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

I am pretty sure nobody in this thread "disregard any scientific approach to audio" and all agree that measurements are only a part of evaluation of audio equipment. It is being pointed out that science falls short in full explanation of human perception of sound. You must have missed it.

Pancreas cancer is "curable disease", just like common cold right? Really?

jasonbourne71, an ASR minion, chimes in with typical ASR minion snark.

deep_333 stated changes were/were not made that he could not see. Being able to see the TAD speakers is irrelevant to evaluating whether changes behind the curtain not visible made any audible difference. The ASR minions always find fault with any test, knowledge, experience, or enjoyment of audio that does not fit the ASR mold.

Anybody involved in the audio hobby in recent years very likely is well aware of ASR. Measurements have their place. However, there is no reason for the Audiogon Forum to provide free advertising space so Amir can cut and paste his charts, graphs and promotion of said material ad nauseum. Providing links is more than sufficient for ANY person leaving a post.

And it that quick moment of ASR advertising, captain feral copied and pasted a measurement on some TAD floorstander, it appears... Funny thing is...i was sitting in a building that belonged to a rival of pioneer/tad ( Pioneer, Yamaha, Technics, Den/Marantz..etc they are all considered to be fierce rivals over there). The monitors just happened to an older tad pro kit that this guy may have never heard of....

It was interesting...their "sound master" (poor translation indeed) picked 2 tracks of the 7 or 8 recorded tracks i had. He wouldn’t tell me why he picked those specific tracks (guy played all kinds of instruments). They were gracious enough though to let me use my own tracks that i’d recorded on my own instrument. They looped it and i just took notes with time stamps for a couple of hours. The guys had a whole work bench behind a curtain with all kinds of circuits (legacy, new sht whatever). Later on, they were explaining to me what correlated to changes made on their end (with their timestamps) against the notes i took down at different timestamps (with no visual)...plenty enough repeats in there..

Technics, Yamaha, etc would keep guys on their top end payroll (high job security n all) for decades if it was all baloney according to the clown and his minions with a AP kit....right? mmhmm...yep.

And yes, he wants a video (as if i owe him something)...i would want his hiney planted in my house...so i can telecast this clown to the world, show the difference in "listening skills"/ ability to pass blind tests (whoop di doo), etc between 1 hobbyist musician, 2 other pro musicians and 1 guy with genetically challenged ears who took a listening test on harman’s website for an hour (a self proclaimed sound master). He can hear an instrument in his 1 hour of harman website training better than 3 guys who may have collectively spent more than a 100 years in effort on their respective instruments apparently! We’ll find out.

It will be a few hours of 3 of guys laughing away passing blind tests as the minion leader sinks into an abyss. That would be time well spent, but, guess what? If you post such a video on ASR showcasing what a fool he is, he’ll take it down quickly and ban the guy who posted it.

 

knock1

I am pretty sure nobody in this thread "disregard any scientific approach to audio" and all agree that measurements are only a part of evaluation of audio equipment. It is being pointed out that science falls short in full explanation of human perception of sound. You must have missed it.

That is typical of ASR strawman ill logic, and often presented with a self-righteous passive-agressive sneer. In this instance:

8th-note

Fortunately our audio hobby is not life or death but I hope that the anti-science folks don’t carry that bias into more important parts of their lives.

He is so-oooo concerned for our health and well-being! Isn’t that lovely? It’s a whole new level of virtue signalling.

ASR itself is toxic and it attracts toxicity. I ignore ’em.

 

And yes, he wants a video (as if i owe him something)...

You don't owe me anything.  That request was meant to help you prove your case.  Otherwise, we can dismiss it as another grandiose claim to hear someone flushing their toilet in the next country.  And claim so while violating basics of how to do a controlled test.