Like OP has mentioned earlier, GR admits his ignorance and provides the update ... Amir’s comments are correct. Attack to Amir’s comments and disrespect got to end here, folks.
Interesting ASR review of small GR Research speaker kit
I bounce between various kinds of analysis — more subjective listening reports, more quantitative measurement analyses and, my favorite, those that combine both strategies to tell a useful story about audio products.
Amir of ASR has just done a very powerful takedown of a fairly inexpensive kit being sold by Danny at GR Research. Not only does he prove his point about the speakers, he also makes (to my mind) a very convincing case that Danny put his finger on the scale in how he reported his own measurements.
I'm not in any camp — Danny's or Amir's or anyone else's. What I appreciate is thoroughness and meticulousness in exposition. Danny does that in his own videos. (Again -- to me. I'm really still learning and cannot easily spot gaps in argument in this subject matter.)
I know people with some of GR's best kits — and I've heard one of them. They sounded incredible. I've watched a bunch of Danny's videos where he criticizes other companies; I've come away thinking, "Wow, he really revealed some of the grift embedded in that product."
But here, the tables are turned, it seems, on Danny. I hope he responds, both to defend his reputation and methods, but also because it will set in relief where some of the distance may be between these two dominant online figures' methods in assessing what makes for a good speaker.
I’ve realized the best way to get fantastic sounding speakers is to build them yourself - if you have the skills.. a mass produced product can not compete cost effectively in terms of cabinet design/build quality.
I build the meniscus Helios in similar fashion to Javad’s design, and they have blown me away. Just amazing. |
I am not quite sure how you get this from the video. From the 1 minute 20 second mark to about 3 minutes he explains exactly what others have said above. These speakers were designed for near field desk top type of listening and were never intended to be full range or to play loud. Both of which Amir did. Without coming out and directly saying it, Danny is saying that the speaker was tested improperly.
When you are wrong and deserve to be called out, you should be called out. He was wrong and deserved to be called out in this case. |
Some of you are seeing what I see. Others are just issuing more broadsides against Amir and ASR and measurement in general. Or singing paeans to how your system makes you feel, measurements be damned. Interesting — shows how audio is both scientific and religious, depending on the particular audiophile. For my own part, what I liked about this video — and some of the stuff on Audioholics, too — is that they go through a topic and says, "There is this issue, and here's the evidence and the conclusion….and now there is this *other* issue, etc." They may go ahead an add all that evidence up and give a product evaluation, overall, too. But what is important to me is each separate piece of evidence. I have learned a lot from technical information about speakers, amps, etc. I have learned a lot by listening. The notion that I would throw out an entire class of methodology just because there are *some* who are measurement-only (or listening-only) zealots is ridiculous. I'd prefer Jefferson's approach to the Bible — cut out the speculative metaphysics and leave the sensible stuff. You don't throw out the whole Bible because you think the afterlife and sin stuff is just B.S. |
@hilde45 ++1 for your balanced approach and the Jefferson Bible. Measurements and specs are important. I used the impedance plots to determine the crossover frequency for my sub, for instance; frequency curves helped me deal with some beaming from a horn speaker I used to have. Etc. The science of why my rig sounds good is part of what my geeky side enjoys. But we deploy that gear into a complex acoustic environment, try as we may to tame it. There are so many variables it’s easy to see how a less-than-stellar component(s) might be great in a given room with a given rig. We need both the left and the right side of our brains… |