Why pay $5000+ for speakers? - Page 4

Nuance, what you are missing is this. It's not that uncontrolled directional designs don't sound good. The opposite. Many do. The problem is when you place them in rooms. Real rooms, like your living room. You will get a far greater degree of variability than the controlled response designs. That's precisely what Toole et al found. Much greater consistency of "good sound" perception, room after room, with uniform directional characteristics. Less variability.
You mention shows. Read the comments on my type of speaker in mid to shoe box size rooms. Do you see remarkable consistency or variability of perception? Now contrast that to say a cool shaped gorgeous wood finish standmount designed by a weatherman, with all the visual cues to arouse the RAALtarboys. Sounds spanking great in that huge room there. Oh but wait, what happened here to mess up the sound in this smaller room?? Where did the magic go? Was it the amp? DAC? Cables? Burn in? "Synergy"?? No wait, it was the room! That SOB crappy room ruined it. Or was it? Same sized or even smaller/worse room...yet I sailed through unscathed. Coincidence? Luck? Hmmm.
Come up to Capfest and see if my luck hold up. Uniform polar field and 97db will be the lower sensitivity design.
If the sound sucks I'll blame the wires.

cheers,

AJ

p.s love Rutgars pics of those huge pretty speakers....and that stuff stuck on the walls (no comment on those lifter thingies)

Ha - same stuff, different day with you, DS-21. You provided one reference (a Wilson speaker), but that hardly proves all other speakers will have poor off-axis response. The Philharmonic and Salk speakers come to mind, as they have very good off-axis response. The latter are the speakers you failed to search for measurements on over at Audioholics, thus your statement below is simply wrong. You've done a fine job at missing the mark lately.




Oh, I don't disagree with any of that sir. He stated that a non-controlled directivity design flat out won't measure well or sound good, so that's where my argument lies. He's simply wrong, and pushing his opinions as facts. I understand that a the room will effect a non-controlled design more than a controlled response design. I've read Toole's book and white papers, and also Geddes' philosophy - all good stuff.

I'd still like to hear your speakers, but I cannot make Capitol Audio Fest.

I've been looking at the Legacy line a lot lately. They've got some impressive looking speakers. I just wish there was a dealer closer to me. The closest one is 4-5 hours away.

I have always found the notion of 'you get what you pay for' to be quite amusing as there is no 1-1 mapping between cost and value. Expensive doesnt always mean better, and there is more to pricing than the quality fo the product. A more accurate phrase would be that 'you have to pay for what you want to get'.

Even the idea of diminishing returns is vague, as it depends on a valuation of the return. Theoretically, if we assume that all speakers are priced at true cost, then there should exist for every user a point where the increased cost is not justified by the perceived increased value, but there is no law that says the point must be same for everyone, and if we introduce real world pricing, then all bets are off.

and therein lies the crux of the issue -'perceived value'. The way we process and appreciate sound is highly subjective. If someone, for whatever reason , enjoys listening to a particular setup (speakers, amps, music etc combo) more than another, and is willing to pay more for that experience, why should another try to deny him of it. Even if his perceived values are influenced by non-auditory sources or even placebo effect, is he not entitled to his own? Even if he cant distinguish them in a blind test, that he would not in reality listen to them 'blindly' (i.e.he would have bought them and be aware of what he bought), is he not entitled to his perception? Most times, I think people are simply trying to impose their perceived values on others, while in my opinion, there may be popular trends and opinions, but at the end, each should be entitled to his own.

The only objective measure would be accuracy of reproduction, which I believe is measurable to a good extent, but that does not equate to a perceived pleasantness. Different people my enjoy different levels and forms of inaccuracy to different extents, and none should claim his/her perception is superior to another. This is true with regards to things whose evaluation depend on subjective human perceptions like hearing or tasting.

I personally dont see myself spending up to $5k on speakers, simply because my perception of the value of good audio is well below that. I would rather spend the money on other stuff that have more perceived value to me.

It won't, unless the room is specifically band-aided to cure the flaws in the loudspeaker. I'm pretty I wrote that earlier up in this thread, too. But you persist in intellectually dishonest mischaracterizations of my words.

Believe what you want - you aren't worth the time.

As I wrote above, I always use the most recent speaker listed on Stereophile's website to prove my point about the mushroom cloud midrange inherent in the large mid + tweet on a 180deg baffle. Why? Because the specific model of speaker may change, but the physics behind them does not. And just going to Stereophile's website and pulling the first speaker review is easier than searching for a previous speaker review, as well as more current. (Why use a review from 2004 to prove a point when a review from 2012 will do so?)

Do you think the Wilson is materially different in its radiation pattern from any other 7" 2-way with a flush-mounted tweeter? Such as, for instance, the Usher Tiny Dancers I ranked dead last by a large margin in a blind test between it and four other speakers with much more consistent midrange patterns (KEF HTS3005SE, Zaph ZBM4, Tannoy Arena, Behringer B2031P)? Here, for reference, is the horizontal off-axis plot of those bad-sounding-to-me speakers:



If so, how? What would make one of them not perform just like the Wilson and the Usher in this aspect, except the obvious (a properly-sized waveguide on the tweeter)?


They don't measure well. That is simply fact. See Wilson Duette and Usher Tiny Dancer, supra.

You see, horizontal off-axis response is a measurement. One that, in my years of listening to speakers, has better correlated with my perception of the speaker's sound better than any other.* By definition of being non-constant-directivity in the midrange, such speakers have off-axis midrange response that differs significantly in timbre from the on-axis response. The off-axis response has a lot more midrange energy, because of the simple physics that I mention and JA noted in his comments on the Wilson speaker: "This is the result of the relatively large woofer's radiation pattern narrowing at the top of its passband, contrasting with the wider dispersion of the tweeter at the bottom of its passband."

Physics, not magic. Objective, not subjective. Though what that excess of midrange energy thrown into the room does to the sound of music in a system is, obviously, subjective.

Furthermore, keep in mind that "omnidirectional" and "hemispheric" are both subsets of controlled midrange directivity. In the midrange, it seems "hemispheric" the direction that Philharmonic Audio goes.

*The one exception of which I can think is the Acapella Violon 2000. The midrange (IIRC, a big horn fed by a Dynaudio dome midrange) sounded excellent, as did the treble, but the bass was badly mistuned (very peaky, a lot like the Wilson Puppy) and that soured me on the speaker. I surmised at the time to get the efficiency of the bass unit up to that of the midrange. I understand that subsequent iterations of this speaker have moved from a vented box to closed box, and IIRC doubled the number of woofers, but I've not heard them.

But the frequency response of reflected paths is likely not flat, and thus is it not a jump to say that the response at the listening position will be definitively better in one case than the other? Also is that not one of the reasons for room calibration and that the eventual experience could be better even if the off axis measurements are bad?

FWIW, the Keele CBT is pretty different from most line arrays in how it uses power-tapering to maintain a constant vertical pattern.

Siegfried Linkwitz's site hosts an interesting presentation Mr. Keele gave in Boston on his CBT design here.

Now, like any other line array composed of 3" woofers and close-by horizontal 1" tweeters, it will have very broad horizontal dispersion. But because the spacing is so small and the crossover fairly low, the effects will be minimal.

That's one speaker I'd like to hear, though. And as someone who just put in an offer on a loft with concrete floors and a metal ceiling, it's something of suddenly much increased interest to me!

No, your brain knows it's in a room and that the reflections will be HF attenuated and/or modified. You are being fed sensory input beyond your ears. If your mother spoke to you across an empty room you would still instantly recognize her voice. Adaptation is part of our sensory perceptual evolution (unless you are an audiophile or even worse, "studiophile" knuckle dragging type).


The power correction can ease the pain much like aspirin given to a cancer patient. The superficial symptoms are being addressed (making the sound "less worse") but the root cause remains.

cheers,

AJ

Dont see how this addresses the point I was raising. As recognizing your mother's voice has little to do with if you think she has a sweet voice.

The response at a listening position is a sum of multiple paths. The contribution of a path depends source excitation that excited that path (if we assume linearity) summed with response of the path itself. If the response of the path is not flat or even known, it is a jump to judge the quality of the received signal based on the excitation alone (which is waht DS-21 seems to be doing)?


Again I dont see the validity of the analogy.

Is the overall response not what matters? There are no superficial symptom suppression involved. If after equalization, the system sounds good, how does that become a temp solution. It should continue sounding good until the environment is perturbed.

That's ok.


Expected after the above and still ok.


Ear/brain sees/processes it differently than the tip of a microphone.


Yes there is. The EQ can only spatially adjust total radiated power. It cannot address individual axes, but your brain (hopefully) is assessing both the direct an reverberant contributions in the sum total, very much unlike the microphone. Whether you understand this or not is irrelevant.


It's not a temp solution. It's yet another example of "well if it sounds good to me...". What is being discussed, is what was determined scientifically across population samples, not yet another uncontrolled anecdote by audiophile X.
If whatever, "sounds good" to you, enjoy it. That was not what was being discussed.

cheers,

AJ

Not sure if it is relevant but I was asked what music I listen to. Well the list is diverse. Led Zep, ZZ Top, Billy Joel, Tim McGraw, Casting Crowns, Steely Dan, Eric Clapton to start...

The Wilsons did sound good. The Mach daddy MBLs are great to but I also like Martin Logan stats and big ole Klipsh LaScalas.

WOW what a ramble. Does the big expensive stuff sound good? Yes but VALUE is not their price model.

This is just absurd! A 50k -300k speakers are going to be mostly for aesthetics and nothing more. You can only make a speaker sound so good. 300k good BS! There are so many variations it isn't even funny.. I've listened to a lot of box speakers and their sound usually doesn't differentiate from another box speaker like apples and oranges. I think once you hit a certain price point,the aesthetics take over and then its all about that. Unless they just make the speaker bigger to add more cost. There are plenty of $1800 speakers that sound as good as $5000 speakers. Look at the difference in the cabinets.. Lots of difference there..

That's kind of like passive EQ isn't it?

I shouldn't even bother engaging you anymore, but what the heck...

These don't measure well? I noticed you mentioned the midrange directivity, but they have a flush mounted tweeter that doesn't use a waveguide, no? Again, I understand completely what you're saying, but you claimed (on audioholics) that a non-controlled directivity speaker won't sound good, which is an opinion, as what sounds "good" is subjective.

http://philharmonicaudio.com/philharmonic3.html

I think you bring up a good point that most will find intuitive. However, studies have shown that smoothness the off-axis response matters quite a bit (less than the design-axis smoothness of response, but more than anything else in the speaker designers' control), though holes have been found relatively benign and peaks more deleterious.

I suggest you read Toole, Sound Reproduction, (2008). Chapter 20 discusses some loudspeaker preference testing. The takeaway message is the following:

Most of loudspeaker preference can be described by three variables:
-design axis FR (NOTE: I use "design axis" rather than Toole's "on axis" simply because some speakers are not designed to be pointed on axis at the listening position)
-smoothness of off-axis FR
-bass extension.
(That ranking, presumably, assumes the absence of self-noise, such as whistling from pointy parts marketers incorrectly call "phase plugs"* or too-small ports.)


*For some reason, marketers even for good speaker companies have decided that a "phase plug" is a "waveguide" (see, e.g., Tannoy Tulip "Waveguide," KEF Tangerine "Waveguide"), and a little pointy thing that really has de minimis effect on dispersion or FR on a midwoofer (though it may be a useful heat sink) is a "phase plug."


Not really. It's adding delay (by curving the line - can also be a flat CBT with passive or active delay circuits) and progressively lowering the level of the outer drivers according to a set formula.

Though certainly, as in all good crossovers, there is some "EQ" to flatten the response.

Read up on it, if you're interested. It's really neat stuff, and conceptually very different from a standard line array. Keele's one of the sharpest minds in audio, and his measurements indicate he's onto something. I'd love to hear them, and plan to as soon as feasible.

I don't know why I bother either. You are so obviously driven by lame personal animosity (even though, to my knowledge, I've never met you) that you're seem not just willing but downright eager to debase yourself with intellectually dishonest comments. Here's what I actually wrote about those speakers on Audioholics:


And this:


What I've consistently written is that a tweet on a 180deg waveguide mated to a big midwoofer is a recipe for sonic disaster. If a tweeter is crossed to the woofer where they are both basically radiating the same way, then that's just a wide-but-controlled directivity speaker. Dr. Murphy's measurements show that to be the case, as one would expect knowing (a) the relative radiating width of the Neo8 and the Neo3, and (b) that he's crossing them fairly low (2.5kHz). Now vertical polars aren't going to look very good with that design, but those seem subjectively of much lower import in preference testing.

Now, it does take analytical skills you may not have to realize that "big" in terms of horizontal directivity means "wide" rather "large surface area." But given that you've read my other words, you're just showing the same intellectual dishonesty you did when you posted the grill on/grill off difference measurement for a speaker on a thread, without providing any context as to what the measurement was about.

Which one of these is better?
http://www.psbspeakers.com/products/...Image-T6-Tower
http://www.paradigm.com/products/pro...es-7/monitor-9

I didn't read those replies on Audioholics, but thanks for linking them. They aren't the posts I was talking about, though, in which you made claims you cannot back up, and still have not. Your claim that I am making dishonest comments is simply a ploy to avoid answering my questions; you and ntrain must be pals. Fair enough, though - like I said, you're not worth the effort. Enjoy your ignorance, and using your magic eyes to tell people whether or not a speaker will be hi-fidelity or not. You are a laughable guy.

Look, I understand it's easy to get lost on the price points, diminishing returns, and all of those sorts of aspects of such speakers. Especially in most real-world situations. But if you can forget about the uber pricing for just a few minutes, and be completely honest, those speakers are in an entirely different Universe sound wise, compared to ANY speaker costing under $20K that I have heard. And believe me, I really wish it wasn't so. I could have saved myself a LOT of money. And so could have some of my friends.

Now I'm not saying that every speaker priced higher than $20k are all fantastic speakers. The truth is, I've heard some that were down right horrible sounding! And in those cases, there are definitely some under $10K speakers I prefer.

One lower priced speaker I really like (with an MSRP of $2500): the Evolution Acoustics MMMicroOne http://www.evolutionacoustics.com/lo...rs/mmmicroone/

Hook that 20k speaker up to a common receiver and then compare them. How many guys have $2000 speakers hooked up to 30k worth of gear.. None.. Hook them both up to 30k worth of gear and do a blind listen..

Again it besides the point. How your brain processes sound is irrelevant to the point I raised (and maybe explains your wrong analogies).

The point was if the vibrations arriving at your ear is the same, your brain cannot distinguish them (which is the whole basis for simulating surround sound). Hence if the sound arriving at your ear is 'good', does it matter how it was generated? The entire setup from signal source, through amp, speaker, room effects etc, all contribute to that final sound and thus its a jump to single out one of them imo. Rather its the net effect that should be evaluated.


I understand it but simply think its wrong.


If its not a temp solution, then what is wrong with it?

There is very little that is scientific about listening test coupled with an opinion poll since the very essence of objectivity and measurability are absent.

The one you prefer

cheers,

AJ

FIFY.
You know one way how Einstein defined insanity?
So to avoid further repetition, good luck, you're all set.

cheers,

AJ

I tend to agree with Rut. The high dollar stuff, for the most part, sounds damn good it's just over priced.

The Anthony Gallo Reference is weird looking but sounds great. That speaker went from $4K to over $6K in 3 - 4 years and it was due to a materials change in the cabinet and improved drivers. Come on a 50% jump!

Speakers, can't live with them can't live without them!

Ok that was obvious.. How about others opinions..?

Interesting post coming from someone who seems to believe in things 'scientifically' determined across population samples, yet fails to grasp the simple crux of a logical argument.

Likely more than you think...I've read of studios with lots of good processing gear using relatively inexpensive speakers...now if you're talking about your average home audiophool, you may as well add how many spend 30k on gear, 30k on speakers and can't listen to them without their multi thousand dollar cables....err, interconnects...gotta use fancier words when taking that much more money from those with golden ears.

While I havent read the book, I have read the relevant papers. I understand (and to an extent appreciate) where he is coming from, but think there are many conditionals (e.g. speaker placement are not optimized nor locations changed) to his results that make a generalization of it dubious.

For example, (using his paper: loudspeaker measurements and the relationship to listener preferences)
- The test were conducted on 48 people, all having a background in 'critical listening'. Many were musicians, sound recording engineers and audiophiles. It is dubious to generalize from such a small and select few to the rest of the human population. Worse still, the presented results excluded the 14 people whose judgment were deemed to have high variability. The 28 selected were those whose fidelty ratings had the closest agreement across the group (i.e. those that disagreed with the majority were kicked out), making the conclusion more dubious to generalize.

- not all listeners auditioned all speakers as there were six separate experiments with just a few speakers being consistent across the experiment. Experiments involved 4 speakers sampled over 30min and ran from one to several days introducing further inconsistency.

- The listeners were meant to evaluate on a scale of 0-10 the faithfulness of the production to the ideal, but this raises the question of what is the ideal. What the general populace judges to be good is not necessarily an accurate reproduction of the ideal

- the presented results were from monophonic test, while most real world application would be stereophonic, but were excluded because the stereo assessment had higher variability.

- Speaker positioning was not optimized for individual speakers. Some speakers may have performed better under different conditions.


These are just a few shortcomings which, imo, limits the applicability of this study and others like it, in predicting end user preference from objective speaker measurements. Note, I am not saying the outcome is erroneous, as it is clearly better than other more subjective measures, but generalizing it is simply dubious.