IMO you're going about it in a sensible manner, listening and measuring.
Speaker shootout question -- do you position the same or differently, depending?
If you're comparing two speakers at home, do you position each the same or do you position each as (roughly) optimal for that speaker in your room?
I'm comparing a tower and a bookshelf now, and their design is different. It would seem that the best way to compare would be to figure out what is optimal for each and then compare them in (likely) different positions.
What kind of process do you use for comparing two differently designed speakers?
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I have had the opportunity to hire and observe real sound engineers to work the acoustics in my rooms and I have learned a few things from them. It does not matter how good your ears are, mine a pretty good around19Hz and 21kHz in my last hearing test, if you just place your speakers by ear you are missing a lot. Your ear will take you 60-70% there depending how difficult your room is, but to do it right you need to use some application like REW and decent calibrated microphones to get past that 70%. Maybe some of you know how I am working and doing the work in the living room of my house in the USA, and I am nothing short of amazed of how easy is to use REW and a microphone and the results are not only audible but measurable. I would suggest the OP that he does 2-4 measurements after ear placement and @tk21 method, and gets each pair a fair and level opportunity, after all this is the time to decide which pair he will buy and live with. I know that what I am going to say is subjective, but using my ears and REW, the transformation of the sound was/is nothing short incredible. As an illustration, here is one of the measurements/parameters in my living-room "before/after" but still a lot of work to do. This system is all analog so there is so much I can do. Some here might argue that I can add more bass volume but at this point this is how I liked the sound best. The smoother the better. Have a lot of fun selecting your speakers! |
@snilf @snilf Good suggestions. I have a backup Adcom amp with A & B speaker sets. I could quick switch with those. Of course, the speakers would be coming through the Adcom rather than my tube amps, and couldn’t use my better speaker cables, but at least both speakers would have the same cables and the same power amp. @jjss49 @djones51 @jjss49 @djones51 Thanks for saying so. The back and forth between listening and measuring strikes some as over the top but this is exactly how many hobbyists do it, and of course speaker companies, too (such as Harman). It’s not just measuring but an iterative process. Paul McGowan talks about this all the time — design, measure, listen, design, measure, listen. These topics seem so simple to some (who have likely just done things the same way forever) but once the suggestions start coming in, it’s clear that the complexity of both acoustics and how people decide to test their own perception makes the experimental procedures involved quite varied, indeed.
This is so true. In fact, just playing with the height of my seating position the other day, I realized how much different the new speakers were with a 2" lower seating position -- a change which did not affect the older pair at all. Also +1 about the comment regarding the need for a "symmetrical space." While my room IS a rectangle with (somewhat different kinds of bookshelves on both sides), one is easily fooled into thinking that it is symmetrical. This is where REW is so helpful. Do a sweep with just left and just right and the differences are *immediately* apparent.
I totally agree — after positioning things in places they "sound good," I measure and adjust and then listen again. What the anti-measure people don’t realize is that when there are big dips in a curve, they could be missing even an octave of notes but because they brain tends to create a "gestalt" they don’t notice anything is missing, often. But once those dips are removed, one can perceive additional notes — manifesting, often, as voices or instruments playing those parts — and realize they were missing important parts of the music. Here’s the curve I achieved using REW *after* listening:
And here is the impulse graph, above -20db, where things start to get smeared. I went from a forest of reflections to a few scattered trees, and the definition on images throughout the soundstage got startlingly firm.
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@djones51 That’s a measurement of an Ascend Sierra Tower with RAAL tweeter along with 2 Rythmic subs and a REL 328 sub, in well treated room. The speaker measured much differently in a different position and without subs or treatment. Can you say what you don’t like about the graph? Here’s how it measured before subs and treatment (initial tone was 80 dB):
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