Worst measuring loudspeaker?

[MattHooper]

The picture above shows a "broken" speaker. It cannot sound good. People prefer relatively flat frequency responses. If anyone thinks the speaker above sounds good, then they need to be educated on how to read colorful squiggly lines, and if they turn off the music and study the lines long enough they will be enlightened that the speakers they thought sounded good actually sound bad.

There are certainly grounds to call this a bad speaker, design, and grounds to say it will sound worse relative to a much better measuring speaker.

But I’m curious if we have really solid grounds to say the people would, hearing the speaker in blind conditions, actually say “ this sounds bad.”

What I’m getting at, is that blind speaker preference ratings, as far as I remember, don’t necessarily document people declaring “ bad sounding” so much as they document relative preference ratings. In other words, the fact one speaker is rated lower and preference than another doesn’t automatically entail “ it sounds bad.”
It just tells you that another speaker was rated higher. With issues like frequency, problems, or resonances causing people to read loud speakers as “ worse” than others.

Now, if you take the speaker rating scales, you could perhaps say “we’ll call anything below 4 or down “ bad” for sound quality.”
Which would be fine.

But I’m wondering, without actually putting this loudspeaker to blind listening tests, how confidently can we predict how low it would be rated (?). Would it just be rated lower than a better performing speaker - “ other speakers sound better than this one”? Or if asked to describe the sound, would a majority say “this sounds bad?”

I’m certainly not saying it’s not possible: the measurements look pretty bad, and even some sighted reports noted the midrange issues.

On the other hand, some people have listened to the Borresen speakers and thought they sounded “ good” or “ not bad all things considered.”

(I might be forgetting certain studies that directly address the question I’m asking… it’s been a while since I took a look at them)

This is science. If they paid for them, they will sell them and get something different.

Here’s where I would think you should be more careful about your confidence levels.

There have been all sorts of loudspeaker designs with wonky measurements that many audiophiles have kept for long periods of time, finding themselves satisfied.

There seems to be a common assumption on this forum that the type of measurement criteria derived from blind listening tests of loudspeakers translates into lasting satisfaction, and retaining that gear, over the typical purchase made via sighted listening.

As far as I’m aware, nobody has ever actually presented data supporting that. It’s basically just been assumed.

And anecdotally, having paid attention to polls about what equipment people own on sites like this, as well as the more traditional
“ subjectivist” sites, I haven’t seen any obvious trend either way.

For instance a poll on the heavily-subjectivist-Steve Hoffman forum asked members how long they have had their loudspeakers.

Even within the first several pages, plenty of people indicated they’ve held onto their speakers for a long time

And I don’t see any particular rhyme or reason as to which type of speakers led to such satisfaction given the variety of designs mentioned.

So what I’m saying is that, if we are really thinking with a scientific level of caution, we would be cautious about simply extrapolating the results of blind testing to claims about owner satisfaction levels - how lab studies predict or translate to the real world environment - without hard data. Otherwise it’s just making assumptions.

And if someone posts anything to the contrary, we will keep repeating the same arguments for 150 posts.

Hopefully we don’t need that

 

[a4eaudio]

Here’s where I would think you should be more careful about your confidence levels.

Hopefully some of my sarcasm came through. I was summarizing what has been said. Someone actually said (probably over 100 posts ago) something along the lines of "when they realize they don't sound good they'll sell them."

Hopefully we don’t need that

This was directly in support of your posts. You said something to the contrary... Some people might like them even though they measure poorly...and there have been dozens of posts simply repeating that you must be wrong.

I'm also playing Devil's advocate...I probably would not like the way they sound and would never design a speaker that measure this way.

 

[MattHooper]

Hopefully some of my sarcasm came through. I was summarizing what has been said. Someone actually said (probably over 100 posts ago) something along the lines of "when they realize they don't sound good they'll sell them."



This was directly in support of your posts. You said something to the contrary... Some people might like them even though they measure poorly...and there have been dozens of posts simply repeating that you must be wrong.

I'm also playing Devil's advocate...I probably would not like the way they sound and would never design a speaker that measure this way.

Ah, thanks. I didn’t quite catch the tone. Internet and all that. Cheers.

 

[a4eaudio]

Looking at that graph again gives me an idea. Sort of an Ikea/Lego speaker concept. You make some woofers of some various sizes and types. Make some midranges of various sizes and types. Make some tweeters of some various sizes and types. Come up with nicely done cabinets and a fastener system to let the customer assemble the pieces as they see fit. And voila everyone has their own personalized speaker combo.

I think this is called "active crossovers with DSP".

JUST A JOKE!!

 

[MattHooper]

BTW, since Erin’s review has taken up quite a bit of space in the last few pages, including a discussion about the nature of his review, I contacted Erin to ask him more about this review and how it relates to his general goals.
I especially wanted to make sure that I had understood and represented his goals properly in some of my post here.

As I wrote earlier, I think it was clear if you are familiar with Erin’s reviews, as well as what he presented in the Borresen x3 review that he was not going to think highly of the speaker.
That I was quite sure he would not want to own such a speaker nor recommend it.
But that his approach generally was not to rate speakers good and bad and tell people what to buy, but to give an understanding of how loudspeakers perform… the good and the bad. As I am capsulated in this short post

Erin’s reply, I believe, confirmed this. He mentioned it was fine to quote him here:

To be straight to the point my approach is geared more toward helping people understand the data. So even if it's a speaker I think is dog shit I'm going to spend some time talking about things that stood out to me (for better or worse) and point to places in the data where it (most likely) jives. Sometimes I only talk about bad things because there are only bad things to talk about—for example, the Fiio SP3 speaker or the Klipsch Heresy IV.

Luckily for us consumers, few speakers have absolutely zero redeeming qualities. They exist. But they're few. The Borresen X3 is one I would never buy nor would I ever encourage anyone to buy for various reasons. I hope that was clear in my assessment. However, there were some redeeming qualities and there were interesting qualities. Redeeming being the linear HF response. Interesting being the 80Hz bass boost which I attribute to *many* people noting the "punchiness" or "quickness" to the bass in their subjective assessments. Those are the interesting things to assess and flesh out in the reviews. If my goal was to share data only and give a thumbs up or down then I wouldn't even bother with creating videos; I'd just have a Twitter feed and say "Speaker A: Terrible". That's not my goal, though. I am latched into this hobby because of the connection between what we hear and what the data shows (or doesn't show). So I come at my reviews from that angle. I hope that through sharing how the data correlates to what we hear others will find it interesting and maybe take a step further into the hobby.

As I mentioned earlier, I appreciate that approach myself. I don’t really need anybody to declare to me “ don’t buy this” or “ this loudspeaker is shit.” Give me the information and I can decide for myself whether the speaker is interesting or not.

I know other members here would want Erin to trash the Borresen speakers unequivocally as having no redeeming features whatsoever, but that’s not his approach. And I believe he is honest about that. Verbally trashing speakers would be a distraction from what he’s actually trying to do.

Also, Erin included;

Also, let @MAB know that I agree 100% with his assessment of CSD plots. I loathe them because they are not normalized against SPL and there's no way to draw a real apples-to-apples comparison in part because of that. Ironically, I was talking to a speaker engineer friend of mine last week about this even and I was surprised to know he didn't understand why I do not provide these graphics ... until I explained this issue to him. I was going to write up my own Matlab script to import the IR data and generate a normalized CSD from that but I found that ARTA has an IR import feature and - even more cool - it can create burst decay plots from this IR data! These are far more useful than CSD. So, I'll be using that from time to time. It's an extra process to go through so I'll likely use it sparingly.

(I don’t know if that pertains to a discussion that happened in this thread or in another one)

 

[Mark617]

Hopefully some of my sarcasm came through. I was summarizing what has been said. Someone actually said (probably over 100 posts ago) something along the lines of "when they realize they don't sound good they'll sell them."



This was directly in support of your posts. You said something to the contrary... Some people might like them even though they measure poorly...and there have been dozens of posts simply repeating that you must be wrong.

I'm also playing Devil's advocate...I probably would not like the way they sound and would never design a speaker that measure this way.

A few ”canines” seem unable to let the bones go...

Nothing was gained really after 150+ posts on what Erin should, would, could, meant, didn't mean, etc. etc. Just because people won’t call a spade a spade. My take is that the said speaker is an expensive dud. One would be better served by an IKEA speaker/pix given that it would cost some 100 times less than the expensive dud. Is ASR an objectivist site or is it becoming relativist and subjectivist à la Stereophile/TAS/etc.?

 

[Blumlein 88]

A few ”canines” seem unable to let the bones go...

Nothing was gained really after 150+ posts on what Erin should, would, could, meant, didn't mean, etc. etc. Just because people won’t call a spade a spade. My take is that the said speaker is an expensive dud. One would be better served by an IKEA speaker/pix given that it would cost some 100 times less than the expensive dud. Is ASR an objectivist site or is it becoming relativist and subjectivist à la Stereophile/TAS/etc.?

Is it not strange how many people have "stood up" for this speaker as a consideration while every single one so far has said they would not like it either?
I also think these folks are over-looking how much of a travesty this offering is considering its price. We are talking $11 k here. Is there any single thing, even one thing this speaker does that you cannot equal with a number of other offerings for the same or less money, plus those other speakers can offer many things this one cannot? Very odd.

We don't need to throw TAS or S-phile a bone. We already have them.

 

[Bjorn]

Or compare this Revel Performa3 F208 floor stander that goes for $5500/pair list, on sale for ~$4K by Revel for over a year. I might just post this graph whenever an expensive speaker measures poorly, from now-on...

View attachment 408254

But it also shows that the speaker doesn't have constant directivity, which means the reflected energy will be quite different to the direct signal. It's also evident that we're dealing with a speaker with vertical lobing right in the sensitive area besides crossover there and there's no time adjustment between drivers. And speaker has the traditonal floor bounce and will have high gain reflections from both floor and ceiling. Place this speaker in many rooms vs a better design, and you'll see that the better design will measure more evenly on average.

Just looking at the on-axis frequency response is not a very good way to judge a speaker. But it's obviously the first step to get right.

 

[MattHooper]

Meanwhile, I said over and over I’m not defending the X3 as a good speaker, that the measurements are awful, justifying calling it a bad or broken design, that it makes sense Erin would never recommend such a speaker, that Borresen should be embarrassed by the measurements which suggest in terms of speaker design chops
“ the emperor has no clothes…”

But pointing out Erin included the few positives he could find along with the negatives.., ” how dare you defend this loudspeaker!!!

I guess people are going to see what they want to see…

 

[Andysu]

But pointing out Erin included the few positives he could find along with the negatives.., ” how dare you defend this loudspeaker!!!

I guess people are going to see what they want to see…


View attachment 408473

 

[ChrisG]

Story time:
I was once comissioned to help with the design/build/tuning of a loudspeaker that was "pleasantly broken", which presents an interesting challenge. This was intended as something that would be coloured enough to be an interesting/ear-catching listening experience, but not so broken that it'd only ever sound good playing Nils Lofgren's Keith Don't Go (Live).

The design was a success. It wasn't something I'd ever want to own for the long-haul, but it was an interesting thing to listen to, which held up better than expected when playing Metallica.


I do wonder if the Borresen speakers are the product of similar discussion: something "interesting" to listen to, while all the products that have seen a Klippel system are tending to sound the same.


Chris

 

[Mark617]

Meanwhile, I said over and over I’m not defending the X3 team as a good speaker, that the measurements are awful, justifying calling it a bad or broken design, that it makes sense Erin would never recommend such a speaker, that Borresen should be embarrassed by the measurements which suggest in terms of speaker design chops
“ the emperor has no clothes…”

But pointing out Erin included the few positives he could find along with the negatives.., ” how dare you defend this loudspeaker!!!

I guess people are going to see what they want to see…


View attachment 408473

Yet...

 

[CapMan]

Finally, I'll note that there are plenty of high-performance loudspeakers with very non-linear frequency response curves.

"High performance" and " very non linear response" are a contradiction in terms.

 

[ChrisG]

"High performance" and " very non linear response" are a contradiction in terms.

While I can see why you might think that, be assured that your statement isn't always correct.

There are many excellent PA speakers which, when used passively with a "flat" source, give a very non-linear response. The reasoning goes like this:
- A passive crossover is lossy. However, if you know your loudspeaker will only ever be connected to an amplifier that has the correct EQ & limiting, then you don't need to aim for a flat response (typically this involves 10+dB of attenuation for the HF driver). Instead, you can use a relatively low-loss crossover, simply get the drivers to phase-align, and then EQ out the extra HF sensitivity and anything else that might need doing, but would be expensive to do passively.
This is an improvement in several ways:
- Reduced loss (ie, heat build-up) in the passive crossover, improving reliability.
- Reduced amplification requirements, since you're not wasting power in the crossover.

D&B, Nexo and others operate in this way.


Perhaps it could be argued that those speakers are "active", but be assured it's possible to connect Any Old Amplifier to them. It's just that the manufacturer makes no guarantees of performance if their speakers are used in that way.


Chris

 

[kyuu]

But it also shows that the speaker doesn't have constant directivity, which means the reflected energy will be quite different to the direct signal. It's also evident that we're dealing with a speaker with vertical lobing right in the sensitive area besides crossover there and there's no time adjustment between drivers. And speaker has the traditonal floor bounce and will have high gain reflections from both floor and ceiling. Place this speaker in many rooms vs a better design, and you'll see that the better design will measure more evenly on average.

Just looking at the on-axis frequency response is not a very good way to judge a speaker. But it's obviously the first step to get right.

Huh? From the review:

Not seeing the issues. Yes it has floor/ceiling bounce like just about any speaker, but Revel seems to have known quite well what they were doing. Don't know how you're judging that it isn't a well-designed speaker.

 

[Putter]

I guess I come to this conversation from a 'Consumer Reports' point of view and I'm not talking about their highly flawed speaker measurements although for many years they were the only useful reference for stereo receivers. It's that in the real world it's very difficult to compare different speakers, so you're forced to use a combination of positive reviews brand reputation and/or measurements and the penalty for a bad choice can be costly.

Monsieur Hooper's contention that somebody would enjoy this or that speaker is likely true, but for how long and would they enjoy a better measuring speaker costing less? Isn't this likely the reason why they're continually 'upgrading'? Why not sell non flat measuring amplifiers, CD Players, Tuners, Streamers, etc.? The reason is that audio equipment is expected to be faithful to the original recording and I would argue that 'should be the case with speakers.

Also the title of the thread is worst measuring loudspeakers not the least enjoyed. If you want to argue that a poorly measuring speaker can be enjoyed, well that's been true since the era Edison's lacquer disc, 78's, 45's as flawed sources and single driver speakers.

 

[Laagman]

Looking at that graph again gives me an idea. Sort of an Ikea/Lego speaker concept. You make some woofers of some various sizes and types. Make some midranges of various sizes and types. Make some tweeters of some various sizes and types. Come up with nicely done cabinets and a fastener system to let the customer assemble the pieces as they see fit. And voila everyone has their own personalized speaker combo. The discontinuities could be no worse than shown above. Heck with not much effort they would be much less. Maybe person A decides a he'd like a more recessed midrange sound so he swaps out one for another and snaps it in place. Ditto for all the other parts. A mix and match concept. Maybe person B is all about voices and wants them to stand out so that middle section uses one of the choices that makes that part elevated. With just a more, medium and less choice for each of the three sections you have dozens of combinations to suit your own musical taste.

Isn’t that what Buchardt is trying to do, but digital with their masterings?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Isn’t that what Buchardt is trying to do, but digital with their masterings?

I don't know, not familiar with that.

 

[MattHooper]

Story time:
I was once comissioned to help with the design/build/tuning of a loudspeaker that was "pleasantly broken", which presents an interesting challenge. This was intended as something that would be coloured enough to be an interesting/ear-catching listening experience, but not so broken that it'd only ever sound good playing Nils Lofgren's Keith Don't Go (Live).

The design was a success. It wasn't something I'd ever want to own for the long-haul, but it was an interesting thing to listen to, which held up better than expected when playing Metallica.


I do wonder if the Borresen speakers are the product of similar discussion: something "interesting" to listen to, while all the products that have seen a Klippel system are tending to sound the same.


Chris

Interesting story, Chris.

While I appreciate seeing the measurements analyzed, I’m also somewhat wary of some of the opinions that arise in this forum based solely on measurements. As I’ve said, there’s occasionally been some very disparaging commentary on speakers that I have either owned or auditioned extensively and enjoyed immensely. (Whether it’s MBL omnis, Devore or others). And some of the inferences from the measurements made here did not capture very comprehensively the presentation I heard.

So if anybody wants to call a speaker awful, broken or whatever, that’s perfectly fine to express that opinion. (I would share that opinion by the way of the Borresens based on Erin’s review.). But I prefer to be given as much information as possible, good with the bad if there is any, along with the measurements, and then I don’t need anybody’s personal opinion as to where they would rate it. (and for me listening for myself is a must.)

As for the Borresen X3, it’s an interesting case. They don’t measure well and plenty of people along with Erin were aware of some of the problems, even in informal listening sessions.

On the other hand, there are some reports from owners who really love them, who even picked them over auditioning speakers like Perlisten. I read another audiophile’s lengthy report where he auditioned the X3 to see if he wanted to replace his Harbeth 40.2, and he felt his Harbeths sounded better and pretty much every parameter with the exception of spacious sound staging. But still, he really liked what he heard from the x3.

So it’s interesting to ponder what is going on with the people who either like these speakers, or those who notice some of the problems but still enjoy them.

Maybe some of these listeners just aren’t as sensitive to the colorations? Maybe some of the colorations were slightly mitigated in different set ups? Maybe there’s some sort of bias effect doing a lot of work? (and if that’s the case, does that mean some ASR members feel confident they wouldn’t fall prey to the same bias effects and would hear right through to the real speaker? )
Maybe the speakers colorations are quite audible (no doubt) but it’s possible to exaggerate how bad it actually sounds, and some listeners in being less sensitive to areas of poor performance are picking up on some of its engaging qualities? I mean, these speakers don’t perform in a high fidelity way most here would demand for such an asking price. Nor would they likely perform well in blind tests against other better speakers.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if the average person, used to just hearing stuff on their smart speaker, whatever, might not think “ wow” upon hearing these loud speakers in comparison, given they likely cast a large sound stage precise imaging, a sense of detail, and punchy bass. Maybe that’s enough for some listeners to overcome the problems. (especially if they’re not doing back-to-back comparisons with other better speakers in blind conditions.)

 

[Blumlein 88]

Interesting story, Chris.

While I appreciate seeing the measurements analyzed, I’m also somewhat wary of some of the opinions that arise in this forum based solely on measurements. As I’ve said, there’s occasionally been some very disparaging commentary on speakers that I have either owned or auditioned extensively and enjoyed immensely. (Whether it’s MBL omnis, Devore or others). And some of the inferences from the measurements made here did not capture very comprehensively the presentation I heard.

So if anybody wants to call a speaker awful, broken or whatever, that’s perfectly fine to express that opinion. (I would share that opinion by the way of the Borresens based on Erin’s review.). But I prefer to be given as much information as possible, good with the bad if there is any, along with the measurements, and then I don’t need anybody’s personal opinion as to where they would rate it. (and for me listening for myself is a must.)

As for the Borresen X3, it’s an interesting case. They don’t measure well and plenty of people along with Erin were aware of some of the problems, even in informal listening sessions.

On the other hand, there are some reports from owners who really love them, who even picked them over auditioning speakers like Perlisten. I read another audiophile’s lengthy report where he auditioned the X3 to see if he wanted to replace his Harbeth 40.2, and he felt his Harbeths sounded better and pretty much every parameter with the exception of spacious sound staging. But still, he really liked what he heard from the x3.

So it’s interesting to ponder what is going on with the people who either like these speakers, or those who notice some of the problems but still enjoy them.

Maybe some of these listeners just aren’t as sensitive to the colorations? Maybe some of the colorations were slightly mitigated in different set ups? Maybe there’s some sort of bias effect doing a lot of work? (and if that’s the case, does that mean some ASR members feel confident they wouldn’t fall prey to the same bias effects and would hear right through to the real speaker? )
Maybe the speakers colorations are quite audible (no doubt) but it’s possible to exaggerate how bad it actually sounds, and some listeners in being less sensitive to areas of poor performance are picking up on some of its redeeming qualities? I mean, these speakers Don’t perform in a high Fidelity way most here with demand for such an asking price. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if the average person, used to just hearing stuff on their smart speaker, whatever, might not think “ wow” upon hearing these loud speakers in comparison, given they likely cast a large sound stage precise imaging, a sense of detail, and punchy bass. Maybe that’s enough for some listeners to overcome the problems. (especially if they’re not doing back-to-back comparisons with other better speakers in blind conditions.)

Yet more stories rendered where someone tried this horrid broken design and decided it wasn't for them. What do we learn from this? 7200 people gave this a try and 3 of them liked it maybe. So it deserves our efforts to be fair and not overly negative about it. Is this a sick joke? I asked before. Begins to sound like the idea of just calling a broken spade a broken spade would save lots of people the trouble of giving it a shot and finding (surprise, surprise) it isn't for them.