The biggest problem with measurements like those conducted by Erin, is they don’t take into account room modes and reflections, and don’t reveal what a listener will actually hear at their seat. The upper bass boost is probably intended to offset the bass null that occurs around that frequency in a typical listening room when the speakers are otherwise placed for optimal imaging (away from walls). It just so happens that those nulls tend to be around 10dB in magnitude IME.
If anything, for me, Erin’s results are evidence that speaker measurements are much less useful for determining sound quality than I had long thought. That’s because the X3s at their “street price” are without question the best sounding <$10K speakers I’ve experienced.
Recently, I had a very brief audition of their new C1 standmounts. Despite the brevity of that experience, I could immediately tell the C1s are likely the best sounding standmount 2-way I’d ever heard. And that’s despite having owned/heard many textbook-measuring speakers in my time.
When you think about it, it’s kind of bizarre that the audiophile community puts so much gravity into the conclusions of two psychoacoustic researchers who were once colleagues. In contrast, there is a far greater body of research conducted on cholesterol, and yet the experts can’t seem to come to a consensus on which is bad/good etc. The same applies to a multitude of other subjects.
#3 the lack of dynamic range. I have read people state they can play very loud but the data strongly suggests otherwise. This would explain why the X6 is made. I thought there might be something special with the tweeter but it shows heavy compression too.
I was surprised to see those results, because the X3s can play louder without audible distortion than any speaker I’ve owned. They seem to have incredible dynamic range in my room.
