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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
amir_asr
777 posts
 

Because you "have been measuring" while Nelson and Viktor built tons of gear people love, buy and keep for years. For some reason I trust their engineering chops more than yours. Why is that?

Why do you trust anyone?  You are buying a product, not the person.  It is not like Nelson is going to come to your house with that amplifier.  He has built a product that competes with thousands of others.  He doesn't provide an ounce of reliable information as to why his amplifiers are better sounding.  He wants you to believe that they do and you do.  Countless fellow audiophiles are yours who read ASR want reliable information and measurements give that to them.  They also want to learn the underlying science and engineering which again, ASR provides.

In contrast, you seem to be wanting people to buy products just because of someone's reputation.  Which you are welcome to do but then don't ask me to tell you who you are.

Why are you even here?

You are in a thread that is specifically about ASR and how a company attempted to shut down my evaluation of their product and that of another reviewer.  Instead of commenting on that and defending the right of free press, some of you have drifted into misinformation and insults about me and work I do.  So once in a while I answer when I get a notification about this thread and me being mentioned. 

BTW, in your personal gear you list Levinson and not your "top measuring" gear. Why is that? How do they say at MSFT? Eat your own dogfood? Oh and what were great achievement of "Digital Media" at Microsoft? Like... none? Refusal to support lossless perhaps? Inability to even make a decent media player? 

On your first question, I bought a great system some 15 years ago before I started measuring anything.  The most important part of my system is Revel Salon 2 speakers.  When John Atkinson of Stereophile was asked which speaker he likes after hundreds he had tested, he said Revel Salon 2, mentioning that "he almost cried when he had to return them."

My DAC has since been upgraded from Mark Levinson to Topping.

The amplifiers remain Mark Levinson. They produce 500 watts into 8 ohm and nearly twice as much into 4 ohm.  I need the power to drive the rather insensitive Salon 2 and other speakers I test.  Had I not own them, I would not buy them however and instead, would get a Hypex based amplifier.

Finally, on Microsoft, products my team designed have shipped in billions of products and I don't just mean Windows.  Whenever you watch video and your bandwidth drops and so does the fidelity of the stream, that is technology we invented in the company we sold to Microsoft to adapt stream quality to bandwidth.  We were pioneers in streaming, for which, I was proud to receive the 3rd Emmy award for technologies developed in my team:

 

 

Any more off-topic comments you have that you want me to address?

mikhailark
297 posts
 

@amir_asr Off topic? Why, just checking your qualification and credentials. Did you mean destroying shareholder value along with other MSFT VPs until you finally got fired, oh, sorry "retired". Stock was only going down back then. But I am sure you were paid really well. But not engineers who actually did the work.

All while Nelson was making real gear. Not "measurements".

"Once it a while" according to time stamps means you jump back here as soon as someone mentions you. On Friday night LMAO.

 

audition__audio
1,504 posts
 

Amir it is time for you to exit this thread. With each post you dig your grave deeper with yet another nail placed in the coffin lid. You are not doing yourself any favors.

When I briefly checked your reviews very few high end companies actually send you their product to review. A bunch of mid-fi with customers sending you, apparently, the "higher end" stuff. 

At least on this site, your 15 minutes (being generous) is up. Your lack of understanding is pitiful.

 

alexatpos
1,218 posts
 

Personally, I have never been bothered by Amir's conclusions. We have exchanged few notes here, but after I read that he do not 'hear' ('believe' , 'measure' or else) difference between various different cables, I understood that any other conversation is pointless. On the other hand, I have many audiophile friends, who have very different 'standards' about hi fi than me. Should we all start 'fighting' with anyone who believes or does things in a way that differs from ours? I believe not.

So, instead of trying or pushing him (or anyone else of that matter) away from these pages, I guess the smart way would be to choose conversations where you can actually learn or share some information with people whose opinion you care about. The rest is just a waste of time and energy. He will not change his point of view and neither will anybody else who has a different one. Him, being pretentious a bit, should not be so annoying for anyone to loose good manners about it

Ag insider logo xs@2x
cleeds
5,970 posts
 
mikhailark

... you "have been measuring" while Nelson and Viktor built tons of gear people love, buy and keep for years ... Why are you even here? Are you yearning for attention and confirmation of your "achievements"?

He's a YouTuber who uses this site to promote his, just as numerous others have done here before him. They all rely on controversy and drama to whip up enthusiasm and if there's not enough excitement to generate the clicks they'll invent their own conflicts.

Another common YouTuber technique is to cloak oneself as a savior - a protector against a corrupt industry, snake oil, and unscrupulous dealers. Those that fail to embrace the savior are thus "afraid of the truth" or hopelessly deluded.

Those patterns are really obvious.

 

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