However, I can still detect very slight spectral tilts and the presence of timbre-modifying harmonic distortions. These are generally not present in the electronics of today (at least unless intentionally colored) but they are still present in transducers and in the vintage equipment that interests me.
I’m fairly good at getting a bead on the general characteristics of loudspeaker. If I perceive there’s an obvious scoop out in the mid range, and emphasis in the highs, an emphasis in the bass or whatever, that tends to be reflected in the measurements of a loudspeaker.
That shouldn’t be too surprising because if the measurements didn’t predict or correlate at all what we hear then they wouldn’t do us much good.
If there were only speakers that measured like a Revel Salon speaker, then predicting what you’re going to hear from those type of measurements is going to be much easier. But in the wild west of loud speakers, there is such variation out there it can be hard to fully predict the sum total subjective impression of a collection of frequency response deviations, or colorations. Some surprise me in terms of how benign they seem to be.
I can’t tell exactly whether I’m going to love the sound of a loudspeaker or be left on moved just from the measurements.
So for instance, I auditioned the Paradigm Persona loudspeaker.
I found it generally, extremely clear sounding and well balanced. With the exception that I was finding myself fatigued by a peak in the highs. I didn’t try to determine its exact frequency response, but I noticed it wasn’t necessarily showing up in the usual suspects like female sibilants but higher up - more in things like high hats, high notes in violins, etc. It was there enough to make the sound fatiguing over time for me and I scratched that speaker off my list.
And then later I saw Kal’s Stereophile review of those paradigm loudspeakers, where Kal and his subjective impressions also noted this. He wrote:
“But it's those bells that remind me to comment on something about the upper treble of the 5F that had nothing to do with quality, as the sound was consistently transparent. It was the balance of the HF around, I'm guessing, 10kHz, that at first seemed a bit prominent with respect to the upper midrange.”
And then in the measurements…boom!… there it is:
On the other hand, when I first heard the Joseph Perspective speakers, I noticed a bit of a rise in the highs, but it didn’t bother me at all (as it did John Atkinson), and I found the overall sound of speaker was rich and smooth and easy to listen to over long periods of time.
I now own the newer “2” version of these speakers which have smoothed down the highs is a bit more, but you can see the rise, especially in the original version here, starts a slower rise from 5K up towards 10 K and beyond:
So there is some similarity in that rise of the high-end to the Paradigm speakers, though not quite as aggressive, a peak at 10 K but again in listening, I found one of them fatiguing, and the other one completely engaging and non-fatiguing.
I personally wouldn’t have been able to predict that just from the measurements.
Another reason there is still room for expert reviewers, in my view, is that they have an opportunity to audition a wide range of equipment in listening environments where they have a lot of listening experience. Few of us have that opportunity, and there seems to me enough variability in the performance of parts of the system to give value to the comparisons.
Agreed.
I have certainly found value in some reviewer’s reports. And sometimes, often even, they have been the only available
“ front line” bit of information on many loudspeakers I’ve been interested in.
The top models get the field-coil drivers, and I think this is the cheapest of 4 models, but the AN-UK website is unclear.
