What is considered a "good" preference rating?

[goldark]

What is considered a "good" preference rating, both with and without a subwoofer? Can certain preference rating clusters be grouped together to say these speakers generally perform about the same, or within reasonable audible thresholds? And if so, how should they be grouped?

 

[Eetu]

Hi, maybe you find these charts helpful, by @edechamps:

And here we go:

View attachment 70050

• The box (±0.5) indicates the 50% prediction interval of the rating. In other words: there is a 50% chance that the average listener will give this speaker a rating that falls within the box.
• The lines (whiskers) (±0.9) are similar to boxes but with a 75% interval.

A mathematically equivalent, and perhaps more useful, way of looking at the above plot is the following:

• If boxes barely overlap (predicted score differs by 1.0), there is a 91% chance that the average listener will prefer the higher-rated speaker.
• If lines (whiskers) barely overlap (predicted score differs by 1.8), the probability is 99%.

I think this chart makes it quite clear that many speakers find themselves in the same "category", meaning that the model can't really tell which one would be preferred.

From there we can use the same principles to generate a matrix chart to compare every possible pair of speakers. I might have gone a bit overboard on that one…

View attachment 70051

Both charts are live over at Loudspeaker Explorer, in the Preference Ratings section at the very bottom.

 

[Eetu]

What is considered a "good" preference rating, both with and without a subwoofer?

The LS50 and the JBL 305P mkII share a score of 'only' 4.5. The LS50 is Stereophile Class A speaker, both are well-liked, 'good' speakers.

There's variables beyond the Olive score such as wide vs narrow directivity, THD and max SPL.