Thanks
terry9
For you simple on point and very clear post...And short post also...
I cannot say the same about all mine ... 😁
😊
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.
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@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. | |
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. 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.
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@prof No, I don’t think so. Single blind tends to not lie, and I’ve done enough of those.to convince me. And, of course, THD captured everything in distortion - until IM and TIM were discovered. Also, you might recall that observation informs hypothesis just as much as theory informs observation. It’s not heresy to question your assumptions - or your instruments. | |
You are so enthralled with your techno-cultist ideology that you dont even see my point... Sounds are acoustics meanings not bits. ( the set of bits only CONVEY acoustics meanings from a recording room to another listening room) The ears-brain is tuned to recognize concrete acoustics meanings..In speech and in my room listening music.. The numbers of factors implied is huge... You cannot predict with few electrical measurements what i will hear... You then call what i will hear "illusions" forgetting that the acoustics meanings perceived vary much with the training... You can fool someone blind about a bit of sound taken out of his usual acoustic environment and calling all human perceptions delusion if something is not measured BEFORE and AFTER...
But here it is you who put the sophism and put the cart before the horse... In acoustics we trust hearing and measure it to refine hearing aids for example. To do so we need to trust that musicians for example are able to detect really a piece of information that Fourier uncertainty principle will deem impossible to perceive... ( This trust is born not from a debunking circus of ASR but from real statistical studies to probe the limits of hearing and acousticians were astounded by our own ability) Then instead of suspecting any individual to be deluded, acousticians discovered the opposite of your ideological watchword guru selling point about ASR ideology : namely human hearing has his own non linear way to extract meaningful acoustic information in his own time domain ... Have you even read the article above ? it is not about astrology or ASR ideology and cultist tool debunking, by the way , but about pure science ... You are in a techno-cultist religion it seems... I prefer science... 😊 You make me smile because i remember you can have opinion about what you had never studied (astrology) ... To resume my acoustics opinion: i am not a subjectivist because i believe in acoustic training and measurements and i am not an objectivist because accusing people of being deluded if they dont put all their faith in few electrical measures, is not my business as ASR Amir... ( i dont do business i set my room😁 ) «I am always between you brothers because science exist between fields too »-- Groucho Marx christian epistemology 🤓 |
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