Should we (I) get into speaker testing & measurement

[Cahudson42]

I vote for sticking with electronics - because your reports stand head and shoulders above others, and are not colored by subjectivism. Given your limited time, I would prefer you continue with these, rather that divert and dilute to speakers.

I eagerly await your electronics reports - and hope we might see the es100 and BTR3 sometime soon.

Keep up your great work, and Thanks!
Chris

 

[scott wurcer]

that would obviously be yes, but given the growing success of the ASR site, I'm afraid that as for wine, Amir will become the robert parker of audio with many perverse effects and lead to an increase in the prices of new and second-hand products.

https://www.robertparker.com/

Not Parker please, we will all be listening to over compressed bass heavy pop music. Parker single handedly destroyed all sense of subtlety and diversity in wine.

 

[amirm]

One idea for new speakers or speakers we have original packing for. We could ship one or both speakers when purchased to Amir for testing and then have it forwarded or returned back to us. Those of us curious to know how the factory measurements verify would be one source of material.

We have done this for some heavy gear (e.g. AVRs) and is a great way to save half the shipping cost.

 

[fredoamigo]

Not Parker please, we will all be listening to over compressed bass heavy pop music. Parker single handedly destroyed all sense of subtlety and diversity in wine.

Sorry, it's true, the comparison was really wrong...

 

[pjug]

Is it too early to send speakers?

 

[mkawa]

i vote no. speakers and headphones are too room and head dependent, resp. besides, if you think vendors are a PITA about poor measurements with their electronics, they are an order of magnitude more protective of their speaker and headphone designs.

 

[amirm]

Is it too early to send speakers?

Not if you are interested in me selling them from back of a white van.

 

[Aprude51]

This is a key point here. We have set such a high standard of independence that it is now hurting us in funding expansion of our activities. I see other sites making such investments and even funding employees to work there based on ads and every other form of monetization they can think of.

Do we want to continue to keep the optics of independence so high at the expense of not being able to test more category of audio products?

It is our own collective decision with respect to site policies that has created a quandary for us.

I know that some are vehemently opposed to sponsorship, but I think there are a few reasons that ASR could accept sponsorship and remain independent enough to be still be trusted:

- Measurements are inherently objective. Although one can try to present poor measurements in a positive light (JA...), your open, documented approach to measuring will help to prevent that. Additionally, the educated & inquisitive membership would help to keep you honest.

- Due to the history of the site, ASR is going to attract sponsors that are already supportive of a honest / scientific approach to evaluation. As has been mentioned before, brands that develop excellent products are already benefiting greatly from the site. I don’t see the harm in ASR capturing part of the revenue generated from positive reviews.

Publications funded strictly by subscriptions are more common in professional spaces where a high subscription cost can be justified. Even with some clever funding schemes, I think it will be exceedingly difficult to support an effort like this without outside money.

 

[pjug]

Not if you are interested in me selling them from back of a white van.

You'll have to park the van in your yard. The speakers I was thinking of sending would not sell for enough to pay for gas.

 

[Earfonia]

Sorry, I haven't read whole pages in this thread, only some pages. If accurate speaker measurement may not be practically realistic to achieve at home, I would like to suggest, start with the smallest first, review and measurement of earphones and In-Ear Monitors.
My 2 cents.

 

[Aprude51]

i vote no. speakers and headphones are too room and head dependent, resp. besides, if you think vendors are a PITA about poor measurements with their electronics, they are an order of magnitude more protective of their speaker and headphone designs.

I think this is actually a good reason to get into speaker measurement.

 

[Fluffy]

@Aprude51 is right. If there is a company that don't want people to probe into their speaker designs, it's all the more reason to do just that.

 

[FrantzM]

Status of this endeavor?

Most needed.

Speakers testing and objective evaluation is the next step in the evolution of Hi-Fi. The FUD is perpetrated due to the (real) interaction between the room and the transducers. These can be measured as well. Measurements could even help us predict how a set of speakers will perform in a given environment
Let's look at this very carefully. The High End Audio Industry is taking notice of ASR and its serious objective measurements. Many of us have, thanks to this website and its thorough and standards-based testing, been able to assemble transparent electronics for outlays of cash ranging from dirt cheap ( Atom, Khardas, Apple Dongle) through mid-price (RME, Topping DX-7) to high (for mere mortals , not audiophiles) prices (Benchmark, etc).. I am certain such deals exist in speakers. ASR has so far some consensus on some speakers of great objective merits (Various Revel models , various JBL , the Dutch & Dutch 8C , Kii 3, the odd Neuman, Genelec but no formal testing. Let us keep in mind that formal testing has allowed us to see how the Apple dongle at $10 surpasses the $15,000 Total Crap err ... DAC and to discover gems such as the Atom, Khardas, Topping, SMSL, Okto Research, Benchmark (that one we knew these Benchmark products were good but nowhere near that kind of good),

To repeat ..Where do we stand on this as of today?

Peace

 

[amirm]

To repeat ..Where do we stand on this as of today?

I have decided that if this needs to be done, I need to pay for it and then hope members over time help offset the cost. Waiting for it to be funded could take too long, if practical at all.

The challenge now is how I can justify spending the cost of 2 to 3 new cars on this in my retirement days. Or how I can justify it based on how many speakers I can test.

On the positive side, I am very interested in doing it.

 

[Fluffy]

Dutch & Dutch 8C, Kii 3

I am very suspicious of these DSP speakers. They may measure perfectly after applying those DSP corrections, but do we know how they perform without them? Could adding DSP be an excuse for poor acoustical choices in their design? We also can't individually measure how their amps or internal dacs perform. And also why trust the manufacturer to choose what kind of DSP correction you need? EQ can be a very individualized thing, and starting from an already EQ'd speaker you don't know if you are applying a filter that was already applied, thus deviating even further from the intrinsic mechanical behavior of the speaker. This sounds like something that can add all sorts of distortions and other artifacts. I try to avoid DSP based headphones for those reasons.

By coincidence, I heard those Dutch&Dutch speakers in an audio show I've been to this week. Didn't really make that much of an impression on me, to be honest.

 

[RayDunzl]

The challenge now is how I can justify spending the cost of 2 to 3 new cars on this in my retirement days. Or how I can justify it based on how many speakers I can test.

I don't think I could, either.

Or, justify it as "only a tenth of the cost of ONE carefully chosen car"...

(Private jets are expensive too)

$4.5m not counting operating costs:

On the positive side, I am very interested in doing it.

You could dabble a bit.

Explain the constraints, why it isn't a "full measure", etc, perform a few simple measures, see what you find.

 

[Julf]

I am very suspicious of these DSP speakers. They may measure perfectly after applying those DSP corrections, but do we know how they perform without them?

Who cares? Why would it matter? It is like asking "how would my car perform without power steering and automatic traction control?". Perhaps interesting to a car suspension/handling design engineer, but not to an user.

 

[Vovgan]

how I can justify spending the cost of 2 to 3 new cars on this

Current and future generations of audio lovers won’t forget you.

 

[Juhazi]

I am very suspicious of these DSP speakers. They may measure perfectly after applying those DSP corrections, but do we know how they perform without them? Could adding DSP be an excuse for poor acoustical choices in their design? We also can't individually measure how their amps or internal dacs perform. And also why trust the manufacturer to choose what kind of DSP correction you need? EQ can be a very individualized thing, and starting from an already EQ'd speaker you don't know if you are applying a filter that was already applied, thus deviating even further from the intrinsic mechanical behavior of the speaker. This sounds like something that can add all sorts of distortions and other artifacts. I try to avoid DSP based headphones for those reasons.

By coincidence, I heard those Dutch&Dutch speakers in an audio show I've been to this week. Didn't really make that much of an impression on me, to be honest.

Fluffy, you seem to be pretty arcaic with dsp! "All sorts of distortions and artifacts" will not be induced, don't worry! But many conventional passive speakers are very bad despite of high price! Of course dsp cannot hide severe flaws in physical design and performance. Noise cancellation technique is not easy, it has some problems IRL.

Kii, D&D, Beolab 90/50 etc. latest home hifi designs use dsp as essential part of the design and crossover, and don't give any sound without dsp. These have very good acoustic/physical design choices too and dsp gives some really special features like adjustable radiation pattern. Another useful feature is for subwoofer matching, when same dsp controls both main speakers and sub(s) - and most AVRs can do this for passive speakers.

DSP for room correction is completely different animal and eg. Genelecs have fixed and pretty conventional but optimized crossover parameters in GLM/SAM models which are intended basically for PA installation or monitoring.

I am not up to date with soundbars, but some models use dps tricks like delay/phase warp and wall reflections to synthesize eg. rear channels up to Atmos compatibility. Evaluating measurements of these is extremely difficult, we don't know what is ideal. DSP can be found also in pretty cheap desktop monitors with peculiar "sound enhancement" options.

 

[amirm]

You could dabble a bit.

Dabbling is painfully resource intensive. You have to lift speakers to 9 to 10 feet or more outside. Rotate them 360 degrees. Move the mic up and down and do that again. Then for bass, put them on the ground away from any barrier for hundreds of feet. Perform "ground level" measurements then. Then stitch the two curves together, knowing that the latter measurement includes a gain that cannot be backed out. With amount of rain get here, the process is not practical anyway for me to go through. And even if you did it, you get almost no resolution in 100 to 200 Hz.