Tekton M-Lore Speaker Measurement Update

[F1308]

In a world where goodwill reigns supreme,
Where kindness glimmers in every dream,
People unite, hand in hand, heart in soul,
Their aspirations high, their spirits whole.

Through valleys deep and mountains high,
They journey forth, beneath the sky,
Their voices raised, their purpose clear,
To vanquish darkness, banish fear.

Yet amidst this noble quest for light,
A discord echoes, a troubling sight,
Loudspeakers blare with measure awry,
Distorting truth, obscuring the sky.

But fear not, for the hearts of good prevail,
Their resolve unwavering, their courage doesn't fail,
With wisdom's sword and justice's shield,
They march forward, refusing to yield.

For in the end, it's the whispers of love,
That drown out the noise, rise above,
And as the sun sets on chaos and plight,
Peace reigns supreme, in love's pure light.

 

[jtwrace]

I think you tested the defective speaker, try the other one.

 

[Ze Frog]

To be honest it could have measured as the flattest and greatest thing ever but the owner has made all of that irrelevant.

I don't get it, all he had to do was say they are designed by ear, which he claims one minute. Instead he chooses to say they measure flat and measurements suddenly matter the next...

Sad part is, it's not a tragically measuring thing anyway, and if it sounded good to him and his customers he could have just shrugged it off and stated that flat wasn't the main design criteria and it wouldn't have been a problem as many here who want a flat as possible base to work with likely weren't going to buy a Tekton for that reason when we have Genelec and Neumann among others basically acing that particular part of the market. Complete madness and a total own goal.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Ive been thinking about this kind of thing a bit lately. It would be nice to measure / calculate area of the deviation from the target. Looking at the two graphs above its quite clear that tekton has a far larger area of deviation than the revel.

Yes, but how to define the reference line? Should it be the response at 1 kHz or somewhere else?

 

[KSTR]

I don't get it, all he had to do was say they are designed by ear, which he claims one minute. Instead he chooses to say they measure flat and measurements suddenly matter the next...

Well, we don't know if they measure actually flat (or at least flatter) at his site from a systematic but unidentified measurement error. From personal experience I know that can easily happen (like +-2dB easily) unless you either have access to a good anechoic room (and even then mic distance matters quite a bit) or a Klippel NFS, or at least a know-good reference speaker you can use to normalize results.

 

[KSTR]

Yes, but how to define the reference line? Should it be the response at 1 kHz or somewhere else?

The reference line is whatever target was defined as the design goal. There is no universal absolute target. Notably directivity and projected listening distance and environment have big impact on what is perceived as good and balanced sounding on-axis target.

 

[HeadDoc12]

The empire strikes back.

The clash between Tekton and the objectivistas will not be fought out in a court. Because then the judge must decide between the value of objective and subjective opinions in HiFi.

There are some examples of gear where everything comes together. One of these is making beautiful music now in my room: the Chord Dave dac. Together with a streamer with a much better sound than the bit-perfect MicroRendu (Bryston BDP-2) every day I understand better that measurements do not say everything. Between measurements and the best sound is a gap.

And that gap is where this fuzz is all about.

This dispute has never been about Objective vs Subjective. If you believe it has, then Eric Alexander (EA) has succeeded in distracting and manipulating you. It is, and has always been, about free speech. If EA had stated that his speakers sound better than they measure, the matter would have been resolved. But EA specifically said the measurements were wrong, implied both error and malice on Amir's part, AND insisted he had better measurements - which he has never provided. He also behaved identically on another reviewer's YouTube channel. Most importantly, he threatened legal action if the reviews remained online unaltered. This was never about a different approach to audio. It is and always has been about the sad, wrongheaded attempt by a businessman to BULLY reviewers into providing only the kind of review he likes. When those reviewers pushed back, EA lost all sense of composure, respect, reason, and even reality - to try to get his way. Like his speakers if you want; but DON'T ignore or excuse the behavior of the man behind them. EA has been actively working against one of the fundamental rights of a civilized society: the right to free expression.

 

[uwotm8]

As most of you probably know, I reviewed the Tekton M-Lore speaker back in October of last year. Company recently complained that my measurements were in error due to woofer being listening axis and not the tweeter (speaker manual disputes this). And that without the feet, the holes that house them go all the way through causing additional leakage. Owner/designer @Eric Alexander has implied that these make a big difference. So much so that he was planning to litigate against me back in March of this year:
View attachment 364796
Company has failed to this date to provide any measurements of its own, backing that I have "damaged this loudspeakers reputation." Instead, it has repeatedly demanded that I either delete the review or lately, to remeasure it.

I had responded to him that changing the listening axis would not make much of a difference. He disagreed. Fortunately Klippel Near-field Scanner computers the full response of the speaker in 3-D space so I could re-present the results using the woofer axis. As simple math would have predicted, there is little difference as I post in the review thread:

Subsequently, Eric Alexander sent me email demanding that I correct the step response. I explained to him that this was a different measurement and to redo that, it would require to test the speaker again. And that if he provides me with his step response, I would include it in the review. I received no answer.

In the interest of going above and beyond, I exchanged messages with the owner of the M-Lore who had since sold the speaker. He was kind enough to offer to actually buy back the speaker so that we could re-test! Fortunately we didn't have to go that far as the new owner was kindly willing to let me borrow the speaker again. I got both speakers with the spikes as shipped. I don't know which one I tested but I think the results below are representative enough that I don't need to test the other speaker.

I put the feet on and measured the impedance (I have left out phase to make it easier to read the graph):

View attachment 364797
As a number of expert members had predicted, the impact is very small and limited to very low frequencies. There was a tiny resonance at around 400 Hz which got reduced a bit and shifted to higher frequency as noted. It should be noted that you can get larger difference if you just change the test voltage. So all of this is in the noise, literally.

The other complaint was about the step response. Most of you know that I only post that for the few people who care and it doesn't enter my analysis of the performance of the speaker. @Eric Alexander however, insisted that there would be a difference here. First, let me explain that the step response comes from my 86 dBSPL, near-field, non-anechoic measurement. As such, it is very sensitive to where you set the reference axis. In my original review, that was the tweeter. I remeasured, this time by making woofer the reference axis. Since the path length to the microphone from the woofer is shorter than the tweeter now, the first spike that represents the tweeter is lower in amplitude (right):
View attachment 364798

Neither represents bad or good results in my book. But if the right graph makes Mr. Alexander happier, there it is.

Conclusions
As is plainly obvious, these are all nits and do not in any way change the picture of the performance of the Tekton M-Lore speaker. All of this was communicated to the company but the designer refused to accept. And kept insisting that the measurements were "botched" or "flawed." The negligible difference could be and have been predicted so there was little reason to bring them up. It is very odd that a speaker designer would exaggerate such differences so much. And then refuse to post measurement differences when challenged. But here we are.

This concludes my testing of the Tekton M-Lore speaker and addresses the complaints of the company. I am open to testing other speakers from the company but I am done with M-Lore seeing how the company doesn't care enough to release its own measurements.

Now please excuse me as I make arrangements to return these two bulky speakers to the new owner. Special thank you to him and the first owner by being so generous with their time and kind motivations to help resolve this issue.

MEET YOU IN THE COURT!!!1
- Tekton

 

[Mart68]

Oi..... Have you forgotten the hill-n-dale responses of your Focals? Doesn't stop you seriously enjoying them though, does it?

I bet the upper midrange bump in these is gone when they're sited close-to-wall and then, a gentle-ish slope on the tweeter isn't really an issue with the kind of gear I suspect usually used with the likes of these...

They're not that bad! Anyway I just use a bit of PEQ - gets rid of that bump no problem. Sounds like the voice of God mate

 

[eddantes]

So in the end we find out that a speaker that looks to be "meh" at best, remains "meh" at best... Except now we know that these "meh" speakers are manufactured by a thin skinned, snowflake of a man, that cares more about his fragile ego than his customers.

 

[AdamG]

My post was deleted because of "religious" content. Why this one is still here?

Simply because we missed it in our first sweep of the thread. Very few moderators and thousands of new posts every day. We can’t possibly read them all. So instead use the report function and that always gets our immediate attention. Thanks.

About a dozen or so posts have been deleted for religious content of one type or another. As you may have seen (before I deleted it) a fight was breaking out over religious beliefs. This is exactly why we just want to avoid the inevitable arguments of religion versus science. We take no side in this fight. But what it does is misdirects the conversation and derails the thread. Up until now all the posts were deleted and no Warnings were issued.

However, if some of you persist in this activity you may have your posting privileges suspended. Please let’s not talk about Religion here. Thank you very kindly for your understanding and cooperation.

 

[Ze Frog]

Well, we don't know if they measure actually flat (or at least flatter) at his site from a systematic but unidentified measurement error. From personal experience I know that can easily happen (like +-2dB easily) unless you either have access to a good anechoic room (and even then mic distance matters quite a bit) or a Klippel NFS, or at least a know-good reference speaker you can use to normalize results.

Wether they measure flat at his site or not is pretty much irrelevant, the Klippel is the industry recognised standard and is a far more reliable tool than a designer who claims whatever with no measurements whatsoever besides a raw driver measurement for just the woofer so far from a manafacturers website, lol. It's very clear that at best he's working with raw driver measurements which is effectively entry level D.I.Y first foray type stuff. Combine that with his incredible claims and behaviour trying to rubbish actual reviewer's with a clear and documented expertise in what they are doing and the equipment they are using and it looks incredibly damning. If he had actual measurements in his specific test area he would have posted long before this and likely worked with Amir or Erin or reached out to Klippel even to ascertain wether his measurements are indeed flawed and then work to improve them going forward, and in doing this he could have held his head high and used the situation to his advantage by showing some humility.

 

[AndreaT]

As most of you probably know, I reviewed the Tekton M-Lore speaker back in October of last year. Company recently complained that my measurements were in error due to woofer being listening axis and not the tweeter (speaker manual disputes this). And that without the feet, the holes that house them go all the way through causing additional leakage. Owner/designer @Eric Alexander has implied that these make a big difference. So much so that he was planning to litigate against me back in March of this year:
View attachment 364796
Company has failed to this date to provide any measurements of its own, backing that I have "damaged this loudspeakers reputation." Instead, it has repeatedly demanded that I either delete the review or lately, to remeasure it.

I had responded to him that changing the listening axis would not make much of a difference. He disagreed. Fortunately Klippel Near-field Scanner computers the full response of the speaker in 3-D space so I could re-present the results using the woofer axis. As simple math would have predicted, there is little difference as I post in the review thread:

Subsequently, Eric Alexander sent me email demanding that I correct the step response. I explained to him that this was a different measurement and to redo that, it would require to test the speaker again. And that if he provides me with his step response, I would include it in the review. I received no answer.

In the interest of going above and beyond, I exchanged messages with the owner of the M-Lore who had since sold the speaker. He was kind enough to offer to actually buy back the speaker so that we could re-test! Fortunately we didn't have to go that far as the new owner was kindly willing to let me borrow the speaker again. I got both speakers with the spikes as shipped. I don't know which one I tested but I think the results below are representative enough that I don't need to test the other speaker.

I put the feet on and measured the impedance (I have left out phase to make it easier to read the graph):

View attachment 364797
As a number of expert members had predicted, the impact is very small and limited to very low frequencies. There was a tiny resonance at around 400 Hz which got reduced a bit and shifted to higher frequency as noted. It should be noted that you can get larger difference if you just change the test voltage. So all of this is in the noise, literally.

The other complaint was about the step response. Most of you know that I only post that for the few people who care and it doesn't enter my analysis of the performance of the speaker. @Eric Alexander however, insisted that there would be a difference here. First, let me explain that the step response comes from my 86 dBSPL, near-field, non-anechoic measurement. As such, it is very sensitive to where you set the reference axis. In my original review, that was the tweeter. I remeasured, this time by making woofer the reference axis. Since the path length to the microphone from the woofer is shorter than the tweeter now, the first spike that represents the tweeter is lower in amplitude (right):
View attachment 364798

Neither represents bad or good results in my book. But if the right graph makes Mr. Alexander happier, there it is.

Conclusions
As is plainly obvious, these are all nits and do not in any way change the picture of the performance of the Tekton M-Lore speaker. All of this was communicated to the company but the designer refused to accept. And kept insisting that the measurements were "botched" or "flawed." The negligible difference could be and have been predicted so there was little reason to bring them up. It is very odd that a speaker designer would exaggerate such differences so much. And then refuse to post measurement differences when challenged. But here we are.

This concludes my testing of the Tekton M-Lore speaker and addresses the complaints of the company. I am open to testing other speakers from the company but I am done with M-Lore seeing how the company doesn't care enough to release its own measurements.

Now please excuse me as I make arrangements to return these two bulky speakers to the new owner. Special thank you to him and the first owner by being so generous with their time and kind motivations to help resolve this issue.

I will be happy to join you in a class-action lawsuit. Your data have enlightened thousands of audiophiles, and by following your forum I have learned how to spend my hard earned dollars more wisely.
Ad maiora!

 

[Hipster Doofus]

TEKTON a subsidy of PS Audio

 

[Ken Tajalli]

This dispute has never been about Objective vs Subjective. If you believe it has, then Eric Alexander (EA) has succeeded in distracting and manipulating you. It is, and has always been, about free speech. If EA had stated that his speakers sound better than they measure, the matter would have been resolved. But EA specifically said the measurements were wrong, implied both error and malice on Amir's part, AND insisted he had better measurements - which he has never provided. He also behaved identically on another reviewer's YouTube channel. Most importantly, he threatened legal action if the reviews remained online unaltered. This was never about a different approach to audio. It is and always has been about the sad, wrongheaded attempt by a businessman to BULLY reviewers into providing only the kind of review he likes. When those reviewers pushed back, EA lost all sense of composure, respect, reason, and even reality - to try to get his way. Like his speakers if you want; but DON'T ignore or excuse the behavior of the man behind them. EA has been actively working against one of the fundamental rights of a civilized society: the right to free expression.

I agree with you almost.
Remember when President Bush said he didn't like broccoli ?
Well the sales of broccoli went up noticeably!
An influential outlet's posts can have a direct effect on business. So if I had posted that, or you, it would have been free speech, but when ASR does it, ASR becomes responsible.
At any rate, Mr. Alexander was wrong about the whole shebang, he handled it very badly, there was no need.
All I am trying to say, that individuals can enjoy free speech, but organizations can not hide behind it in theory.
ASR was blameless here, perhaps Amir could keep his opinions & interpretations, in a separate section from actual test data, in the future.
If anything .....

 

[YSC]

As most of you probably know, I reviewed the Tekton M-Lore speaker back in October of last year. Company recently complained that my measurements were in error due to woofer being listening axis and not the tweeter (speaker manual disputes this). And that without the feet, the holes that house them go all the way through causing additional leakage. Owner/designer @Eric Alexander has implied that these make a big difference. So much so that he was planning to litigate against me back in March of this year:
View attachment 364796
Company has failed to this date to provide any measurements of its own, backing that I have "damaged this loudspeakers reputation." Instead, it has repeatedly demanded that I either delete the review or lately, to remeasure it.

I had responded to him that changing the listening axis would not make much of a difference. He disagreed. Fortunately Klippel Near-field Scanner computers the full response of the speaker in 3-D space so I could re-present the results using the woofer axis. As simple math would have predicted, there is little difference as I post in the review thread:

Subsequently, Eric Alexander sent me email demanding that I correct the step response. I explained to him that this was a different measurement and to redo that, it would require to test the speaker again. And that if he provides me with his step response, I would include it in the review. I received no answer.

In the interest of going above and beyond, I exchanged messages with the owner of the M-Lore who had since sold the speaker. He was kind enough to offer to actually buy back the speaker so that we could re-test! Fortunately we didn't have to go that far as the new owner was kindly willing to let me borrow the speaker again. I got both speakers with the spikes as shipped. I don't know which one I tested but I think the results below are representative enough that I don't need to test the other speaker.

I put the feet on and measured the impedance (I have left out phase to make it easier to read the graph):

View attachment 364797
As a number of expert members had predicted, the impact is very small and limited to very low frequencies. There was a tiny resonance at around 400 Hz which got reduced a bit and shifted to higher frequency as noted. It should be noted that you can get larger difference if you just change the test voltage. So all of this is in the noise, literally.

The other complaint was about the step response. Most of you know that I only post that for the few people who care and it doesn't enter my analysis of the performance of the speaker. @Eric Alexander however, insisted that there would be a difference here. First, let me explain that the step response comes from my 86 dBSPL, near-field, non-anechoic measurement. As such, it is very sensitive to where you set the reference axis. In my original review, that was the tweeter. I remeasured, this time by making woofer the reference axis. Since the path length to the microphone from the woofer is shorter than the tweeter now, the first spike that represents the tweeter is lower in amplitude (right):
View attachment 364798

Neither represents bad or good results in my book. But if the right graph makes Mr. Alexander happier, there it is.

Conclusions
As is plainly obvious, these are all nits and do not in any way change the picture of the performance of the Tekton M-Lore speaker. All of this was communicated to the company but the designer refused to accept. And kept insisting that the measurements were "botched" or "flawed." The negligible difference could be and have been predicted so there was little reason to bring them up. It is very odd that a speaker designer would exaggerate such differences so much. And then refuse to post measurement differences when challenged. But here we are.

This concludes my testing of the Tekton M-Lore speaker and addresses the complaints of the company. I am open to testing other speakers from the company but I am done with M-Lore seeing how the company doesn't care enough to release its own measurements.

Now please excuse me as I make arrangements to return these two bulky speakers to the new owner. Special thank you to him and the first owner by being so generous with their time and kind motivations to help resolve this issue.

in my book if a speaker having a tiny listening angle change in anechoic plot and the data becomes night and day then it isn't a good one anyway

 

[TankTop]

TEKTON a subsidy of PS Audio

The difference is PS Audio actually has a couple of good products. Sadly their profit margin on snake oil is much higher.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

The difference is PS Audio actually has a couple of good products. Sadly their profit margin on snake oil is much higher.

lol…so would u want a good doctor who tell the truth all the time or who tell the truth sometimes.

 

[KSTR]

Whether they measure flat at his site or not is pretty much irrelevant [...]

It's not when we are looking for a possible reason why he said it is without actually lying.
Mind you, I'm not defending EA, even when putting everything aside except the hard data .... because the hard data says his speaker's performance is fair at best.

 

[Yevhen]

He was kind enough to offer to actually buy back the speaker so that we could re-test!

Today, Tekton probably makes more money from people who buy his speakers to measure (and prove poor response) rather than listen to