Tidal Speakers owners

Fiddler,

Are you trying to imply that measurements are not part of a speakermanufacturer's manufacturing process and that they rely on hearinng to find out if their speakers are neutral! How then would they know that all their production units of one model sound the same? By listening? Of course not! Measurements is the only tool to accurately understand why a speaker sounds the way it does or if its neutral.

Listening can reveal if the listener likes the way the speaker sounds. This has nothing to do with neutrality. Neutrality can only be proved by measurements.

Do you honesty think Atkinsons measurements in Stereophile are alll that can be measured on speakers? He is working for a magazine for the masses that are mostly interested in subjective listening descriptions. They wouldn't sell If they used mostly measurements in their magazine.

Measurements can not. og course tell you how something will sound overall, but it is the only accurate way to prove deviations from neutrality.

Fiddler,

There certainly are no deviations between what JA is hearing and his measurements. If that was so there would be something wrong with his hearing.

What you probably mean is that how he perceives the overall sound may not be what he expects after having measured one characteristic of the speaker.

One non-neutral character of the speaker can mask out another non-neutral character of the speaker, the rest of the system including the rooms non-neutral character can mask out non-neutralities in the speaker and non-neutralities in the recording can mask out non- neutralities in the speaker so that when listening the speaker sounds neutral. Still the speaker would not be neutral and the only way to find out would be by measurements.

Neutrality in this context by definition means nothing is added or subtracted from the signal inside the speaker. How can that be subjective as if something is added or subtracted to the signal inside tbhe sound is a matter of opinion. Either something is changed or its not. A fact can't be subjective and has to be measured to be proved.

If someone likes the sound is of course a matter of taste and highly subjective, but that has nothing to do with neutrality.

Roysen, I am incredulous at what you have said in the last two postings. I have known many speaker manufacturers over my time in audio. Measurements have not been a major consideration in any case that I know of. I once visited a major UK manufacturer and we listened to two prototypes. Both were identical in every regard, dimensions, drivers, crossover, construction, finish, wire and of course all electronics that we used in listening.

Before he could ask which I liked, I said that one sounded much better. He agreed. I said how could this be. He said they were made in different shops was the only difference. The better one went into production and has been very successful. I am sure each speaker is listened to at his shop as in others but not measured. I have not visited Tidal, so I don't know whether each is measured but I do know they are listened to.

If you mean by "non-neutral" poor sounding, I can agree with all you say. But measurements fail to capture much that is essential to "good sounding." Of course, frequency response, off axis response, phase, and efficiency are all elements of good design, and they can be easily measured in speakers. Manufacturers have little influence on what consumers hook to their speakers, and, as Geopolitis noted, can greatly influence what the speakers sound like, especially it seems the Tidal speakers.

Wow, not sure you could be any more wrong Tbg. You obviously know little about real speaker design. Here is what Jorn at Tidal said, ""It is 95% measurements and 5% hearing, with the step response being the most relevant measurement and then frequency response immediately following that."

See article here: http://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101&catid=55&Itemid=88

Holenneck, I never said I knew about Jorn. I see he adds "step response" to my list and then goes to frequency response. I know that he remains very concerned with the non-resonant cabinets. As I said apart from these easy to measure characteristics, speakers are designed by listening to them. I guess you could measure cabinet resonance this rather than feel it.

Jorn is not talking about some measure of neutrality, harmonic distortion, or quality "measures" of speakers.