Tekton M-Lore Speaker Review

[tomtoo]

Fair point, but without a baseline, Amir was unlikely be able to discern a small variance via his impedance measurement. Even with plugged holes, Erin’s impedance shows comparable BR tuning. As was pointed out earlier, these designs are bass reflex and already have a much bigger hole in the cabinet.

So, will still count the impedance as another deflection. Notably am still baffled by the original foot hole claim as it is speculative. Amir’s speaker came from an owner. If the owner mounted the feet, then the holes would be rather small, and the measurement impact would be rather small. Cabinet leaks happen all the time due to loose screws, bad driver gasketing, unsealed joints and other issues. These leaks could affect the tuning, but the effect is harder to judge without possessing the actual speaker.

As I pointed out earlier, if these were not just deflections, EA could have readily shown his design chops by posting his measurements months ago (or at least sharing them with Amir).

From my point of view the possible errors from that 4 holes was enough to discredit the measurements( if you like too). Thats why i think Erins remeasurement was so importent. Couse it shows the influence was minimal. Iam not in tektons mind i dont know what they liked to achieve. The only thing they achieved in me is that i never ever would by a speaker from them.

 

[FrantzM]

Here is where I believe the main disconnect is - Amir and Erin like accurate flat response speakers. The m lores are not designed to be, there used to be or is a model called the lore reference that was supposedly accurate, but less preferred by some to the response of the m lore. Amir doesn’t like a lot of things like the original Kef ls-50s, but likes the metas. Most I know who own or listen to both can eq the ls50s to sound the same, or prefer the ogs. Sean olive and Harmon have their favorite non linear tweaks, why can’t Tekton have theirs? Amir, why not just show the data, and let the readers decide? Why the I recommend, or I don’t recommend comments, when surely you are aware others have different hearing preferences than you? When did buying an AP and Klippel become the “I am now the god of what gear sounds good, and what gear will sound like crap?”

There is a difference between "review" and "measure"...

...

Peace.

 

[tomtoo]

Here is where I believe the main disconnect is - Amir and Erin like accurate flat response speakers. The m lores are not designed to be, there used to be or is a model called the lore reference that was supposedly accurate, but less preferred by some to the response of the m lore. Amir doesn’t like a lot of things like the original Kef ls-50s, but likes the metas. Most I know who own or listen to both can eq the ls50s to sound the same, or prefer the ogs. Sean olive and Harmon have their favorite non linear tweaks, why can’t Tekton have theirs? Amir, why not just show the data, and let the readers decide? Why the I recommend, or I don’t recommend comments, when surely you are aware others have different hearing preferences than you? When did buying an AP and Klippel become the “I am now the god of what gear sounds good, and what gear will sound like crap?”

Why you like to forbit Armir his own subjective impressions? The most reviewers have only that. Amir has this AND measurements.

 

[cavedriver]

Here is where I believe the main disconnect is - Amir and Erin like accurate flat response speakers. The m lores are not designed to be, there used to be or is a model called the lore reference that was supposedly accurate, but less preferred by some to the response of the m lore. Amir doesn’t like a lot of things like the original Kef ls-50s, but likes the metas. Most I know who own or listen to both can eq the ls50s to sound the same, or prefer the ogs. Sean olive and Harmon have their favorite non linear tweaks, why can’t Tekton have theirs? Amir, why not just show the data, and let the readers decide? Why the I recommend, or I don’t recommend comments, when surely you are aware others have different hearing preferences than you? When did buying an AP and Klippel become the “I am now the god of what gear sounds good, and what gear will sound like crap?”

As much as I think the comment above is far, far off the mark (as others have already commented), I do want to add one interesting piece of information I came across that was news to me and adds a wrinkle to Harman's listener response data. Someone had linked to this stunningly dense and beautiful page of teachings from the great Mr. Linkwitz himself and item "H" got my attention. Basically, he says that around 3 kHz there's a difference in the way we hear sound coming from directly in front of us in free space versus sound coming broadly from all around us. He cites classical recordings as an example where mic position passes this on to the recording and describes that he typically includes a 4 dB notch at 3 kHz in his crossovers, possibly with a switch to disable it for recordings that weren't mic'd this way (most everything else apparently). When I listened to the LS50 Meta it became apparent that it has a broad dip in the 1-3k range that nixed it for me, but that I now wonder if KEF put in there intentionally, and that I now want to look for it in other speakers as a "telltale" of the designer's thinking (having listened to the KEF and not liking the response with certain material).

Again, this page is awesome:

Electro-acoustic models

Acoustical and electrical models for the design of a dipole loudspeaker with numerical examples for the PHOENIX project.

www.linkwitzlab.com

 

[teched58]

Audiokarma appears to have deleted their entire thread, "Youtube Reviewer Threatened With Legal Action Over Speaker Review."

It was at 12 pages yesterday. This morning it's gone.

I guess they really have a bug up their digital butt over there about the high quality, quantitative work ASR is doing.

 

[cavedriver]

Audiokarma appears to have deleted their entire thread, "Youtube Reviewer Threatened With Legal Action Over Speaker Review."

It was at 12 pages yesterday. This morning it's gone.

I guess they really have a bug up their digital butt over there about the high quality, quantitative work ASR is doing.

Presumably they were threated with legal action by someone...

 

[Ze Frog]

Audiokarma appears to have deleted their entire thread, "Youtube Reviewer Threatened With Legal Action Over Speaker Review."

It was at 12 pages yesterday. This morning it's gone.

I guess they really have a bug up their digital butt over there about the high quality, quantitative work ASR is doing.

This is where you will see those truly standing behind Erin and defending him through a feeling of moral obligation, and the others that are just cashing in on it as content or to garner support from the audience sympathetic to Erin's plight.

A cynical viewpoint I know, but if any area needs a cynical eye cast upon it it's definitely the audio industry and it's influencers.

 

[tomtoo]

There’s a set of principles at play here. ASR exists for the sole purpose of objective reviews of products and user engagement around those reviews. Objectivity ignores the personality and behaviors of the people involved. It is a matter of character and adherence to these principles that ensures @amirm will continue to review products without regard to whether he likes a given person involved. It’s a nice thing to have, but is not required. And I don’t mean to speak for Amir, I’m simply stating what I sense to be the principles behind this wonderful place.

Circling back to Amir’s proposal, it’s adherence to these principles and character that makes the case for a Right to a Fair Review Society (or whatever that ends up being called), to establish broad principles, ethical behaviors, legal resources and a framework that all stakeholders can work from.

And it’s not just reviewers of AV products who can and should benefit. Such a society can benefit a broader community of reviewers of all sorts, producers who are interested in good faith representations, and consumers who rely upon the reviews in their decision making.

Sry its absolutly clear ASR is not and can not be absolutly objective. The measurements add a objective part. Nothing else. The phanter is subjective. Amirs listening impressions are subjective. And i think Amir never claimed his reviews are completly objective.

 

[Tangogod]

Sorry if asked, did anyone go(or seen a review) and visit the Tekton stand at Apoxna and how was the vibe?

 

[ban25]

Honestly, if he threatens to sue Amir (as in actually, not just a forum rant), Amir should request a jury trial in Seattle. Eric will have to pay for it, and he will certainly wish he had spent far less money on a Klippel NFS instead.

 

[DLS79]

Honestly, if he threatens to sue Amir (as in actually, not just a forum rant), Amir should request a jury trial in Seattle. Eric will have to pay for it, and he will certainly wish he had spent far less money on a Klippel NFS instead.

Not to mention the main stream press would latch onto a case like that, and a much broader swath of the population would learn about his actions. Imo, it would mostly likely guarantee his company goes out of business.

 

[markus]

Looks like threatening to sue others is the normal mode of operation for @Eric Alexander: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/interesting-post-from-audio-karma.411513/post-7655813

 

[Rick Sykora]

Since had been meaning to do anyway, I approximated the potential leaking due to some holes in the cabinet using my Purifi SPK4s. The results are posted here.

The results demonstrate that there would likely be a shift in the box tuning and some potential impact to the bass performance. How much depends on the particular design so would need to model for the Tekton. Or, as he has claimed his prowess, the designer should be able to readily sim and illustrate for us. In any case, lacking a baseline from Tekton, Amir would not have been able detect via his testing...

However, it also had been alleged that the leaks would be audible due to the velocity of the air through them. I thought this was another very dubious claim. In my experiment with a powerful woofer in a much smaller cabinet (my SPK4), I was unable to produce any noticeable whistling or chuffing with bass heavy music. Based on this, am very confident Amir (or Erin) would not have experienced any audible anomaly that would have allowed them the detect the leaks. For that matter, any leak is barely perceptible by covering the hole with your fingertip.

 

[DLS79]

Looks like threatening to sue others is the normal mode of operation for @Eric Alexander: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/interesting-post-from-audio-karma.411513/post-7655813

Some real "winners" in that thread......

 

[Ron Texas]

As much as I think the comment above is far, far off the mark (as others have already commented), I do want to add one interesting piece of information I came across that was news to me and adds a wrinkle to Harman's listener response data. Someone had linked to this stunningly dense and beautiful page of teachings from the great Mr. Linkwitz himself and item "H" got my attention. Basically, he says that around 3 kHz there's a difference in the way we hear sound coming from directly in front of us in free space versus sound coming broadly from all around us. He cites classical recordings as an example where mic position passes this on to the recording and describes that he typically includes a 4 dB notch at 3 kHz in his crossovers, possibly with a switch to disable it for recordings that weren't mic'd this way (most everything else apparently). When I listened to the LS50 Meta it became apparent that it has a broad dip in the 1-3k range that nixed it for me, but that I now wonder if KEF put in there intentionally, and that I now want to look for it in other speakers as a "telltale" of the designer's thinking (having listened to the KEF and not liking the response with certain material).

Again, this page is awesome:

Electro-acoustic models

Acoustical and electrical models for the design of a dipole loudspeaker with numerical examples for the PHOENIX project.

www.linkwitzlab.com

In the original LS50 there is a dip from 1khz to 2khz and then a peak from 2khz to 4khz. KEF got a lot of returns on the original due to that peak. Many owners of the original (including me) eq out the bump. at 2.5khz the difference between the original and meta is 4 db.

 

[tmtomh]

Since had been meaning to do anyway, I approximated the potential leaking due to some holes in the cabinet using my Purifi SPK4s. The results are posted here.

The results demonstrate that there would likely be a shift in the box tuning and some potential impact to the bass performance. How much depends on the particular design so would need to model for the Tekton. Or, as he has claimed his prowess, the designer should be able to readily sim and illustrate for us. In any case, lacking a baseline from Tekton, Amir would not have been able detect via his testing...

However, it had been alleged that the leaks would be audible due to the velocity of the air through them. I thought this was another very dubious claim. In my experiment with a powerful woofer in a much smaller cabinet, I was unable to produce any noticeable whistling or chuffing with bass heavy music. Based on this, am very confident Amir (or Erin) would not have experienced any audible anomaly that would have allowed them the detect the leaks. For that matter, any leak is barely perceptible by covering the hole with your finger.

Thanks Rick! We also have measurements of this difference from a built speaker, as part of Erin's revised review of the Troubadour:

This shows that while the impedance bump was unaffected - and therefore not caused - by the absence of the feet, the low-frequency response was impacted, as you predicted.

The bass F3 is about 2 to 4Hz lower, depending on where you consider the F0 point to be (and of course ignoring the major shelving that puts the entirety of the anechoic bass down 3-4dB below about 300Hz).

Zooming in more closely, this looks like it translates into 0.5 to 1dB more SPL from the speaker with the feet in, from about 40-60Hz. Conversely, it looks like without the feet you get about 0.5-1dB more SPL from about 60-120Hz.

Ironically, I would guess the latter would potentially be more noticeable, because more music has more content in that 60-120Hz range, and it's a broader range where the speaker is still at full output - in other words I would guess that while neither difference might be audible, there's a greater chance that the reduction in that shelving would be audible than that you'd notice the difference between 83 vs 85dB output at 50Hz.

 

[JP]

Audiokarma appears to have deleted their entire thread, "Youtube Reviewer Threatened With Legal Action Over Speaker Review."

It was at 12 pages yesterday. This morning it's gone.

I guess they really have a bug up their digital butt over there about the high quality, quantitative work ASR is doing.

I asked and was told it 'devolved including denigration of moderation' so they decided to delete it rather than purge those posts. I hadn't seen an activity alert on it at all yesterday so I can't say I saw any posts that fit that bill.

 

[Sal1950]

Here is where I believe the main disconnect is - Amir and Erin like accurate flat response speakers. The m lores are not designed to be, there used to be or is a model called the lore reference that was supposedly accurate, but less preferred by some to the response of the m lore. Amir doesn’t like a lot of things like the original Kef ls-50s, but likes the metas. Most I know who own or listen to both can eq the ls50s to sound the same, or prefer the ogs. Sean olive and Harmon have their favorite non linear tweaks, why can’t Tekton have theirs? Amir, why not just show the data, and let the readers decide? Why the I recommend, or I don’t recommend comments, when surely you are aware others have different hearing preferences than you? When did buying an AP and Klippel become the “I am now the god of what gear sounds good, and what gear will sound like crap?”

The part you don't seem to get is that this is ASR - Audio Science Review.
The science of High Fidelity loudspeaker design (although infinitely harder) should be the same as an amplifier, DAC, etc. It needs to be able to deliver to the listeners ears a FR, etc; that is as close to the input as possible. "Tweaks" should come after the fact at the listeners discretion (tone controls, DRC, etc) and not be build into the component.
The purposeful introduction of aberrant FR is bad design science.

 

[Rick Sykora]

Thanks Rick! We also have measurements of this difference from a built speaker, as part of Erin's revised review of the Troubadour:

...

Thank you!

Should have noted that my experiment is conditioned on the nutserts being installed. If just unfilled holes, the impact would be greater.

After the designer complained to Amir, am pretty sure more than a few Tekton owners started checking their speakers.

 

[blueone]

Zooming in more closely, this looks like it translates into 0.5 to 1dB more SPL from the speaker with the feet in, from about 40-60Hz. Conversely, it looks like without the feet you get about 0.5-1dB more SPL from about 60-120Hz.

Ironically, I would guess the latter would potentially be more noticeable, because more music has more content in that 60-120Hz range, and it's a broader range where the speaker is still at full output - in other words I would guess that while neither difference might be audible, there's a greater chance that the reduction in that shelving would be audible than that you'd notice the difference between 83 vs 85dB output at 50Hz.

In my listening seat measurements with OmniMic V2, I can get a ~1db difference at 100-200Hz just by moving the mic position a foot or so horizontally or vertically. Especially vertically. I'm having trouble believing that difference would be audible, unless you were listening at low levels, and who listens critically at less than about 75-80db at their listening seat? It's just difficult to believe.