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Worst measuring loudspeaker?

jhaider said:
You use a center channel that’s not identical to your left and right speakers, right? Fix that and see what happens.
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I’ve tried it. Being a total Home Theatre geek (almost 16,000 posts on the AVS forum - if you think I’m chatty here!) I did a lot of experimentation when designing by Home Theatre system.
At first I was hoping to combine two channel listening with the Home Theatre system, so I tried various combinations of the two channel floor speakers I liked with different centre channels. There was just no way to truly optimize the type of performance I wanted for two channel they would also optimize for my Home Theatre surround system. So I decided to make them two different systems and that worked out really well.

My L/R surround speakers are Hales Transcendence 1 monitors. Since I was seeking coherence, I bought 2 pairs, so that I could try using the same three monitors for left centre right. It sounded coherent, but when I tracked down the Hales Transcendence centre channel, which is a proper centre channel design and made to mesh with those loudspeakers, I found the sound more satisfactory, maybe even more coherent. So that’s what I’ve used ever since. I’ve had some home theater, installers, and geeks at my house who’ve told me my system produces the most coherent bubble of sound they’ve heard for surround sound, in someone’s Home Theatre system. So I think I did pretty well. I absolutely love how it worked out.
 
mcdn said:
@MattHooper I love how measured and balanced you are, but at some point things are just broken. You mention MBLs and other speakers with clearly different design criteria to the standard "drivers in a box" design that can get a good score here. I agree they shouldn't be held to that standard. But Borrensen speakers aren't omni, or active, or cardioid, or interesting in any way other than being expensive. They are badly designed speakers that look nice, marketed to rich people who may never even listen to them. That's fine and there's a place for it, but we here should call them out for what they are.
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I think I’ll just say, quibbles aside, I agree :)
 
Kal Rubinson said:
Not really. It is a 5.3 system.
Speakers: I use 3 KEF Blade 2 Meta for L/C/R each driven by a bridged Benchmark AHB2. I use a (pair of) KEF LS60 for SL/SR. There are subs in each of the three corners of the room, 2 x KEF KC92 and 1 x SVS SB-2000Pro.
Electronics: All (almost all) playback is from files stored on a remote NAS, organized and played via local WinPC+Jriver+DiracLive-ART and output to the speakers via a Merging Hapi II with 8 channels of EAS/EBU input/output and 16 channels of D/A from Merging DA8P cards.
Connections: WinPC+Jriver to NAS via LAN. WinPC+Jriver to Hapi via Ravenna. Hapi to L/C/R and subs is balanced analog via CAT6. Hapi to LS60 is AES/EBU via CAT6.
Room arrangement: L/R Blades are 8.5' apart. Blade to listening chair is 11'. All three face forward without any toe-in. LS60s are on side walls about 2' behind listening chair.
Listening room: 24' L × 14' W × 8' H. Mix of hard and soft furniture. Cieling, floor and most walls are plaster over reinforced concrete. Floor covering is new oak flooring over a resilient base and a silk/wool carpet with padding. Large membrane bass traps are built into each front corner. Sidewalls lateral to L/R speakers have 2" thick, 2' wide floor-to-ceiling OC 705 panels. Front wall above traps has large triple-pane windows variably covered by solar shades. Rear of room opens into 2 smaller (10' × 7' and 12' × 8') rooms.

Key point is the use of discrete, uncompressed multichannel recordings with up to DXD resolution although everything is downsampled to 24/192 for DL-ART processing. This means that, even for stereo playback, all speakers/subs are active.
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Good loard! What a system! I didn’t realize you were using three blades. No doubt it sounds incredible. Thanks for all the detail. It was very interesting, nothing left to chance.

I was similarly obsessive when designing my Home Theatre, looking for as much perfection as I could manage. By the time I finished with that part of the room, mixing it in with my two channel system became the next challenge.
 
dshreter said:
It’s not an accident, it is the point I am making. People are saying spinorama interchangeably as both a presentation of data and a scoring rubric. A spinorama is only the first thing.
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They probably are, but you look like you are saying 'scoring rubric' is the main measurement-based way to determine preference, and the Spinorama is not part of that. My post was trying to disabuse you of that notion, because the Spinorama is actually the main measurement-based way to determine preference. So it is not "only the first thing".

Toole's book is a great resource for a deeper understanding of the basis for the above.
 
Newman said:
They probably are, but you look like you are saying 'scoring rubric' is the main measurement-based way to determine preference, and the Spinorama is not part of that. My post was trying to disabuse you of that notion, because the Spinorama is actually the main measurement-based way to determine preference. So it is not "only the first thing".

Toole's book is a great resource for a deeper understanding of the basis for the above.
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The spinorama is not a way to determine preference. It is a collection of data and a chart for representing speaker behavior. What you do with that information is a distinct concept, and that interpretation could also be done with other data presentations besides spinorama.

I’m also not saying scoring rubric is the main way to determine preference. It is only one way, and my posts intended to point out that with only a single scalar metric it’s very limited in how much information that provides.
 
dshreter said:
The spinorama is not a way to determine preference. It is a collection of data and a chart for representing speaker behavior. What you do with that information is a distinct concept, and that interpretation could also be done with other data presentations besides spinorama.
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Incorrect. Spinorama is what Olive and Toole use to predict which of two loudspeakers will win a blind preference shootout. That makes it "a way to determine preference", period. It is also the preferred means that Olive and Toole recommend that we use to determine preference, given the normal assumption that we are not going to conduct a well-controlled listening test comparison of the speakers in question due to the inconvenience of doing so.

Toole's book is a great resource for a deeper understanding of the basis for the above.

dshreter said:
I’m also not saying scoring rubric is the main way to determine preference. It is only one way, and my posts intended to point out that with only a single scalar metric it’s very limited in how much information that provides.
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And that's a great point, one that Olive has made on this forum too, and others including me. Keep making that point!
 
Are you suggesting I should? I prefer not to be handed leading questions. Explain yourself.
 
Newman said:
Are you suggesting I should? I prefer not to be handed leading questions. Explain yourself.
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My working definition of spinorama aligns with what I pasted and linked. You’ve referred to it as “what Olive and Toole use to predict which of two loudspeakers will win a blind preference shootout.”

I’m trying to ascertain if we are actually disagreeing or not, and if so, why.
 
Blumlein 88 said:
...

In terms of speakers it is like me not knowing if you live in an apartment with a small listening room, or need to worry about disturbing those around you, or if you live in a house with a big listening room. Or if you need to use an attic with odd dimensions. Or domestic tranquility requires you to have something unobtrusive.
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Yes, this was my point. Knowing some objective measures of a car is useful but it's not going to be enough to know which car I would prefer. If I'm 6' 8" tall (I'm not), front headroom probably matters more to me than others.

I appreciate Spinorama and it provides a lot of useful and valuable information. But it is not enough to know which speaker someone would prefer. (At least most of the time. Some of those superstars of this particular thread may be an exception.) I see many posts on ASR to the effect of..."Speaker A is better than Speaker B" because of some minor difference in the directive index which is probably inaudible and we wouldn't know for sure in one room vs another.
 
dshreter said:
My working definition of spinorama aligns with what I pasted and linked. You’ve referred to it as “what Olive and Toole use to predict which of two loudspeakers will win a blind preference shootout.”

I’m trying to ascertain if we are actually disagreeing or not, and if so, why.
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Ok, so you jumped over from discussing what it is or is not used for, to basic definitions, and that confused me. They are different things. A national flag is defined as a rectangle of cloth with a prescribed pattern on it, but that doesn't say anything about what it is or is not used for. Definitions don't usually help to prescribe application.

If you are maintaining that the Spinorama is not the primary measurement suite for ascertaining the relative listener preference of different loudspeakers without having to do inconvenient listening trials, then we are disagreeing. I maintain that such use is exactly what Toole and Olive say it can be used for.

cheers
 
Newman said:
Ok, so you jumped over from discussing what it is or is not used for, to basic definitions, and that confused me. They are different things. A national flag is defined as a rectangle of cloth with a prescribed pattern on it, but that doesn't say anything about what it is or is not used for. Definitions don't usually help to prescribe application.

If you are maintaining that the Spinorama is not the primary measurement suite for ascertaining the relative listener preference of different loudspeakers without having to do inconvenient listening trials, then we are disagreeing. I maintain that such use is exactly what Toole and Olive say it can be used for.

cheers
Click to expand...
Precisely, I believe we are sharing a common understanding :)
 
The worst-measuring speakers I *own* are a pair of Lowther Acoustas. Oddly, they sound wonderful on some source material. I intend to do things to flatten them a bit, someday. The second worst are my pair of JBL L200s, which again, can sound very nice. The third worst were probably my Tannoy Gold 15, I made them active with active crossovers and that helped, but eventually they had to go. I think the worst I ever heard were either early Bose (vomit) or early Jordan Watts metal cones (earache), which I could never get to work right. The cheapest best-measuring speakers I had OTOH were a pair of Baxandall designed equalised Elac 13x8 units, remarkable for the time. But I stick to my Neumanns for accuracy.
 
dshreter said:
One of the key differences of larger and more expensive Revel speakers is they possess controlled directivity down to lower frequencies. Related, larger speakers can also have narrower directivity across a swath of the spectrum compared to smaller speakers.

This seems to be one of the differentiating qualities of larger speakers beyond the frequency response and SPL handling, that might make these sound better than something like a KEF R3 with a beautiful spin.
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Yep. The differences between larger speakers and smaller that are otherwise similar such as the Revel family, seem to be controlled directivity lower in frequency, higher SPL, and extended low frequency response.

In the case of the Revels, I don't think lower controlled directivity plays too much of a role. The difference in speaker (baffle) width is only about 4" from Salon2 & 328, to 206.
That's might lower pattern control frequency a fat 100Hz around the 500Hz or so zip code. Not too big a deal I think.

SPL and bass extension do seem to be a bigger deal, especially for the 328 vs 206 (salon SPL less so due to it's lower sensitivity.)
The 328 with 91dB sensitivity and 300W amp recommendation, should be good for 116dB peaks.
The 206's numbers 88dB sens, and 200W, fall in at about 108dB peaks.
Knocking (you choose) 18 to 12 dB off those peak numbers for average SPL at 1m, that has no peak compression.
leaves the 328 with pure clean 104-98dB SPL, and the 206 with 96-90dB. That's a big difference sonically ime/imo.

Like wise the 328 extend f-3 to 35Hz, and the 206 just goes to f-3 @ 52Hz. Another big sonic difference.

My take is maximum unclipped/uncompressed SPL handling both average and peaks, all the way down to f-3....
....is probably more important than very good spins. I think once spins make it to the no glaring problems stage, SPL and bass extension take over.
 
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:facepalm:
 
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Oh I love me some drama. Seems like this company doesn't know how to design speakers or doesn't understand the limitations of their own measurements. Whatever the fuck is going on at 2-2.5kHz can only be explained by the former, so I'll say that is the main culprit.

Beave said:
LOL at the scale of the frequency response plot they provided. A 10dB deviation looks small when you use a scale like that (intentional, no doubt).
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Don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. But again, it might just be both.


Anyway, this is the exact opposite of the response you want for a manufacturer. Wasn't it Ascend Acoustics that started using a Klippel NFS after the effects of the limitations in the way they measured speakers showed up in a review at ASR? That's how you should handle these things, not blame the reviewer.
 
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They had to go out 'yesterday' and measure their speakers to see if they matched Erin's measurement? Isn't this a speaker that has been on the market for some time?

They don't already have at least a semi-anechoic measurement of it?

They don't know what a Klippel scanner is or how it works?

They didn't bother to fact check before publishing their rebuttal (He'd never asked them for a review pair as they state).

No wonder their speakers are an expensive disaster. Amateur night.
 
Thanks @VintageFlanker, the quicker the dissemination of information the better.
Keith
 
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