Is the floor missing something in that photo?
Anechoic chambers don't have floors. It is usually a mesh. That room was small and I could not get far enough back to show the floor.Is the floor missing something in that photo?
You can but you need an anechoic chamber with measurements every few degrees in both horizontal and vertical direction. You then apply a special weighting based on which ones come at you directly versus reflected from horizontal and vertical directions (indirect sounds). Once there, you get extremely high correlation to listening tests. It is not perfect and listening tests needs to confirm but it is a very good predictor.
Here is a picture of the setup I took while visiting Harman in one of their anechoic chambers:
View attachment 20016
That is the vertical arc with microphone array placed at the precise angles. The speaker is put on a turntable that is spun and the output of the microphones is captured. Once done, you have a sphere or response all around the speaker where you can now begin go create the composite score of all the direct and indirect sounds per above.
What reaches your ear is what you describe above. What you hear is dependent on functions of the ears and brain, and possibly what you consciously choose to focus on....what you hear from a speaker is the sum total of direct sound coming at you from the speaker, and reflections from the room surfaces.
Yes, to a large degree. From 'A Statistical Model That Predicts Listeners’ Preference Ratings of In-Ear Headphones: Part 2 – Development and Validation of the Model' (Sean E. Olive, Todd Welti, and Omid Khonsaripour):Can we measure all the frequency response of different headphones (from same brand or different brand), and determine which one sounds the best?
The correlation between the predicted and measured preference ratings was r = 0.91 with a residual error of about 5.5% or 5.5 points on a 100-point preference scale.
It poses different obstacles due to leakage effects and driver position variability.I am assuming that measuring headphone's frequency response would be easier?
Your old employer has the quietest (most anechoic? ) anechoic chamber in the world!Anechoic chambers don't have floors. It is usually a mesh. That room was small and I could not get far enough back to show the floor.
Yeh, I read that a while back. Not sure they needed such a room to have spent that kind of money on it. A boondoggle if I ever saw one!Your old employer has the quietest (most anechoic? ) anechoic chamber in the world!
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/anechoic-chamber-worlds-quietest-room/index.html
Paradigm is a spin off from NRC research team (of which so is Dr. Toole). PSB is another company in the same regard.Reading from the website of Paradigm, their research with the Canadian institute had similar results in that listeners expressed some definite preferences in speaker profiles.
Little bit offtopic, but I just looked up PSB and saw that they just released a new Alpha series of budget-friendly speakers. They look niceParadigm is a spin off from NRC research team (of which so is Dr. Toole). PSB is another company in the same regard.
...All of this research is extensively documented ... It all points to ... smooth ... [speaker] frequency response.
...see if I can find a smoothness ranking, but if anybody already has it, I would of course welcome a link.
Found Atkinson. Can't find a set of charts that are like the ones in the Zu speaker article. Smooth frequency response is much too vague for Google, as I've deployed it so far.
Found one post that points out a (now) obvious tidbit: put the speaker on the grass outside and you've got a low-tech anechoic test bench. (I'ma think about this. Flat freq resp can't be that hard to test, in pragmatic terms. Sound waves travel pretty slowly... Still feels like I'm catching up with the "obvious" though.)
All? Have you checked all?Also check out the measurements for the Devores they all love at Stereophile.
Should the mic go on the grass, too? I live on an abandoned golf course, and have thought of schlepping speakers out there for measurement.
I think what you are looking for is a Directivity Index or DI from the spin-o-rama data.
Here is a good...
I honestly don't think we can blame reviewers using their ears when the industry as a whole apparently disregards fact altogether. (I apologize to the exceptional cases for this sweeping generalization.)Steve doesn't know his ass from a hole in the wall. However, he is fun to listen to.