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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.

erik_squires
ricevs
1,543 posts
 

Amir would never submit himself to listening tests in a room of serious tweakos. No way. If they were A/B ing various things and he said he heard no difference then they would all go on the forums and tell everyone that Amir cannot hear. If Amir heard all the differences that everyone else heard and admitted it to them then he would have to go on to his forum and tell everyone that he was wrong all those years. Either scenario would blow his ego to pieces. Therefore he will NEVER EVER let himself be in such a situation. (The last statement is false because he will eventually let go of this false belief....but probably not this lifetime). His ego (false identification) would be creamed....forever.

This whole dance of life is for the soul to grow from false identification to knowing that we are the pure infinite love and joy of existence (our true identity....forever and ever).

On one hand we have Amir defending his position with charts and quotes.....and on the other hand we have Mahgister defending his position with saying the same thing (almost incomprehensible) over and over and asking us to read others thoughts which prove his side of the story. The soul needs no defense. We are....and always will be magnficient. We are already worthy. We don’t need to prove it.

The simple truth is........you need to listen to something to know how it sounds......plain and simple. All other thoughts and actions and posts are noise (distorted truth). You need to feel love and joy to know how it feels...what it is. So, you can all continue making ego noise or enjoy a beautiful song on your stereo and tweak your stereo to make it sound even more beautiful and give you bigger goosebumps. What do you choose?.....to be right or have goosebumps?

Today I am ordering a LifePo4 battery and charger for the Giandel inverter that got shipped yesterday, to make my stereo sound better. Also, will be doubling up my speaker wire to my woofers this weekend and trying a tiny capacitor bypass cap across the inductor on my woofs. After that, I want to order two of those super low impedance toroidal inductors from Jantzen and see what they "sound" like. I WANT BIGGER GOOSEBUMPS. What do you want? What does your soul want? What does your ego want? Which will you follow?

I want you all to feel the infinite love and joy that exists......RIGHT NOW......This is who you are.....and have always been. It is not the two hands beating on each other......it is the two hands in prayer.......the oneness of our being. Blessings.

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,987 posts
 

and on the other hand we have Mahgister defending his position with saying the same thing (almost incomprehensible)

if you do not understand this simple article at the end of my post as the first of 5 explaining how human hearing cannot be reduced to few electrical specs measure of gear ask me a question instead of accusing me to be incomprehensible ...I will answer WITHOUT insinuation as you just did..

Do you think your love mantra just after insulting insinuation toward me instead of question express good faith ?😊

Instead of insinuating about Amir why not proposing real science as i did to demolish his fragile ideology ?

I myself design also like you my own tweaks but it is useless to speak about that to Amir or his zealots...

only science can talk... Psychoacoustics ... Period...

 

 

 

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html

erik_squires OP
16,037 posts
 

I’m going to go out on a limb and assert @erik_squires loves to push buttons.


A scandalous accusation!! I'm shocked, SHOCKED to see anyone post such a thing.  I barely even post here.

ricevs
1,543 posts
 

Most Wonderful Mahgister,

I am sure you are correct about what it says. You KNOW that listening rules. Your heart is beautiful.

However, the way you write and how much you write makes most of us just skip over your posts. You ever notice that practically no one says they read your articles or really replies to what you say? It is like you are just talking over and over again to yourself. Of course, we are always just talking to ourself. I try to listen and take to heart everything I say and post and think and feel and do. We don't need to read articles to know how to listen.  We listen and know.  We don't need to prove to anyone that listening rules.  We listen and know.  Do I really need to read an article that defends my listening experience?  It needs no defense....you listen and know.                            You do not listen....you do not know.

We are all a projection machine.......we see nothing but our own desires. We create....moment to moment our reality by the quality of our thoughts, words spoken, feelings felt and actions done. Whatever we put out.....becomes our reality. So, be careful what you think and say and feel and do. You are powerful....infinitely so. Think good thoughts. speak beautiful words....feel beautiful feelings and be of loving service.......be a do gooder. We all win when you do.

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
12,987 posts
 

here another article that can help anybody to understand how our ears/brain work in their own time domain , then Amir measuring ideology crumble to dust because he equate electrical specs measured in Fourier linear domain with truth for human hearing and it is not:

 

Minimal Bounds on Nonlinearity in Auditory Processing
Jacob N. Oppenheim1, Pavel Isakov1, Marcelo O. Magnasco1

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.0513

«Time-reversal symmetry breaking is a key feature of nearly all natural sounds, caused by the physics of sound production. While attention has been paid to the response of the auditory system to “natural stimuli,” very few psychophysical tests have been performed. We conduct psychophysical measurements of time-frequency acuity for both “natural” notes (sharp attack, long decay) and time-reversed ones. Our results demonstrate significantly greater precision, arising from enhanced temporal acuity, for such “natural” sounds over both their time-reversed versions and theoretically optimal gaussian pulses, without a corresponding decrease in frequency acuity. These data rule out models of auditory processing that obey a modified “uncertainty principle” between temporal and frequency acuity and suggest the existence of statistical priors for naturalistic stimuli, in the form of sharp-attack, long-decay notes. We are addition ally able to calculate a minimal theoretical bound on the order of the nonlinearity present in auditory
processing. »

 

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