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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
13,194 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.

 

 

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 🤓

prof
3,479 posts
 

@prof No, I don’t think so. Single blind tends to not lie,

I agree that properly done single blind tests CAN be informative.

 

and I’ve done enough of those.to convince me.

Ok.  That's fine.  But unless you produce results for others to analyze, you understand why one needn't take your claims on faith, right?

 

And, of course, THD captured everything in distortion - until IM and TIM were discovered.

Which doesn't remotely validate all the things audiophiles claim to hear...any more than the discovery that certain "traditional" medicines have some effect validates all the claims of traditional medicines.   Therefore, the mere fact someone perceives something doesn't entail "this is something true that one day we'll validate scientifically."

 

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.

Of course not.  But it has to be done in a coherent, cogent manner.

If you don't acknowledge that various bias effects influence our perception, then you aren't grappling with well known scientifically validated phenomena.

But if you DO acknowledge the variable of bias, then it makes sense to account for this in your method of investigating a claim.  Otherwise you are being irresponsible in your conclusions.   You can't just drop the bar to let your pet beliefs or perceptions step over.

 

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,194 posts
 

The perception of timbre is not a deluded perception of some subjective coloration or the extraction of a ratio from a pure Fourier map... It is the recognition of a physical set of invariants in the vibrating sound source or affecting it ... ( Pythagorean purely mathematical description of acoustic information as ratio is debunked by late science and the new ecological theory of acoustic)

A qualia it is was we detected...Something Galilee exclude from science 5 centuries ago because it is not easily reducible to the primary qualities..But science progress.. 😊

 

For the simplest example of a perceived physical invariant from the vibrating sound source : you tap a fruit to inform yourself if this vibrating source will communicate to you one of these two information by some physical invariant : is the fruit ripe or not ...

 

Then now suppose in an experiment where i put quartz piece on a cable...

And suppose that i put a shungite piece after on this cable in a second experiment ...

Is it possible that my Ears/brain could detect something affecting one of the vibrating sound source (the cables with or without the minerals on it ) ? 😋

 

As you can see i can propose one of the hundred of experiments i devised for myself ...

I can predict that the shungite will compress the sound and the quartz will not... 😊

Is it measurable? Probably but not by Amir tools...With your ears you could do it ...

 

 

terry9
2,353 posts
 

@prof 

Agree with everything you say in the immediately preceding post. If I wanted to write a scientific paper for publication, I would proceed differently. As it is, I am retired and interested in how my friends and I hear music, and design and fabricate accordingly. I’m willing to share, but not to go to Herculean lengths to convince. YMMV

mahgister's avatar
mahgister
13,194 posts
 

Some are not here to exhange about audio experience. But they are here to sell gear or worst their own ideology...

They cannot be convinced , they dont think , they used their tools. Period. 😊

 

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