New Joseph Audio Pulsar Graphene 2

JA is really good at measuring, which makes the fact that he can barely interpret his own measurements more than a little frustrating.


He likes speakers that sound like hearing aids, and he is not above making up shade. If he hears things others miss, it’s probably because he made it up.


Feel free to like or dislike the Pulsars as you see fit, but using JA's opinion as to sound quality is not something I'd ever recommend.

erik,

Then how do you explain that JA found the Perspectives to be on the bright, unforgiving side, and his later measurements (taken afterwards) supported what he perceived?

He correctly perceived what his measurements later showed. And he didn’t like the brightness.


Having auditioned the original Perspectives numerous times, and in my own room as well, I found JA’s review quite perceptive - he heard what I heard. I could find the Perspectives brighter and a bit more "scrunch down my ears" on material that don’t sound as bright on many other speakers. I also found the bass could be a bit "woofy" at the bottom.


Obviously that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t buy them, as I’m clearly enamored by the Perspectives. I think the way the Perspectives manage to sound so smooth and free of grain or etch allows them to have that rising top end without the usual costs of uncomfortable treble found in other speakers. So in most cases what you get is a superb sense of clarity, aliveness and detail retrieval, but sometimes that rising top end does show itself.

That’s one reason why I’m intrigued by comments by Mark and others that the speaker’s top end and midrange sounds even smoother and more refined in the new model. And with tighter bass. If Joseph Audio has managed to keep what I love about the Perspectives while addressing those concerns, that would be just the ticket. As JA was pretty much the only reviewer who reported exactly those characteristics, I’m glad he’s the one doing the follow up review.

I've found JA to be among the most perceptive, straight-shooting reviewers in the subjective reviewing trade.

Prof - If you like JA that’s fine. Follow him to the ends of the earth.


I find his descriptions curiously slanted towards B&W as his reference, and if it sounds like that it is good and if not, it’s bad, and they aren’t that neutral sounding, objectively or subjectively.


As for me, I don’t need JA to tell me what a good speaker is.


As my blog has shown, he likes a particular type of ragged treble, which to those of us who haven't lost much of our hearing, is a hearing aid. If your tweets match this odd signature, he’ll praise it, and otherwise pooh pooh it. JA is exactly why DIYers give High End audio such a bad wrap. He has crap taste, bad hearing and we’d never deliberately build anything he thinks is superb.


Essentially JA has lost his hearing and wants you to hear like he does, and for the most part he's accomplished it.

@erik_squires 

B&w are very flat speakers. Used in Abbey road as a reference point.

JA says 

There appears to be a slight excess of on-axis energy centered on 10kHz, but the response trend through the region covered by the midrange unit and tweeter is otherwise very flat.

 https://www.stereophile.com/content/bw-nautilus-801-loudspeaker-measurements-part-2

we’d never deliberately build anything he thinks is superb.

Have you read the kef blade review he did? They are very flat sounding speakers.

Essentially JA has lost his hearing and wants you to hear like he does, and for the most part he’s accomplished it.

You can’t possibly mean that the speakers I like has been decided by my reading what JA has written....can you?

I mean, it couldn’t be that I have heard the speakers in question, before JA did his review, and found he reported what I heard?

I liked the Perspectives more, it seems, than JA did. He raved much more about speakers that leave me cold. I also love the Devore speakers which JA would never want to own.

He has crap taste, bad hearing and we’d never deliberately build anything he thinks is superb.

Really? Atkinson has raved about the Revel Salon2 speakers, stating:

John Atkinson wrote: That the Salon2 can offer such resolution along with the ability to play at high levels with full-range low frequencies, and has a neutral, uncolored midrange, and offers superbly well-defined and stable stereo imaging, and has silky-smooth top octaves courtesy its beryllium-dome tweeter, and features sonic coherence from bottom to top of the audioband, makes it both a Class A speaker in Stereophile’s "Recommended Components" listing, and gave me no choice but to make it my "Editor’s Choice" for Stereophile’s 2008 Component of the Year. And enough of the magazine’s reviewers agreed with me that the Salon2 was also voted Joint Loudspeaker of 2008.

The Revel speakers certainly do not fit this standard B&W wonky frequency response profile you insist JA favors to the exclusion of more neutral speakers. Are you saying you DIYers would never build anything like the Revel speakers that JA found to be superb? That would say more about you guys, than JA ;-)


This is why, when I actually look at the breadth of Atkinson’s comments and reviews, I find that you need to cherry-pick your examples in order to support your thesis, ignoring instances (as you are again downplaying his Perspectives review) that don’t support your view of him.

Anyway, been through this before. That’s my last comment on that, back to the Joseph Audio discussion.