Tidal Speakers owners

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.

You said, "Measurements have not been a major consideration in any case that I know of." The fact is that you must simply not know of any real speaker designers. They ALL measure. Read this to see how Revel and Vivid do it: http://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=228:high-performance-loudspeakers-how-theyre-designed&catid=62:monthly-column&Itemid=3

If you know of a single _credible_ speaker that is not designed using measurements first, then please name it. I'm sorry, but you just don't seem to know about which you speak.

Tbg,

You are talking about what was considered best of two speakers. That would of course be subjective and as such a matter of taste.

Neutrality is different. Its an objective fact. Either the speaker is neutral or its not regardless of someones opinion.

I never wrote that there exist one universal neutrality measurement. A set of measurements much more comprehensive than what JA is using will each one show deviations from neutrality on each character the measurements show.

Technology has moved on. Todays best speakermanufacturers like Tidal, Rockport Technologies, Magico, Wilson, Anat Technologies etc rely more heavily on measurements than the top companies of the past and mostly only huse listening evaluations for confirmation purposes. In fact one of the companies most respected for top sound and neutrality is Goldmund. They have made a press release that they only do listening evaluatios to confirm single compnent choice inside their products. Everything else is done by measurements.

Listening is too unteliable because its subjective and situation related.