Wonderful post(s) Dr Toole.
On the more “ subjectivist oriented” audio forums I’ve been advocating for the relevance of your work for as long as I can remember. I would hope that any person getting into this hobby encounters your work first, to be informed and have a sensible starting point.
As the title slide says: liking the loudspeakers is the answer to the wrong question. Get some neutral loudspeakers and find art you enjoy. Tone controls and accessible EQ are still legitimate manipulations, but one can always default to neutral to hear what was recorded. It might be good.
That is obviously a very reasonable approach to this hobby of ours, as a guide to buying audio gear and loudspeakers specifically. Any audiophile would do well to consider it.
I’d just like to add a caveat, and submit a justification for an alternative approach to enjoying the hobby that I and some other audiophiles share. To show my hand: I remain very much in the “ liking the loudspeaker” camp.
It seems the lesson from your research, and one generally adopted on ASR, is that the ideal would be that loudspeakers, if all were properly designed, should (
with certain caveats ) sound roughly the same, and there’s no reason to bother with anything that doesn’t measure to the criteria we have established. Look for these type of measurements and you’ve got a good loudspeaker and no reason to bother with anything else that strays is too far. If you want to change the sound do it with EQ.
For simplicity, leaving aside some caveats, I’ll just call this the “Single Criteria” (SC) approach.
But an alternative view can somewhat flip this on his head:
The fact that so many loudspeakers measure and sound different is interesting and enjoyable in of itself to experience.
It’s part of the fun!
I’ll call this the Open Criteria (OC) approach.
So if we take a visit to our average high end audio show, we’ll encounter speaker designs that are all over the map, plenty of them colored and sub-optimal by the “ Single Criteria “ approach. It’s sort of like the wild West of audio.
Somebody with the SC approach could find this a reason to despair: so many coloured and poorly designed loudspeakers. Why bother with them? If only people could all get on board and start designing all loudspeakers “properly.”
Whereas somebody with the OC mindset might enter the show and see all sorts of different, crazy-looking designs and wonder “Wow, what do THOSE sound like?” And just find it tons of fun to experience all the different types of sonic presentations, even recognizing plenty of them are not without colorations.
Example: at one audio show there were some ridiculous looking loudspeakers which were something like lowther drivers placed in the centre of gigantic umbrella-sized plastic lenses focussing the sound to the listener.
They we’re not neutral, but sitting in the sweet spot with my eyes closed listening to a recording of solo classical guitar, it was the most uncannily realistic sensation of a clear, sonically dense impression of a person playing a guitar in front of me that I’ve ever heard from a sound system, stereo or surround. A one trick pony system? Very likely. But wow, was it fun to experience that one trick!
I’m glad somebody had the wacky idea for those speakers.
Along those lines, I’ve owned many different speakers over the years, all sorts of designs from dipoles (Quad 63s/gradient dipole subs), to Omnis (MBL), different takes on traditional speakers (first order designs from Thiel, high order crossover designs from other companies, BBC old school monitors, interesting “egg shaped” designs from Waveform and many others).
If I had been of the SC school of thought I could’ve bought a pair of Revels decades ago (I have auditioned Revels throughout the years), and a pre-amplifier with EQ or tone controls, and that would’ve been it.
But even if under strictly controlled blind conditions I may have identified Revel speakers as sounding better than all of those speakers, I still prefer my loudspeaker owning history as I don’t regret a single pair of speakers I’ve owned. Every single one sounded different and interesting and enjoyable in its own way. Each one representing the goals, quirks and vision of that particular designer. Not to mention I enjoyed the different aesthetics and design concepts.
And I could not have re-created all those exact differences, simply using tone controls or EQ.
Nor with EQ could I re-create my experimenting with changing loudspeaker positions and listening positions in my room, altering reflections, adding diffusion, etc.
Some audiophiles like the “playing with sound” aspect of the hobby, which can sometimes be achieved by owning and playing with different gear rather than just neutral speakers and EQ. (you’re not gonna mimic the sound of some of those wild looking gigantic tube driven horn systems simply with a pair of Revels and EQ).
None of this is to advocate for this approach
over the one you suggest. Nor does it broach the other subject of accuracy as a consistent criteria and trying to “close the circle of confusion.” I just wanted to provide one justification for why some folks, like me, might not be fully satisfied with “
just use this criteria for purchasing loudspeakers, and add tone controls EQ if desired.”
Cheers.
(
Though if I was in a position of advising somebody new to the hobby, the reasonable thing to do is to make them aware of your research and approach first of all, from which they can make advised decisions on what route they want to go).
there are limits on how to get empirical data out of human test subjects .
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