Worst measuring loudspeaker?

[Axo1989]

That's generous. I see a speaker with no real bass to speak of, there's no glossing over that the crossover region is a mess even if it might all work itself out in the wash, and that huge peak above the presence band might give a bit of 'air and space' but I personally find such obvious colourations get irritating over time.

Added to that they are insensitive, and with them being a small two-way you won't be able to put much power into them before they audibly distort.

If they were a couple of hundred then you could do worse, but at six grand? I don't see how such products can find a market, but some do seem to manage it.

Yes, I was providing counterpoint. Also I'm Australian and we often go with (somewhat sarcastic) understatement: "very modest bass extension" and "no real bass to speak of" and even "there's literally no f*cking bass" are equivalent. But I've also done the pushing small speaker too hard thing and it isn't for me. As for market, I reckon some will actually like that sound (just as I know I wouldn't). And they will like the construction and finish which isn't there on a cheap but more conventionally tuned device. I know staring at a cheap-looking thing while listening to music would make my flesh crawl. They are three-way speakers though, the top is a co-axial arrangement.

 

[Gringoaudio1]

Ok, shorter:

In the real world, we all listen to our systems in sighted conditions right?

So, can you explain how the measurements help predict, to any useful degree, what we will hear from that speaker in sighted conditions?

Can you explain this without making my point for me? ;-)

If it turns out the measurements are "useless" for predicting the sound under the conditions we'll actually be listening...why should any audiophile care about the measurements, again?

(And if anyone reading those questions infers that I'm arguing measurements are useless...you'd be wrong and missing my point).

So why not measure in the theatre? Too onerous. I accept that. But don’t say that getting it right by ear is superior to measurements. It just more efficient given the venue.

 

[garyrc]

Thanks J, are there any recognised audible levels of distortion in loudspeakers?
Are there just too many variables to achieve a consensus?
Keith

I've heard it's around 2 % IM, or THD, but like amounts of IM & THD are not equally bad sounding or annoying, IM usually being worse.

The lowest IM is to be expected (much of the time) in speakers in which the diaphragms barely move (e.g. horns), or that are 3 or 4 way thus cutting down on Doppler effect. https://www.stereophile.com/reference/1104red/index.html

 

[617]

Thanks J, are there any recognised audible levels of distortion in loudspeakers?
Are there just too many variables to achieve a consensus?
Keith

Geddes showed that HD doesn't correlate to audibility and developed a different standard which takes into account absolute level. Floyd Toole barely mentions distortion in his book because he says it simply doesn't play a factor in listener preference. I saw a test from a loudspeaker manufacturer that said bass distortion could reach 100% before listeners found it objectionable.

So to answer your question, there is no consensus, no widely accepted level or distance for measurement (mics distort at high levels), and no broad consensus on audibility.

We tend to confuse our measurement techniques with what we hear. Harmonic distortion is the result of our mechanical transducers malfunctioning at their limits. It is not an intrinsic phenomena of our hearing. There's really no reason why a spurious sound which is completely correlated to the 'clean' sound, having the same rhythm and pitch relationships, should be objectionable or even noticeable when it is many times quieter.

Geddes explains his research better than I can:

In 2003 my partner and I published two papers on the perception of nonlinear distortion. Much of the results from this work is available here http://gedlee.com/distortion_perception.htm.

Basically through an ellaborate test of some 25 college students we were able to show that THD and IMD are meaningless measurements of distortion as far as perception is concerned. Basically one cannot say that something does or does not sound good based on these measurements. .01% can sound outrageous in some cases and 25% can be inaudible in others. The numbers are meaningless.

This result has been confirmed by several sources and now virtually eveyone in the loudspeaker business is coming to the conclusion that making THD measurements is pointless. Floyd Toole believes that nonlinearties in loudspeakers is irrelavent as evidenced by the fact that his new book contains no discussion of this topic. Lorri Fincham recently remarked at ALMA that THD and IMD were completely meaningless as a judge of sound quality. My own presentation from ALMA (China) last year says the same thing and maybe goes even a bit further.

Basically distortion, as we are used to thinking about it, is completely incorrect. This was further confirmed when we did a study of compression drivers published in JAES. In this study no one of about 30 subjects could hear nonlinear distortion up to the thermal limit of the driver - some 126 dB at the waveguide. This result was surprising and quite controversial, but it is holding firm as quite correct.

There are things that we perceive as distortion-like artifacts, but these are not nonlinearities in the drivers themselves, but are actually nonlinearities in our hearing system. This was brought to like by my partner and I in Oct. 2006 at the AES convention. These diffraction-like artifacts are perceived quite readily by us, but only at higher SPL levels, there are not audible at lower SPLs. These effects are virtually ignored in most loudspeaker designs.

 

[garyrc]

"Lucy, queen is a hereditary title, so you can't be a queen."

I'm not sure if it is a coincidence but I virtually always find speakers in which the diaphragm barely moves (therefore lower IM) to be more detailed, clearer, and less muddy, particularly at high SPL, than speakers in which large excursions are present (and even advertised!). My favorites tend to be horns or, sometimes, ribbons, electrostatics, etc.

"... virtually everyone in the loudspeaker business is coming to the conclusion that making THD measurements is pointless." I'm much more concerned with IM than THD. In the '80s I did many listening tests (more stores then!). I compared the Klipsch Cornwall and the Klipschorn. In those days, those two systems had identical drivers and identical crossovers, but the Cornwall, that no horn in the bass, and a short horn in the midrange, had 3 times the IM distortion of the Klipschorn, with the Cornwall playing at 10 dB lower SPL. Switching to the Klipschorn was like opening a window between the speakers and me.

This guy thinks IM ("Doppler Distortion") audibly changes the sound, e.g., makes the flute more "edgy." . https://www.stereophile.com/reference/1104red/index.html

This one thinks IM hides detail https://josephcrowe.com/blogs/news/intermodulation-distortion-testing-various-hf-drivers.

Might it matter how the distortion is produced, the kind and complexity of the music, etc?

FWIW, here are some old (1980s - 2,005 or so) notes I got from reviews, including ones by Heyser, Keel Jr, etc.

The speakers are listed in order of clarity and detail (to my ears), with the clearest on the top, except for the Platinum, which I haven't heard.

Speakers IM distortion at 105dB (THX peaks) Harmonic distortion at 105dB (THX peaks)
Klipschorn 1.75% IM 0.25% HD
AR 4-way AR 98RS 2.7% Audible ~3% Audible
Fried Studio 4 10% Audible & Annoying 4% (16XKH) Audible
Platinum Studio 2 7% Audible and Annoying 1.9% (7.6XKH) Audible

" ... and I will wear my crown in swimming."

 

[preload]

The two B&W speakers received great reviews from Stereophile. The 683 S2 was rated B full range and the 805 D3 rated A Restricted LF. I did not check the others.

I had a pair of B&W 805 D2 (previous generation to the D3) and compared them in the same room to the Revel m126Be and the Genelec 8351b. The B&W's sounded comparable in overall quality to the Revels, but not as good as the Genelecs (but the Genelecs cost twice as much). This is just another datapoint that confirms that for loudspeakers, our interpretation of their measurements don't completely predict how good they will sound.

That being said, the B&W 600-series probably didn't sound great - that's their entry level (or maybe one line up for entry level nowadays).

 

[thewas]

8000€ pair price passive full range loudspeaker with following measurements:

Source: https://www.hifitest.de/test/lautsprecher-stereo/cube-audio-jazzon-21959

 

[mwmkravchenko]

Greg Roberts is basically a good carpenter. I would say he is a poet with wood. But he has little understanding of acoustic and electroacoustic and speakers IMO. His first model Vittora was a La Scala klipsch with rounded corners and upgraded parts. Parts that were popular back then in Klipsch community. Better Tractrix midrange horn (Edgar style) than the K400 exponential horn of Klipsch itself. Better compression driver (BMS 4592-mid) and better tweeters (Beyma CP25 at first and Faital Pro HF10AK afterwards). Faital Pro 15PR400 woofers. The bassbin of Vittora was designed by Mark Kravechenko. Crossover was designed by John Warren who is highly skilled in this. It seems that Greg is using less help from others in his recent models so no wonder about bad measurements. I still think Vittora could potentially sound very good taking the quality X-over and drivers used into consideration but I have no idea about Alura and Rival and Razz.

I did what I could with Greg. I gave him a smooth bass section and the rest I did not touch. When I saw the final measurements in Stereophile I was sorry that I ever had any involvement. He never paid the design fees either. My happiness has been the other designs that he has come up with. There is no way to describe the response of those loudspeakers using polite words.

 

[617]

I did what I could with Greg. I gave him a smooth bass section and the rest I did not touch. When I saw the final measurements in Stereophile I was sorry that I ever had any involvement. He never paid the design fees either. My happiness has been the other designs that he has come up with. There is no way to describe the response of those loudspeakers using polite words.

I've done work and then asked my name to be taken off. Got paid though.

 

[MarkS]

I nominate the Escalante Design Fremont. Now long out of production, MSRP was $19K/pair in 2008:

Escalante Design Fremont loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

These terrible measurements did not prevent this rapturous subjective review:

They deliver music in the most wholly organic manner I can recall. Music, all kinds of music (more on that soon), is recreated with a warmth, a coherence, a dimensionality, a presence, a texture and an immediacy that is so evocative of the live event that I repeatedly found myself wondering how such an unorthodox design could be so captivating. There is such an inherent sense of "live" rendered by the Fremont, so unlike anything I have ever experienced from a loudspeaker before, that I was completely charmed.

escalante_fremont

 

[poxymoron]

I nominate the Escalante Design Fremont. Now long out of production, MSRP was $19K/pair in 2008:

Escalante Design Fremont loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

These terrible measurements did not prevent this rapturous subjective review:

escalante_fremont

He doubles down at the end:
In my thirty plus years chasing musical nirvana, the Fremont is the most exceedingly musical product I have ever encountered.

Facepalm emoji!

 

[MarkS]

That reviewer is still reviewing: https://www.theaudioanalyst.com

 

[Dialectic]

I did what I could with Greg. I gave him a smooth bass section and the rest I did not touch. When I saw the final measurements in Stereophile I was sorry that I ever had any involvement. He never paid the design fees either. My happiness has been the other designs that he has come up with. There is no way to describe the response of those loudspeakers using polite words.

Unsurprised to hear that he didn't pay you.

His position on warranties--that the buyer of the speakers gets whatever warranties come with the parts--indicates both ignorance and poor business ethics.

Listening to his garbage speakers while he told me how wonderful they were was a remarkably uncomfortable experience.

 

[fpitas]

Well, nowadays it's relatively easy to EQ a decent FR. At least on axes. EQ and FR off axes, maybe if the conditions are there.
Nothing can be done about distortion, at least not the distortion of the speaker elements themselves.

Having said that, if you buy expensive speakers, you should expect that the speaker manufacturer designed speakers with reasonable FR from the start. At least I think so. This is obviously not always the case, which is unfortunately clear if you read this thread.

Check the prices of these deformities of this so-called speakers, even worse sometimes this so-called "High End" speakers, incredible!

If the problem is in the crossover, sometimes global EQ doesn't work very well.

 

[Palladium]

That reviewer is still reviewing: https://www.theaudioanalyst.com

I see, "reviewing" a $10K power supply with a wall of usual weasel text and no measurements.

 

[fpitas]

I nominate the Escalante Design Fremont. Now long out of production, MSRP was $19K/pair in 2008:

Escalante Design Fremont loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

These terrible measurements did not prevent this rapturous subjective review:

escalante_fremont

The huge dip is inexcusable in a competent speaker, of course. But It does illustrate that dips are much harder to hear than peaks.

 

[Mart68]

The huge dip is inexcusable in a competent speaker, of course. But It does illustrate that dips are much harder to hear than peaks.

The in-room measurement shows a huge midrange peak. Some people love what that does, not me.

 

[Axo1989]

I see, "reviewing" a $10K power supply with a wall of usual weasel text and no measurements.

Don't short-change yourself, that was a $10K phono stage and a $10K power supply. Buy the set.

 

[Axo1989]

I nominate the Escalante Design Fremont. Now long out of production, MSRP was $19K/pair in 2008:

Escalante Design Fremont loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

These terrible measurements did not prevent this rapturous subjective review:

escalante_fremont

You have to credit it with consistently terrible measurements no matter where you start: cabinet vibration, frequency response, step response and waterfall, all vying for the worst I've seen on Stereophile. Efficient though.

 

[617]

You know a speaker sucks when it has a fancy name