"Your definition of dynamics is how loud a speaker can play? Wow . . . Not. It . At . All. "
What can one say? Now wonder he is regarded as a joke by serious reviewers.
Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews
I’ve briefly taken a look at some online reviews for budget Tekton speakers from ASR and Youtube. Both are based on Klippel quasi-anechoic measurements to achieve "in-room" simulations.
As an amateur speaker designer, and lover of graphs and data I have some thoughts. I mostly hope this helps the entire A’gon community get a little more perspective into how a speaker builder would think about the data.
Of course, I’ve only skimmed the data I’ve seen, I’m no expert, and have no eyes or ears on actual Tekton speakers. Please take this as purely an academic exercise based on limited and incomplete knowledge.
1. Speaker pricing.
One ASR review spends an amazing amount of time and effort analyzing the ~$800 US Tekton M-Lore. That price compares very favorably with a full Seas A26 kit from Madisound, around $1,700. I mean, not sure these inexpensive speakers deserve quite the nit-picking done here.
2. Measuring mid-woofers is hard.
The standard practice for analyzing speakers is called "quasi-anechoic." That is, we pretend to do so in a room free of reflections or boundaries. You do this with very close measurements (within 1/2") of the components, blended together. There are a couple of ways this can be incomplete though.
a - Midwoofers measure much worse this way than in a truly anechoic room. The 7" Scanspeak Revelators are good examples of this. The close mic response is deceptively bad but the 1m in-room measurements smooth out a lot of problems. If you took the close-mic measurements (as seen in the spec sheet) as correct you’d make the wrong crossover.
b - Baffle step - As popularized and researched by the late, great Jeff Bagby, the effects of the baffle on the output need to be included in any whole speaker/room simulation, which of course also means the speaker should have this built in when it is not a near-wall speaker. I don’t know enough about the Klippel simulation, but if this is not included you’ll get a bass-lite expereinced compared to real life. The effects of baffle compensation is to have more bass, but an overall lower sensitivity rating.
For both of those reasons, an actual in-room measurement is critical to assessing actual speaker behavior. We may not all have the same room, but this is a great way to see the actual mid-woofer response as well as the effects of any baffle step compensation.
Looking at the quasi anechoic measurements done by ASR and Erin it _seems_ that these speakers are not compensated, which may be OK if close-wall placement is expected.
In either event, you really want to see the actual in-room response, not just the simulated response before passing judgement. If I had to critique based strictly on the measurements and simulations, I’d 100% wonder if a better design wouldn’t be to trade sensitivity for more bass, and the in-room response would tell me that.
3. Crossover point and dispersion
One of the most important choices a speaker designer has is picking the -3 or -6 dB point for the high and low pass filters. A lot of things have to be balanced and traded off, including cost of crossover parts.
Both of the reviews, above, seem to imply a crossover point that is too high for a smooth transition from the woofer to the tweeters. No speaker can avoid rolling off the treble as you go off-axis, but the best at this do so very evenly. This gives the best off-axis performance and offers up great imaging and wide sweet spots. You’d think this was a budget speaker problem, but it is not. Look at reviews for B&W’s D series speakers, and many Focal models as examples of expensive, well received speakers that don’t excel at this.
Speakers which DO typically excel here include Revel and Magico. This is by no means a story that you should buy Revel because B&W sucks, at all. Buy what you like. I’m just pointing out that this limited dispersion problem is not at all unique to Tekton. And in fact many other Tekton speakers don’t suffer this particular set of challenges.
In the case of the M-Lore, the tweeter has really amazingly good dynamic range. If I was the designer I’d definitely want to ask if I could lower the crossover 1 kHz, which would give up a little power handling but improve the off-axis response. One big reason not to is crossover costs. I may have to add more parts to flatten the tweeter response well enough to extend it's useful range. In other words, a higher crossover point may hide tweeter deficiencies. Again, Tekton is NOT alone if they did this calculus.
I’ve probably made a lot of omissions here, but I hope this helps readers think about speaker performance and costs in a more complete manner. The listening tests always matter more than the measurements, so finding reviewers with trustworthy ears is really more important than taste-makers who let the tools, which may not be properly used, judge the experience.
- ...
- 1166 posts total
| Post removed |
I hear you but we have no way of knowing if what you say is a function of speaker or not. If you had measured your in-room response, we could comment. See more below.
This makes sense. Speaker's response plus your room are the main problems. Amplification has no prayer of compensating for those.
You brought up the measurements, claiming your speaker had done well. Clearly it has not. In addition, KR's subjective review directly contradicts your claim of bass dynamics: "If you've read this far, you know that I love the Pioneer S-1EX. It is a full-range speaker with great transparency, dynamic potency, and truly neutral tonality. " Now, I don't know if he is right. But he is saying the opposite of what you are saying, pointing precisely the issue with "listening tests" you all swear by. They are unreliable. Measurements however, are concrete and with skill can be interpreted to produce far better conclusions. |
Hi Andy. 😀
That's like asking me if there is a traffic counter that counts how many UFOs go by. First you have to show that there is such a thing as "sweet treble." If you mean rolled off treble, sure, the frequency response tests show that different filters have the ability to roll off high frequencies, making the sound softer which some people confuse with "analog sound" and I guess "sweet treble." Here is sample DAC measurement data on that: As you see, there are two filters that roll off starting as low as 12 kHz.
See the test for treble above. For bass, I do run sweeps down to 20 Hz and often problems are seen there, sadly in high-end DACs such as the aforementioned PS Audio DirectStream DAC
This one gets you coming and going with rising distortion at both ends of the spectrum! My listening tests confirmed the same with problem identified by the designer as cost cutting on the output transformer (in a $6000 DAC!!!). Here is another expensive DAC, the TotalDAC D1-six which retails for whopping $14,000:
See how it either accentuates or attenuates high treble depending on filter setting. We can see lack of fidelity in how it handles SMPTE IMD tests which has 60 Hz+7kHz components: Pretty sure this a "sour" treble instead of sweet. 😁 This is what its frequency sweep looks like:
|
- 1166 posts total