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Nearly all manufacturers do not advertise/exhibit their product measurements? Why?

After my Audio Science Review review forum, it became apparent that nearly the only way one can determine the measurements of an audio product is wait for a review on line or in a publication.  Most equipment is never reviewed or is given a subjective analysis rather than a measurement oriented review.  One would think that manufacturers used tests and measurements to design and construct their products. 

Manufacturers routinely give the performance characteristics of their products as Specifications.  Those are not test measurements.

I searched the Revel speaker site for measurements of any of their speakers and could not find any.  Revels are universally lauded for their exceptional reviewed measurements.  Lack of published manufacturer measurements is true for nearly every speaker manufacturer I've searched for on line, perhaps several hundred.   Same is true for amps, pre-amps, DACs, transports, turntables, well you get the picture.  Do they have something to hide?   I doubt the good quality products have anything to hide but poor quality products do.  

ASR prides itself in providing "true" measurements that will aid in purchase decisions.   Why don't the manufacturers provide these measurements so that reviewers can test if they are truthful or not?

Then there are the cables and tweaks for which I suspect that there are inadequate tests available to measure sonically perceived differences but which objectivists believe don't exist or are "snake oil."  

Well, please chime in if you have some illuminating thoughts on the subject.   

I would have loved to see manufacturers measurements on my equipment and especially those that I rejected.  

fleschler
carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

@fleschler I don't often read the ASR trash. But other people quote it.  I heard ASR panned the EtherRegen switch and that put me over the top in my decision to buy it.  Great switch.  

They haven't banned you yet?

petg60
1,486 posts
 

@fleschler ​​​​​​,

Manufacturers can provide anything upon request to reviewers, that is normal for all industries, then reviewers can verify the supplied measurement, if having the same measurement tooling, and transfer findings regarding production consistency. For the public i am not sure that could be possible (you could always ask of course) and if so, would you be sure that said measurements correspond to the specific model you purchased or to the general one?

 

 

 

 

 

 

kota1
2,706 posts
 

If anyone has a contact with a manufacturer feel free to share this thread, maybe they can post?

Post removed 
mitch2
4,077 posts
 

Manufacturers (or, more accurately, designers) measure certain parameters of their gear as part of the design process, and then they listen and voice the product to achieve the final result. Selected measurements are used to develop the product specifications, which are summarized in the published manual. I suspect most manufacturers believe the product specifications provide sufficient information about the product performance so that buyers can make an informed purchase decision. If they believed it would help sell the product, then they would probably provide a full set of performance measurements. As you implied, there are exceptions such as Lamm that provided measurements of each amp and preamp they sold, and there are others. There are also designers/manufacturers who take pride in achieving certain performance measurements, such as Cees Ruijtenberg at Sonnet Digital Audio (formerly Metrum Acoustics) [linearity plot from Sonnet’s Pasithea DAC/preamp].

I suspect raw product measurements are sometimes massaged before they are documented in the published specification, and that every single measurement used in the design process does not always make it into the specification. However, when preparing the published specs, the manufacturers probably don’t stray too far from actuality in the event that John Atkinson, Amir, or another entity or publication decides to actually measure the piece and publish the results alongside the published specs. My Aerial LR5 speakers were measured by Thomas J. Norton, and the measurements were published in a review by Michael Fremer.

As examples of why specs may vary somewhat from the raw measurements:

  • Amplifier manufacturers like to show their amp’s power doubling when measured from 8 to 4 ohms, so they might take the power measurement at 4 ohms and divide the result by 2 to obtain the published power at 8 ohms, even though the actual power at 8 ohms may be greater than published,
  • a preamp’s output impedance measurement may be reported as the single value measured at 1K ohms, instead of the range of values from 20 to 20K ohms, because potential customers may realize the higher output impedance values that sometimes occur in the lower frequencies would cause a low bass roll-off when used with a power amp having a low’ish input impedance, and
  • speaker efficiencies and minimum impedances may be reported in a manner to maximize those performance parameters and thereby reduce the potential for lost sales to folks whose amplifiers are not powerful enough to drive low efficiencies or low impedances.

For an on-topic interview, Google "Why John Atkinson Believes Measurements Matter."

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