I think most of the asr guys live in their grandmas basement and can only afford the “perfectly” measuring 100 buck topping dac so it’s better and anyone who wants more is a Moron.
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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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. |
We don't think anyone is a moron. We think they are uninformed about how their hearing really works and trust things that are not real and can be trivially shown to be the case. Instead of listening to people who know this topic well, they walk around with fingers in the ear and brag about it too. Fortunately, huge number of audiophiles have enough common sense to see the value of measurements, and proper analysis of audio gear rather than believing in folklore you can't prove. This is why ASR has over 2 million visitors a month, dwarfing traditional rags such as stereophile:
That aside, you have no idea what you are talking about. My own system costs $100,000. Just this week I tested a $12,000 processor from a member: |
amir_asraudiophiles have clung to tubes, hypnotized by the glowing filaments, convincing themselves that they are hearing better fidelity. Delusional definition - Characterized by or holding false beliefs or judgements. A delusional person believes things that couldn’t possibly be true. So, I see you have a trained listener such as yourself at 100% on your chart and audio reviewers somewhere down at 20%. Let’s also consider that there are millions of audiophiles throughout the world who enjoy the fidelity of tubes, myself included, but they must all be hypnotized by glowing filaments. Let’s also not forget that you’re a trained listener. So, you take a VTA ST70 and you plug in a pair inefficient Infinity speakers and complain to your audience that you’re hearing floppy bass. Oh I forgot, it’s not your responsibility to pair gear properly and let’s not forget those three Emmys as well. Amir, I must say, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so self righteous yourself. You’ve definitely earned another Emmy for that. No doubt your BS-meter is at redline. There are many other forums who don’t like your particular methods either. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disregarding measurements altogether and I’m certainly not against all of them. I just think you need to seek some help for yourself.
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Emmys for what? Look at how he gets his equipment and also the type of equipment he reviews. He is out of his element when he discusses the high-end. Funny how he continually discusses his qualifications but no one in this industry takes him seriously and they usually dont know him. "Oh yeah that Audio Science guy" is about the best you will get. I love the "trained listener" graph. |
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