which would make the test in regard to the discussion here rather less important.

The study doesn't say:

But I think it is a B&W 800 series.

Note that this report doesn't test multiple speakers but multiple EQ on the same speakers.

 

[Duke]

There was a much more recent test in 2008:

View attachment 79625

Listeners were far more picky about the flaws in the "No EQ" mode when in mono (blue) versus stereo (red) and multi-channel (square). Indeed in Multichannel test listeners barely cared about these large tonality differences.

Very interesting!

This is much more of an "apples to apples" comparison than the Rega vs KEF vs Quad, as it is a comparison of EQ methods rather than of loudspeakers, and therefore the radiation pattern is unchanged.

In Mono the preference order looks like: PIR, Direct, InSitu, NoEQ.

In Stereo the preference order looks like: PIR/Direct (tie), InSitu, NoEQ.

In Surround mode the preference order looks like: Direct, PIR, InSitu, NoEQ.

So the general principle that the winner in Mono will be the (or "a") winner in Stereo is upheld.

And more significantly (to me), once again the one which scored the worst in mono clearly moved up the most when going to stereo. But this time there was NO difference in radiation pattern shapes, as that is unchanged in these tests. So I am led to conclude that the narrow pattern of the Quads DID NOT play a dominant role in the dramatic improvement in its score in stereo.

It looks like @March Audio was right and I was wrong.

Having this additional data set is extremely helpful to me. Thank you Amir!

 

[thewas]

The study doesn't say:

View attachment 79629

But I think it is a B&W 800 series.

Note that this report doesn't test multiple speakers but multiple EQ on the same speakers.

Thanks, then it rather cannot be used as an argument for possibly different preference mono vs. stereo for different directivities and rather belongs to this series of experiments http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/11/subjective-and-objective-evaluation-of.html

 

[thewas]

And more significantly (to me),once again the one which scored the worst in mono clearly moved up the most when going to stereo. But this time there was NO change in radiation pattern shape, as that is unchanged in these tests. So I am led to conclude that the narrow pattern of the Quads DID NOT play a dominant role the dramatic improvement in its score going from mono to stereo.

I wouldn't dare such a big conclusion step just from this test as the effects that led to rise in the score do not necessarily have to be the same and especially with the used B&W mainly tonality flaws were dominating, I would like to see such a test with tonally and directivity smooth wide vs. narrow directivity loudspeakers to be sure.

 

[napilopez]

The elephant in the room is still being ignored: why do these flaws matter in any way if they're not perceived in stereo?

Let's test the comfort of car seats by driving in our birthday suit, I'm sure the different materials will provide much more comments and different ratings; like the searing leather vs cool mesh in summer.

It's not that they are not percieved. They are percieved in stereo too, but they take longer to puzzle out as confidence is reduced. It's simply more time efficient efficient to evaluate in mono.

Personally, I prefer listening to mono recordings in stereo. It is a good compromise, though I do some of each.