2. speakers
  3. 189477-20253

Some thoughts on ASR and the reviews

I’ve briefly taken a look at some online reviews for budget Tekton speakers from ASR and Youtube. Both are based on Klippel quasi-anechoic measurements to achieve "in-room" simulations.

As an amateur speaker designer, and lover of graphs and data I have some thoughts. I mostly hope this helps the entire A’gon community get a little more perspective into how a speaker builder would think about the data.

Of course, I’ve only skimmed the data I’ve seen, I’m no expert, and have no eyes or ears on actual Tekton speakers. Please take this as purely an academic exercise based on limited and incomplete knowledge.

1. Speaker pricing.

One ASR review spends an amazing amount of time and effort analyzing the ~$800 US Tekton M-Lore. That price compares very favorably with a full Seas A26 kit from Madisound, around $1,700. I mean, not sure these inexpensive speakers deserve quite the nit-picking done here.

2. Measuring mid-woofers is hard.

The standard practice for analyzing speakers is called "quasi-anechoic." That is, we pretend to do so in a room free of reflections or boundaries. You do this with very close measurements (within 1/2") of the components, blended together. There are a couple of ways this can be incomplete though.

a - Midwoofers measure much worse this way than in a truly anechoic room. The 7" Scanspeak Revelators are good examples of this. The close mic response is deceptively bad but the 1m in-room measurements smooth out a lot of problems. If you took the close-mic measurements (as seen in the spec sheet) as correct you’d make the wrong crossover.

b - Baffle step - As popularized and researched by the late, great Jeff Bagby, the effects of the baffle on the output need to be included in any whole speaker/room simulation, which of course also means the speaker should have this built in when it is not a near-wall speaker. I don’t know enough about the Klippel simulation, but if this is not included you’ll get a bass-lite expereinced compared to real life. The effects of baffle compensation is to have more bass, but an overall lower sensitivity rating.

For both of those reasons, an actual in-room measurement is critical to assessing actual speaker behavior. We may not all have the same room, but this is a great way to see the actual mid-woofer response as well as the effects of any baffle step compensation.

Looking at the quasi anechoic measurements done by ASR and Erin it _seems_ that these speakers are not compensated, which may be OK if close-wall placement is expected.

In either event, you really want to see the actual in-room response, not just the simulated response before passing judgement. If I had to critique based strictly on the measurements and simulations, I’d 100% wonder if a better design wouldn’t be to trade sensitivity for more bass, and the in-room response would tell me that.

3. Crossover point and dispersion

One of the most important choices a speaker designer has is picking the -3 or -6 dB point for the high and low pass filters. A lot of things have to be balanced and traded off, including cost of crossover parts.

Both of the reviews, above, seem to imply a crossover point that is too high for a smooth transition from the woofer to the tweeters. No speaker can avoid rolling off the treble as you go off-axis, but the best at this do so very evenly. This gives the best off-axis performance and offers up great imaging and wide sweet spots. You’d think this was a budget speaker problem, but it is not. Look at reviews for B&W’s D series speakers, and many Focal models as examples of expensive, well received speakers that don’t excel at this.

Speakers which DO typically excel here include Revel and Magico. This is by no means a story that you should buy Revel because B&W sucks, at all. Buy what you like. I’m just pointing out that this limited dispersion problem is not at all unique to Tekton. And in fact many other Tekton speakers don’t suffer this particular set of challenges.

In the case of the M-Lore, the tweeter has really amazingly good dynamic range. If I was the designer I’d definitely want to ask if I could lower the crossover 1 kHz, which would give up a little power handling but improve the off-axis response.  One big reason not to is crossover costs.  I may have to add more parts to flatten the tweeter response well enough to extend it's useful range.  In other words, a higher crossover point may hide tweeter deficiencies.  Again, Tekton is NOT alone if they did this calculus.

I’ve probably made a lot of omissions here, but I hope this helps readers think about speaker performance and costs in a more complete manner. The listening tests always matter more than the measurements, so finding reviewers with trustworthy ears is really more important than taste-makers who let the tools, which may not be properly used, judge the experience.

erik_squires
mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,183 posts
 

Amir actually believes that all things coming out of your stereo can be measured and even subtle differences will show up in testing.

Why wouldn’t that be the case?

Remember why we usually create tools, especially measuring tools? Because of the limitations of our own senses! That’s why we build telescopes to see things we can’t with our naked eye, microscopes because our vision is limited in acuity, and we have all manner of instruments that can detect differences we ourselves can not. That goes for measuring audio gear with devices that can detect "subtle changes" in the signal that our ears can not detect. And we know enough about human hearing to look at measurements of amps, or speakers, and note which ACTUAL sonic phenomenon our ears are sensitive to or not.

All this suggests that of course measurements are a good tool for detecting "subtle differences."

 

You are so wrong here ... ( i dont deny the informative value of measurements here but the ideology and ignorance that is implied by what you claimed dogmatically)

But i had already a discussion for 7 days here with Amir and he did not understood anything...😁 And i used physicists and acoustician articles...

 

In a nutshell hearing theories actually pointed toward ecological theory of perception...

Why ?

Because bits are not meanings for a consciousness... And perceived sound experience is not identical with a Fourier map in the Fourier linear time domain.. The ears/brain create his own meanings in his own non linear time domain...

Read about acoustics and replace your electrical techno-cultism tool fetichism with real science ...

read at least this article :

https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html#:~:text=%28Phys.org%29%E2%80%94For%20the%20first%20time%2C%20physicists%20have%20found%20that,the%20limit%20imposed%20by%20the%20Fourier%20uncertainty%20principle.

 

There is actually a revolution in acoustics science ..

Go to the thread of Bolong "sound is a mystic experience " where i posted in the last few pages all articles describing this acoustic revolution and his meanings ...

😊

No one commented anything there save two idiots trolling me ...

Am i the only one interested by real science ?

Most confuse tools user manual with science ...it is the actual new techno cultic religion...promoted by corporate powers over Nations... Read about Blackrock total control of money flows by the way and you will understand why Trudeau and Biden or Trump are toys in higher hands ...

Myself contrary to subjectivist or objectivist sellers of gear i invite people to read science and experiment ... 😎

 

By the way it is evident that it is impossible to take into account  all variables parameters at play in the system/room/ears-brain-body experience of sound , they are electrical (electrical grid noise floor  of the house system room etc) Mechanical (resonances vibrations) acoustical and psychoacoustical... Then to analyse the S.Q. of a piece of gear few electrical measurements are not enough at all ...

The ideological claim that a few measures of a certain types are enough is only that : a seller ideology... Amir sell something ...

Science is way more complex...

terry9
2,348 posts
 

Why wouldn't that be the case?

It's analogous to 'sufficient statistic'. A sufficient statistic is a number, or vector, or tensor, which is adequate to perfectly describe a probability distribution. For example, the vector (mean, variance) is sufficient to perfectly describe a normal distribution, therefore, if a sample is taken from a normal distribution, only the mean and variance need to be considered.

In matters of science it's more complex, because not all aspects of reality are known. Physics is the study of what is easy - things like acceleration in response to a field of force, like gravity. Even this is so complex that, four centuries after Galileo, we are still devising new instruments to point at the stars,

But psychology is hard. So the measurements are crude and insufficient. Which is why an empiricist should listen first and devise measuring tools second, not the other way around. IMO

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,183 posts
 

Thanks

terry9

For you simple on point and very clear post...And short post also...

I cannot say the same about all  mine ... 😁

😊

terry9
2,348 posts
 

@prof A real world example might help. I use Bryston amps for woofers and subs, because I can’t make better for low frequency. Brystons from the early 1980’s measure almost as well as the SST3 series, 4 generations later..

But the sound !!! My new 7BSST3 momoblocks sound clearly better than the 4BSST which they replaced, and the 4BSST was no contest better than the 3B it replaced. Measurements of THD and IM simply don’t capture everything - how could they, when you can hear a clear difference between polypropylene caps and styrene caps in an RIAA circuit, or nude Vishay resistors from anything else in a gain circuit, when you use a breakout box?

We have a hobby in which subtlety plays a major role, and the measuring technology is far behind the state of the art. IMO.

prof
3,474 posts
 

@mahgister 

 

You miss the point.  Everything you wrote is moot unless it is the case, for any example, that we really are able to detect a sonic difference.  The most reliable method of doing this is listening tests controlling for biases.  And we have learned a lot about thresholds in human hearing.  There are measurable levels of differences and distortions that you will not detect, just as you will not detect with your senses X-rays.

@terry9 

See above.

In scientific terms you are putting the cart before the horse: assuming your sighted impressions to have delivered The Truth, and then inferring from that, well if it's not showing up in measurements then it's the measurements that are inaccurate or incomplete...rather than the possibility it is your perception that is inaccurate.

 

More to discover