@dwcda the difference is you are still here, you didn't get you posting privileges taken away.
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.
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Madrona doesn't "sell" anything. We have no retail operation, nor online. And no showroom. D&M is a top AV brand and as such, have heavy requirements for demo gear, amount you sell per year, inventory, etc. before you can become a dealer. For this reason, almost all of their dealers are big box stores. Existing stores would also want their turf protected which makes it even harder to become such a dealer. As a result, most AV integrators will source products through a distributor. They mark it up so what you pay as your cost, will likely be higher than what a big box store puts them on sale! Translation: you have no prayer of competing for business against major dealers. For the handful of AV Receivers we install every year as part of much larger project, this is fine but if you are going to try to sell things, it is a losing proposition. If you go one step down to Yamaha for example, you can get that line and indeed Madrona is a "dealer" for them. After being asked repeatedly to test one of their AVRs, I bought one out of my pocket through Madrona. See this review of Yamaha RX-V6A: If you are not familiar with "panther rating," the above means it is mediocre and not recommended. That review starts this way: "This is a review and detailed measurements of the Yamaha RX-V6A "8K" Audio/Video Receiver (AVR). They only announced two such 8K AVRs and this is the upper model. Our company (Madrona Digital) is a dealer for Yamaha so I was able to purchase this at a discount for testing. Retail cost is US $600." Notice how the reader is put on full notice immediately on potential conflict of interest. Needless to say, after that lackluster review, I got stuck with the unit. No one was even interested in buying my discounted sample let alone more of them at normal price. Back to D&M, I have repeatedly given poor ratings to their products on the Marantz side. See this review of Marantz AV7705: $2,200 processor gets my "headless panther" indicating a broken design. Why? Because they took the Denon platform, screwed it up from usability and performance point of view, and sold it for more! This went on and on until last year where they finally decided to give the proper option for the filter and improved the performance of the HDAM buffers based on my feedback to the company. That then resulted in a great review:
So this is a great example of the impact ASR has had on the industry. Even major companies like this are paying attention and using measurements to improve performance of their products. To be clear, only one person has ever asked me to sell him an AV product. That was a Yamaha and when I gave him the price, I think he decided to buy it elsewhere and that was that. Did I tell you I hate the business of selling audio gear? I thought I did. |
You are wrong. I own high-end gear. I recommend high-end gear. Here is an example: Mola Mola Tambaqui USB DAC
Conclusions Nearly $12,000 streamer/DAC is recommended. What I don't recommend is high-end gear that takes massive steps backward in performance, attempting to please audiophiles who believe in myths. Here is the direct competitor to above, the PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC:
This is its distoriton+noise relative to frequency (in blue):
This is the Mola Mola (now in red):
PS Audio is selling you a noise and distortion generator. Mola Mola is selling you a state of the art DAC. Both are custom solutions. One designer (Bruno) knows what he is doing. The other, not. This is what measurements do. They bring clarity and cut through marketing claims and user random opinions. When they speak, they speak. Build me a $100,000 DAC that performs well and it too would get a recommendation from me if it looks gorgeous, performs great and has nice and easy functionality. You don't have an answer for these facts so resort to personal remarks and blame game. |
@markwd “The problem isn't that there are interesting experimental results, it's that they don't demonstrate that there is anything that can be done to audio equipment to implement better solutions to whatever gaps may be present.”
@markwd “Now, you can suggest that somehow listening on the part of the designer is allowing them to choose between design pathways but this is just speculation. It may be true, as I noted to @mahgister, but we don't know and neither does the designer.”
@markwd “So there is a certain faith built into all this speculation, just like god-of-the-gaps arguments in other online communities ("listening-in-the-gaps" arguments has a nice ring to it!). It's interesting but needs proof and a proper measurement methodology that shows a path forward for determining exactly how these phenomena impact equipment design and use.”
@markwd “Since you are a bit of a student of ideas in philosophy of science, one key one in contemporary thinking on the topic is lifted from Wittgenstein that we must remain silent on things we have no knowledge of and we have no knowledge of this.”
@markwd “Until we develop it sufficiently we do have an AP and spectral sweeps.” Yes, we might use analysers to help with room set up, but no, in fact, if the measurement of equipment is all that will be done for decisions - it is more correctly stated that until we are able to determine how to accurately measure frequency simultaneously with time, we have our more accurate ears to help us on this difficult but amazing and rewarding journey. We just need to apply ourselves to each develop our listening abilities.
@markwd “I'll just add one footnote to my previous post: we might actually be able to address the specific issues of heterodyning and nonlinear cochlea interactions in audio by using DSP to simply mute tones that interact in those areas of the hearing range. This would be like addressing a room mode but within the ear itself. Of course, we would be robbing the signal of its fidelity in so doing.”
@markwd “Still, in order to do this we could use experiments that first demonstrate it will improve human hearing. There is a great deal of literature on methods for overcoming hearing loss; there may be something in there concerning speech that points towards something useful for audio equipment design.”
In friendship ; ) - kevin |
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