Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

Petty BS, JA makes clear its a nearfield response and that's exactly what is shown. Your measurements show the anechoic response with baffle diffraction loss aka step. BOTH methods show only approximate output depth extension, NEITHER can predict the actual in room LF response, which will dominate.

Sorry, no.  JA's measurements assume you flush mount the speaker in an infinite wall.  No stand alone speaker is used that way. As such, his measurements overexaggerate the bass energy.  JA states the same: 

"The usual excess of upper-bass energy due to the nearfield measurement technique, which assumes that the radiators are mounted on a true infinite baffle, ie, one that extends indefinitely in both horizontal and vertical planes, is absent."

There is no way for you to predict where a speaker is located in a room as to provide any diffraction loss compensation.  This is why CEA/CTA-2034 standard calls for full anechoic response of bass, not a near field one with above stipulation.  And that is what I, Genelec, Neumann, PSB, Revel, etc. all do.

Once you put a speaker in a room, the response will radically change in bass.  For that reason, the job is not done when you get a well measuring speaker.  You need to measure and correct for response errors.  But you don't want to start with faulty measurements thinking a speaker designer didn't know how to design flat response and put that hump in there as seen in Stereophile measurements.

I hear you wanting the crude near-field measurement to be right as to then enable you to post them and say, "see, I have them."  But you don't since your speakers are not flush mounted on infinite walls.

BTW, Klippel NFS has capability to measure in-wall speakers with that assumption.  It will get rid of baffle diffraction and back wall reflections.  Here is an example with the speaker mounted in small baffle:

And here are the computational analysis of error components:

You can see how Klippel NFS I use has properly computed the radiation from back of the speaker ("acoustic shortcut") and subtracted it out because in real use you would not hear it.  Diffraction losses from the edges of my baffle are also found and subtracted.  The system is also self-checking allowing you observe its accuracy.

Bottom line, Klippel NFS is a $100,000 system designed to solve these problems and give you a true picture of the radiation pattern of a speaker independent of where or how it is measured.  

@mahgister 

The point on which i disgree with Amir is not his measures set usefulness,  is exclusively  about extending a set of measures as synonymous with sound perceived qualities because...

And you don't care, no matter how many times I have stated it, that the above is NOT my position.  :(

Measurements tell you if a system is deviating from perfection in the form of noise and distortion and neutral tonality.  This, we want to know because they are opposite of what high fidelity is about.  We want transparency to what is delivered on the recording.

When measurements show excess noise and distortion, that is that.  The system has those things and if they rise to point of audibility, you hear them.  Best to get a system that minimizes that so you don't have to become an expert in psychoacoustics to predict audibility.

Your argument needs to be that given two perfectly measuring system, one will sound better the other.  To which I say fine, show it in an ears only, controlled listening test.  Don't tell me what a designer thinks will happen.  Just show it with a listening test. 

You say the ears are the only thing that can judge musicality but when I ask you for such testing, you don't have one and instead you quote words for me or what is wrong with measurement.  We want evidence of the hypothesis you have.  Not repeated statement of the hypothesis.

BTW, if such a controlled test did materialize, it would be trivial to create a measurement to show the difference.  We will then know what it is that is observed.  When you don't have anything to show from what was tested, what music was used, what listeners observed reliably, etc. there is nothing there to analyze.

@mahgister your points are valid to state. I’m not as savvy on audio science. I admit that. I also admit that science is really important with audio gear. Just as it is with medicine and improving peoples vision for example. 

My analogy isn’t scientific but is based in fact. You cannot strip out the subjectivity of audio.

No one is trying to take out the subjectivity from audio.  The entire science of speaker and headphone testing relies on it extensively.  Problem with using the ear in evaluating things is that it can be difficult to do it properly.  So what to do?  Give up and let any and all anecdotes rule the world? No.  We research and find out what measurements correlate with listening results.  Once there we use the measurements because they are reliable, repeatable and not subject to bias.

If there is doubt about measurements, we always welcome listening tests.  We only ask that they be proper: levels matched and ears be the only senses uses.

Just like you can’t do it with food or anything to do with taste. You can’t measure taste. You can’t quantify it but it is there. 

Per above, many times we can quantify it.  The entire field of psychoacoustics is about that: *measuring* human hearing perception.  You just need to do properly as I keep saying it.  Food research is done that way with blind tests.  There are no controversies there.  But somehow audio is special.

Audiophiles hugely underestimate the impact of confounding elements in audio evaluation. Reminds of some research that was done in Wine tasting.  Tasters were given two identical wines but told one cost $10 and another $90.  Here is the outcome:

"For example, wine 2 was presented as the $90 wine (its actual retail price) and also as the $10 wine. When the subjects were told the wine cost $90 a bottle, they loved it; at $10 a bottle, not so much. In a follow-up experiment, the subjects again tasted all five wine samples, but without any price information; this time, they rated the cheapest wine as their most preferred."

See how strongly price comes into the equation here and how removing that aspect in a controlled test was the key to arriving at the truth of what tasted better?

They go on to say:

"Previous marketing studies have shown that it is possible to change people's reports of how good an experience is by changing their beliefs about the experience. For example, says Rangel, moviegoers will report liking a movie more when they hear beforehand how good it is. "Our study goes beyond that to show that the neural encoding of the quality of an experience is actually modulated by a variable such as price, which most people believe is correlated with experienced pleasantness," he says."

As you see, we are wired this way to pollute our observation with what we think in advance of such tests.  It reasons then that if we want to know the truth about audio performance, that all these other factors are eliminated.  Otherwise we would be judging the price, etc. and not the sound.

Of course without going to school for a day, marketing and engineers alike in audio have learned the above.  They know that all they have to do is have a good story and high price and sale is made.  No need for any stinking controlled test proving anything.  Just say it, folks get preconditioned, and you are done.

@amir_asr Then what do you say to @soundfield who pointed out your old post where you did not level match?

Sorry, no.  JA's measurements assume you flush mount the speaker in an infinite wall.  No stand alone speaker is used that way. As such, his measurements overexaggerate the bass energy.  JA states the same: "The usual excess of upper-bass energy due to the nearfield measurement technique, which assumes that the radiators are mounted on a true infinite baffle, ie, one that extends indefinitely in both horizontal and vertical planes, is absent."

Once again, JA makes it clear its a nearfield measurement without correction, it's up to the viewer to read his speaker measurements section. And you to read your own website where long time speaker designers explain.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-make-quasi-anechoic-speaker-measurements-spinoramas-with-rew-and-vituixcad.21860/#post-726171

There is no way for you to predict where a speaker is located in a room as to provide any diffraction loss compensation. 

That's because you don't know what baffle diffraction loss is, it's based purely on the size/shape of the baffle, relative to wavelengths, not "location in room".

And again, ultimately, correction/EQ  below transition must be made based IN ROOM, not anechoic. The nearfield and/or anechoic is of limited use other than to compare speaker vs speaker in terms of extension. EQ will be needed regardless of how measurement is presented.

JA's measurements are fine and often done in situ, unlike yours, Genelec, Neumann, PSB, Revel, etc.

He's not bringing an NFS to his reviewers home. His quasi-anechoic on/off axis >300hz or so and nearfield below, along with in room (mostly) are suffice. Claiming that he needs an NFS is petty. Voecks also did just fine for your Salon 2s without.

NFS is a great tool, but certainly not mandatory for knowledgeable designers.