@amir_asr If solid state is so much better than antiquated tube gear then why are so many manufactures still using this old science? What say you ? Just curious!
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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I will give you the answer Bob Carver gave me. As you probably know, he built his career on solid state amplifiers. And even won a challenge organized by Stereophile by making his solid state amplifier sound like a tube amp chosen by stereophile editors. So naturally I was curious why he has been into tubes. His answer? There was too much competition in solid state space but much less so in tubes! And that tubes were more fun to design. Translation: nothing in there for an audiophile. Sadly, his tube amps leave a lot to be desired, advertising specs that it cannot meet despite its high cost:
As you can see here, it has 3rd order distortion, not the beloved 2nd order:
And tons of mains noise for added effect. Can’t deliver a flat response in audible band which solid state amps do in their sleep: Worst of all, they advertise 75 watts but the thing can’t go past 29 watts.
This is why we measure folks. To get solid information like this as a check on manufacturer claims. Back to your question, there is no doubt whatsoever that tubes are a marketing tool and differentiation as Bob said. You get underpowered, noisy and high distortion amplifiers and you pay a lot more for it, and have a ton of maintenance to go with it. Folks see the glowing filaments and confuse that with "warm sound." When I listen to these amps, they are anything but warm. Turn up the volume and they get muddy and routinely bright. Exactly as the measurements predict. See this measurement of the Carver:
Notice how it is blowing its brains out at 20 Hz. This is primitive technology. The fact that folks throw so much good money after bad over them, only works if you convince people to hate measurements and simple engineering explanation. The only plausible but random benefit would be that if the high impedance of the amplifier modifies the frequency response of the speaker in the way that makes it more pleasing. That is, two bads working together to make good. Again, this is a random coincident. Better get a proper speaker and drive it with a proper solid state amplifier and get the fidelity you want. If something doesn’t sound good then, it is in your content. |
Isn't it interesting Amir how you think audiophiles who look at glowing tubes in the dark are delusional, yet when you look at graphs, you continually convince yourself you are hearing all sorts of horrible distortion. I don't believe you even know what you're listening to most of the time assuming you even take the time to listen in the first place. |
Please don't make up stuff. I never said anyone is "delusional." Everyone is *human.* Humans use all of their senses and past experiences to arrive at a conclusion. As such, someone saying this and that sounds better when the science says otherwise, requires controlled testing that isolates the sound alone. Without it, all of us, me included, could provide totally unreliable and wrong information.
Could be but if you are worried about this, how come you are comfortable making conclusions in your sighted listening?
I am a professionally trained listener. I listen to music many hours a day. I perform a ton of controlled testing. Countless reviews I do include listening tests. Here is a recent review with listening tests: "ZMF Bokeh Headphone Listening Tests and Equalization
That quickly showed that without it, the sound was quite dull with essentially no spatial effects. There was just enough bass but I felt it could have more so put that shelf in there. And added a dip for the extra energy in upper bass. Now the bass was impressive. Note that I deviated from measurements in setting the 6 KHz lower as to avoid extra brightness. The equalizations I develop like above routinely get tested and verified by other users and many compliment on how much better their headphones/speakers sound because of them. I also teach how to become a trained listener as I post earlier.
Finally, you all have been tested formally and shown to be incredibly unreliable compared to trained listeners:
So if i were you, I would not bring up the topic of who knows how to listen and who doesn't. |
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