Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker? (Read 42599 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #50 –
Did anybody notice that posts 48 and 49 are from THE Sean Olive we are talking about in this thread?

That being said, is there a reason there is no text in either post other than quotations from other posts?  Did something go wrong when he was posting?  I, for one, would like to know what Sean Olive wants to say!

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #51 –
Sorry, I didn't realize I had posted a blank. I have edited my posting for post 49, and will respond to 48 after I gather  more information.

Cheers
Sean

Moderation: Removed unnecessary quotation of the previous post.  Removed link to your site; what's in your signature should suffice.  I removed post 48, but decided to put it back so that you may edit it in place.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #52 –
Quote from: odigg on
Quote from: AV-OCD on
Despite the flat FR of the Classia, it was rated the least desirable in terms of sound quality.  The group chose a Dali speaker consistently over the Infinity, and I have never seen a Dali speaker that has response anywhere near as flat is the Infinity.


I'm a fan of what Sean Olive and researchers like him are doing, but I do wonder about something.  A basic adage (and I believe there has been research in psychology to support this) is that people tend to prefer what they are used to.  From my experience, this holds true for choices ranging from underwear type to the unconscious choices made when picking friends and romantic partners.

So, if a group of listeners have spent many years listening to speakers that are do NOT have flat FR, wouldn't they pick a similar sounding speaker as better sounding than a flat speaker in a blind test?  Isn't it just a matter of liking what they are used to?

Honestly, I support most results of blind testing in audio, but it's very difficult for me to accept that Olive's results are representative of the larger population and not just his sample.


It think it is generally true that people tend to prefer what they are used to, yet that has not been my experience with loudspeaker tests. There was a 1956 study published in JASA  by Kirk who reported that  college students preferred band-limited loudspeakers over a wider bandwidth loudspeaker. The students only preferred the better loudspeaker after they had been exposed to it over a period of time. There are some problems with that study, one of them being that the poor quality of the source material from that era may have been a biasing factor: the hiss and distortions may have actually sounded better on band-limited loudspeakers. Still, the results cannot be entirely discounted.

Fast forward 53 years later (2009) and a similar sort of study is being reported. A Stanford music professor reports that his college students  prefer low bit-rate MP3 music over the higher quality lossless CD quality version; he believes it is because that is what the students are used to hearing.  If you consider that most of the headphones and speakers sold with MP3 players today are not very good either, the future of high quality audio seems rather bleak

In 2003, I published a loudspeaker preference study which included a small sample of college students along with trained listeners, audio reviewers, audio retailers, and audio marketing and sales people. The college students were the least discriminating and reliable group of listeners in the study.  This could be explained alone by their young age and limited experience and exposure to good audio. Fortunately, they still preferred the more accurate loudspeakers over the least accurate one, but they could not reliably choose between the top three, which they tended to give very high ratings compared to the other groups of listeners. I'm sure many of these listeners in the study had bad loudspeakers at home, yet they chose the more accurate speakers in this study.

Finally, I use myself as a good example of someone who didn't prefer what I am used to. When I first started working at NRC back in 1985, someone slipped my own speakers into a loudspeaker test without my knowledge. These were speakers that I had owned and listened to for hundreds of hours over the past 7 years in college.  After completing the listening test, I found out to my horror that I rated my own speakers dead last, finding lots of faults with them compared to the more accurate loudspeakers.  It seems that within the context of a properly controlled multiple comparison loudspeaker test, people have an innate ability to separate the good loudspeakers from the poor ones.. and they tend to prefer the ones with the least offensive distortions.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #53 –
Quote from: krabapple on
Quote from: AV-OCD on
If you were to narrow down your choices using the FR plots with the speakers in this test, the Infinity's would make the short list, and the Dali's probably wouldn't. 

Just food for thought.



First, it's results from just three listeners, whereas Olive tested hundredsn, and Audioholics, though they deserve all credit for trying, doesn't have the terrific 'double-blind speaker lazy susan' technology that Harman has, to reduce the interval between presentations and variation in speaker position.  The room is also acoustically well-designed and treated.  The Audioholics loudspeakers weren't auditioned from the same speaker placement, and the room by the reviewers' own account had some issues.

Second, given that two of the three subjects were audio reviewers, these results may well fall into Toole's secondary category of listeners who do NOT tend to prefer the sound of loudspeakers that meet the derived Toole/Olive criteria.
Those in this category tended to be audio engineers and others who make their living listening to audio in somewhat different ways than the typical listener.  Instead of wide 'apparent source width' (ASW) and 'listener envelopment',
two key criteria for typical listeners, they tend to focus on things like pinpoint imaging.

Third, the subjects even seem to have discussed or viewed each other's answers during the test.  That's a no-no.


We have never said that audio reviewers "do NOT tend to prefer the the sound of loudspeakers that meet the derived Toole/Olive criteria."  In fact, our data suggests that they tend to prefer the same loudspeakers as our trained listeners when given the opportunity to review them under well-controlled double-blind conditions (click on the graph here and compare the audio reviewers' preferences to the other groups' ). The problem is that audio reviewers seldom evaluate loudspeakers under properly controlled double-blind conditions, which means we rarely read a valid, unbiased opinion about the sound quality of the product.

Based on that same study, we did find that the audio reviewers as a group were about 1/5 as discriminating and reliable as the trained listeners. Age and occupational-related hearing loss could have been a factor since this sample of reviewers were on average older than the other groups of listeners. This is pure speculation since we only tested the hearing of the trained listeners, who had normal hearing.

Toole on page 436  in his new book " Sound Reproduction"  talks about hearing loss, which  are unfortunate afflictions, "especially for audio professionals and audio reviewers whose judgments are no longer representative of normal hearing listeners." He concludes: "an audiogram should perhaps be part of the personal resume of people in certain sensitive areas of the audio business, displaying evidence of why anyone should trust their opinions about sound quality."

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #54 –
Sean,

A couple of things spring to mind.

How does the average age of the audio reviewer compare to the average age of the reader of audio reviews? It could be that their profiled hearing perfectly matches the hearing of those who buy loudspeakers on the basis of reviews in audio magazines. The last hi-fi show I attended, Methuselah would have brought the average age of attendees down by about 30 years.

I'm also wondering how much of the audio reviewers poor score comes down to cognitive dissonance. If a reviewer holds the belief that blind tests are valueless (or worse, harmful to their career), engaging in a blind test will be a more uncomfortable experience for them than for other test subjects. People like Robert Harley seem to be very 'anti' any kind of blind testing and that might carry over into the test itself. While I don't think anyone would actively try to skew the test (even if they could), perhaps the audio reviewers are trying too hard. They have the most to lose by 'failing'; their own reputation as golden-eared reviewer is at stake, even if only to themselves. This could possibly undermine their performance. I have absolutely no idea how you'd test for that, however.

Personally, I think it might be that the audio reviewer group spend too long listening to the audio marketing and sales group and not enough time listening to speakers.

Moderation: Removed unnecessary quotation of the previous post.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #55 –
Quote from: solive on
Quote from: krabapple on
af anyone wants to read an, um, interesting juxtaposition of subjective impression versus measurements of loudspeakers, check out this review:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue11/zudruid.htm

and then check out these measurements

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurem.../zucable_druid/

Btw, it's a loudspeaker by a company that also sells 'audiophile' cables.


KrabApple - This is probably one of the worst set of  loudspeaker frequency response curves I've seen in quite awhile. When measurements look that bad, yet the listening review is positive, it's a sign that something is faulty with the listening device(s) and/or listening test methodology.  It's a case of "Hearing is Believing" versus "Believing is Hearing." It wouldn't be the first time I've seen this.



Cheers
Sean
http://seanolive.blogspot.com


The problem I have here is that this speaker may get a pasting in the lab, but gets lots of light and fluffy hyperbole in the review ON THE SAME WEBSITE!

How can this:

http://www.soundstagemagazine.com/measurem.../zucable_druid/

Be this:

http://www.soundstage.com/revequip/zucable_druid.htm ?

I suppose at least the reviewer admitted that 'bass power was nearly absent'.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #56 –
Quote from: Gag Halfrunt on
Quote from: solive on
We have never said that audio reviewers "do NOT tend to prefer the the sound of loudspeakers that meet the derived Toole/Olive criteria."  In fact, our data suggests that they tend to prefer the same loudspeakers as our trained listeners when given the opportunity to review them under well-controlled double-blind conditions (click on the graph here and compare the audio reviewers' preferences to the other groups' ). The problem is that audio reviewers seldom evaluate loudspeakers under properly controlled double-blind conditions, which means we rarely read a valid, unbiased opinion about the sound quality of the product.

Based on that same study, we did find that the audio reviewers as a group were about 1/5 as discriminating and reliable as the trained listeners. Age and occupational-related hearing loss could have been a factor since this sample of reviewers were on average older than the other groups of listeners. This is pure speculation since we only tested the hearing of the trained listeners, who had normal hearing.

Toole on page 436  in his new book " Sound Reproduction"  talks about hearing loss, which  are unfortunate afflictions, "especially for audio professionals and audio reviewers whose judgments are no longer representative of normal hearing listeners." He concludes: "an audiogram should perhaps be part of the personal resume of people in certain sensitive areas of the audio business, displaying evidence of why anyone should trust their opinions about sound quality."


Sean,

A couple of things spring to mind.

How does the average age of the audio reviewer compare to the average age of the reader of audio reviews? It could be that their profiled hearing perfectly matches the hearing of those who buy loudspeakers on the basis of reviews in audio magazines. The last hi-fi show I attended, Methuselah would have brought the average age of attendees down by about 30 years.

I'm also wondering how much of the audio reviewers poor score comes down to cognitive dissonance. If a reviewer holds the belief that blind tests are valueless (or worse, harmful to their career), engaging in a blind test will be a more uncomfortable experience for them than for other test subjects. People like Robert Harley seem to be very 'anti' any kind of blind testing and that might carry over into the test itself. While I don't think anyone would actively try to skew the test (even if they could), perhaps the audio reviewers are trying too hard. They have the most to lose by 'failing'; their own reputation as golden-eared reviewer is at stake, even if only to themselves. This could possibly undermine their performance. I have absolutely no idea how you'd test for that, however.

Personally, I think it might be that the audio reviewer group spend too long listening to the audio marketing and sales group and not enough time listening to speakers.



Gag,

  According to Stereophile the median readership age was 48 years in 2006, and increasing annually. Your point is well taken:  the hi-fi reviewers' median age may accurately reflect their readership. However,hearing loss is a very nonlinear process and I doubt you can categorize  loudspeaker preferences of people with hearing loss into a single segment (unless the loudspeaker is a hearing aid  ). In fact, Toole's data indicate that  listeners with hearing loss as a group tend to have poor inter and intra-listener reliability in their ratings (their preferences are all over the map from one day to the next)

Your second point is that  some reviewers and self-proclaimed golden ears may under perform in controlled listening tests because of  "stage fright",  fear of failure, or it may challenge their faith-based audio beliefs.  Our trained listeners at Harman get over this psychological barrier through experience in tests, and participating in our listener training program, which teaches them how to  rate sound quality attributes with constant feedback given on their performance. If after several weeks the listeners cannot make the grade, we reject them. Life is cruel. But if you want to be a doctor, airline pilot, concert pianist, or an Olympic athlete, you have to pass exams and win qualification races in order to  demonstrate you "have the right stuff."  Why should being a Harman listener or a professional audio reviewer be any different?

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #57 –
Sean,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

Yes, age is a blunt tool to determine a non-linear process like hearing loss, but there are broad generalities that can be drawn from an aging population. This also makes me wonder; not every loudspeaker company uses a thorough set of measurement protocols to develop loudspeakers - some of the smaller companies designs come down to the 'golden-eared' skills of an individual. As these individuals age, do their loudspeaker designs come to rely more on measurement, or their failing hearing?

On your second point, in fairness to the audio reviewers, did they get the opportunity to get over their own 'stage fright' in tests? They were listed among the untrained, after all. It seems likely that once they got past that initial hurdle, they'd respond like any prospective trained band of listeners, with some failing to make the grade and some passing muster (age-related hearing loss and job-related hearing damage notwithstanding). Given the poor showing of the reviewers, it would be interesting to see how they responded to the training program.

That being said, the 'age-related hearing loss and job-related hearing damage' part could be the source of the poor results from the audio reviewers, after all. This would likely de-select some of them from the training process.

Edit: I just keep thinking up extra stuff... sorry. I was wondering how - if - training in other fields influences the performance of the panelists? For example, a musician's ear training, or a studio engineer trained in critical listening.

Moderation: Removed unnecessary quote of the previous post.  Please refrain from doing this in the future.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #58 –
Quote from: Gag Halfrunt on
Sean,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

Yes, age is a blunt tool to determine a non-linear process like hearing loss, but there are broad generalities that can be drawn from an aging population. This also makes me wonder; not every loudspeaker company uses a thorough set of measurement protocols to develop loudspeakers - some of the smaller companies designs come down to the 'golden-eared' skills of an individual. As these individuals age, do their loudspeaker designs come to rely more on measurement, or their failing hearing?

On your second point, in fairness to the audio reviewers, did they get the opportunity to get over their own 'stage fright' in tests? They were listed among the untrained, after all. It seems likely that once they got past that initial hurdle, they'd respond like any prospective trained band of listeners, with some failing to make the grade and some passing muster (age-related hearing loss and job-related hearing damage notwithstanding). Given the poor showing of the reviewers, it would be interesting to see how they responded to the training program.

That being said, the 'age-related hearing loss and job-related hearing damage' part could be the source of the poor results from the audio reviewers, after all. This would likely de-select some of them from the training process.

Edit: I just keep thinking up extra stuff... sorry. I was wondering how - if - training in other fields influences the performance of the panelists? For example, a musician's ear training, or a studio engineer trained in critical listening.

Moderation: Removed unnecessary quote of the previous post.  Please refrain from doing this in the future.



I can't answer for other audio manufacturers, but normal hearing is a pre-requisite for all listeners on our listening panel. Products must pass a minimum performance standard based on objective measurements before they are even submitted for subjective evaluation. Many of the reviewers have visited Harman listening labs  several times before, and have participated in similar tests before. I believe that audio reviewers would benefit from listener training, as most listeners do. In fact, the founder of Stereophile magazine, Gordon Holt  said in a recent interview that the high-end audio establishment's failure to adopt blind product testing (ear training being part of that) has, in part, been responsible its lack of credibility and slow demise. I quote him:

"...Audio as a hobby is dying, largely by its own hand. As far as the real world is concerned, high-end audio lost its credibility during the 1980s, when it flatly refused to submit to the kind of basic honesty controls (double-blind testing, for example) that had legitimized every other serious scientific endeavor since Pascal. [This refusal] is a source of endless derisive amusement among rational people and of perpetual embarrassment for me, because I am associated by so many people with the mess my disciples made of spreading my gospel "


".. Remember those loudspeaker shoot-outs we used to have during our annual writer gatherings in Santa Fe? The frequent occasions when various reviewers would repeatedly choose the same loudspeaker as their favorite (or least-favorite) model? That was all the proof needed that [blind] testing does work, aside from the fact that it's (still) the only honest kind. It also suggested that simple ear training, with DBT confirmation, could have built the kind of listening confidence among talented reviewers that might have made a world of difference in the outcome of high-end audio. "

Cheers
Sean
My Audio Blog

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #59 –
Quote from: 2tec on
I'd like to know what's objectively the best speaker.


Simply put ... the best speaker is what sounds best to your ears with music of your choice.

There does exist a large amount of "construction philosophies" when it comes to speaker design. Some people enjoy smaller "close-field monitor speakers" whereas other listeners need a solid bass reproduction that normally can only be achieved with larger "floorstanders" together with proper cabinet ventilation or subwoofer/satellite systems.

Some people even go to extremes and choose rather exotic speaker designs like full-range horn speakers (have you ever seen a real bass horn?) or electrostats/magnetostats or classic desings with high-tech stuff like plasma tweeters or tweeters with diamond membranes.

Basically, choosing a loudspeaker goes along with answering questions like:

  • What's my overall budget?
  • How large is the room to put them in or how large can the speakers be?
  • Where will I put my speakers?
  • What kind of speaker design do I like?
  • What kind of music do i mostly listen to? What intruments are my favourite ones?
  • What kind of wattage does my amp deliver or what kind of speaker efficiency is needed for sufficient listening volume?
  • What kind of listening volumes must be achieved?
  • Continued ...


There is no such thing as a general-purpose loudspeaker that will excel at every aspect. Each desing principle (heck, even each membrane material) has it's advantages and shortcomings. As a result, buying speakers does always mean dealing with some sort of compromise.
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #60 –
Quote from: JeanLuc on
As a result, buying speakers does always mean dealing with some sort of compromise.

Is that what they're calling salesmen these days?
elevatorladylevitateme

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #61 –
Quote from: JeanLuc on
Quote from: 2tec on
I'd like to know what's objectively the best speaker.

Simply put ... the best speaker is what sounds best to your ears with music of your choice.


My question wasn't what would be the best speaker for me or my room, but rather, whether there was a speaker, or speaker design, that was the most able to accurately reproduce the original sound in its given environment.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  ;~)

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #62 –
Quote from: solive on
Fast forward 53 years later (2009) and a similar sort of study is being reported. A Stanford music professor reports that his college students  prefer low bit-rate MP3 music over the higher quality lossless CD quality version; he believes it is because that is what the students are used to hearing.  If you consider that most of the headphones and speakers sold with MP3 players today are not very good either, the future of high quality audio seems rather bleak


I wouldn't worry too much based on that news report. In a half-dozen or so different versions of it, I've yet to see any details on that music professor's 'study' that indicates it was worth a damn...like whether the comparisons were blind.

(Though of course that hasn't stopped the online audio forums from going bonkers over it...)

Quote
Finally, I use myself as a good example of someone who didn't prefer what I am used to. When I first started working at NRC back in 1985, someone slipped my own speakers into a loudspeaker test without my knowledge. These were speakers that I had owned and listened to for hundreds of hours over the past 7 years in college. After completing the listening test, I found out to my horror that I rated my own speakers dead last, finding lots of faults with them compared to the more accurate loudspeakers. It seems that within the context of a properly controlled multiple comparison loudspeaker test, people have an innate ability to separate the good loudspeakers from the poor ones.. and they tend to prefer the ones with the least offensive distortions.


Did they sound as good to you after this illuminating trial, as they did before it?

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #63 –
Quote from: solive on
Quote from: krabapple on

Second, given that two of the three subjects were audio reviewers, these results may well fall into Toole's secondary category of listeners who do NOT tend to prefer the sound of loudspeakers that meet the derived Toole/Olive criteria.
Those in this category tended to be audio engineers and others who make their living listening to audio in somewhat different ways than the typical listener.  Instead of wide 'apparent source width' (ASW) and 'listener envelopment',
two key criteria for typical listeners, they tend to focus on things like pinpoint imaging.


We have never said that audio reviewers "do NOT tend to prefer the the sound of loudspeakers that meet the derived Toole/Olive criteria."  In fact, our data suggests that they tend to prefer the same loudspeakers as our trained listeners when given the opportunity to review them under well-controlled double-blind conditions (click on the graph here and compare the audio reviewers' preferences to the other groups' ). The problem is that audio reviewers seldom evaluate loudspeakers under properly controlled double-blind conditions, which means we rarely read a valid, unbiased opinion about the sound quality of the product.


It's my mistake for misremembering something from Floyd Toole's book.  I was recalling the section(s) on 'sensitive listeners' (e.g., p 119) -- also referred to as 'audio professionals' -- I mistakenly thought I'd read that audio reviewers were included in that group, but looking at it again, it appears to refer only to recording and mixing engineers and musicians and acousticians. 

It's also not referring  to *loudspeaker* preference per se, but to preference for reduced lateral reflections, compared to the levels  preferred by most of the tested listeners.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #64 –
Quote from: 2tec on
My question wasn't what would be the best speaker for me or my room, but rather, whether there was a speaker, or speaker design, that was the most able to accurately reproduce the original sound in its given environment.


There do exist speakers that combine what is believed to be essential towards accurate sound reproduction.

These characteristics include:

-a flat frequency response, even under given angles (see according graph)

-low chassis resonance from its coil (the impedance graph will hint at that) or membrane (other graphs can tell you about partial oscillation of the membrane in the frequency range)

-sophisticated frequency crossover network layouts with low-tolerance components that e.g. introduce less phase-shifting and allow to deal with chassis resonance by absorption circuits

-fast decay times over the whole frequency range (the waterfall graph is useful for that)

-step response of speaker chassis

-rigid and resonance-free cabinet layout (you don't want to actually hear the cabinet walls move)


If I were to design a speaker I would make use of both classic acoustic teachings as well as modern electronic technology.

My system would most likely turn out to be a three-way floorstander with dual 8" bass chassis in sealed compartments and a D'Appolito (or coax) midrange/high system.

I would build a rigid cabinet and choose chassis that combine low weight membranes, decent internal dampening membrane material, unproblematic impedance graphs and maximum membrane stiffness (to avoid partial oscillations). The loudspeaker would be a fully active (one amp for each way) system with digital (maybe HDMI) inputs (future-proof for potentially useless, but nonetheless upcoming 192/24 formats) and complete internal digital signal processing (basically consists of crossover network, bass eq, parametric eq and time alignment) up to the analog amp outputs.

The digital layout would allow for sophisticated signal processing, quite similar to techniques used in car stereo and home cinema systems and could also be used to get rid of influences by material tolerance.

Time alignment would be used to improve step response by making sure that each speaker chassis moves at the right time (under consideration of the actual listening position). A digital crossover network would allow to implement steep filtering without the disadvantages of passive crossover networks. A parametric eq (with sufficient bands for each speaker way) would allow to get rid of acoustic problems that might arise in the actual listening environment (like standing waves or resonating objects). Additionally, the parametric eq can be used to fine-tune the speaker's sound to personal preferences. The extra bass eq would be used to extend (or reverse-eq) the lower frequency range (sealed cabinets of lower volumes normally produce an early drop-off in frequency response but offer a good impulse response over ventilated systems).

As it is common with home-cinema systems, there would also be an auto-calibration, much similar to Alpine's car audio implementation called "Imprint".

By using a USB interface and supplying an easy-to-use control software, each customer would be able to control the speakers' sound via home computer. A useful addition could be analog inputs with ADC's ...

Just a few thoughts, though

Edit: a few additions
The name was Plex The Ripper, not Jack The Ripper

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #65 –
Quote from: krabapple on
I wouldn't worry too much based on that news report. In a half-dozen or so different versions of it, I've yet to see any details on that music professor's 'study' that indicates it was worth a damn...like whether the comparisons were blind.
(Though of course that hasn't stopped the online audio forums from going bonkers over it...)

Did they sound as good to you after this illuminating trial, as they did before it?


1. See I would love to see the data from the MP3 study but the author doesn't respond to email. I can't believe that the media would go bonkers over the findings without referencing or reading a scientific paper about it.

2. I gave my old speakers  (Genesis) away shortly after that illuminating test as I became exposed to a lot of good speakers while working at the NRC during those years (1985-93). At various times I worked for and tested speakers for companies like Paradigm, PSB and Energy/Mirage --

Cheers
Sean
Audio Musings

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #66 –
Quote from: solive on
2. I gave my old speakers  (Genesis) away shortly after that illuminating test as I became exposed to a lot of good speakers while working at the NRC during those years (1985-93). At various times I worked for and tested speakers for companies like Paradigm, PSB and Energy/Mirage --


Would you feel inclined to mention a few of the brands that best matched the results (flat FR, good off-axis performance, etc) of your research? 

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #67 –
I think I would like to add a few thoughts as well. I used to test speakers at Shure Inc. I was also a phono cartridge designer (shows my age).

One big problem with judging accuracy is that most music is manufactured. Nothing to compare it to!
Heck, even in my little studio I use eight microphones on one drum set. It's not even close to any kind of accurate sonic capture.

That being said, I would go for something that can produce sound over a wide frequency range with reasonably good distortion figures. I would not consider a good on axis anechoic response as proof of sonic accuracy, but a very bad curve might indicate problems.

One of the most important factors to me is output level capabilities of the system. I don't mean just to listen to very loud music. I'll give an example. A handclap at arms length can easily have a peak SPL of 120 db  or more unweighted. It doen't really sound loud. But many if not most systems can't do that...a simple hand clap.
For me having one that can  really affects the level of realism on the right recording, particularly with the 120 db+ dynamic range capabilities of some modern gear. Granted...we're talking about 24 bit studio stuff here rather than a cd player, but that kind of performance will be in consumer stuff too, if not already.

One other thing I wanted to mention. The BRS (binaural room scanning) written about in Sean's blog.
Long ago we did some testing with head movements in binaural recordings. It was not as sophisticated as binaural impulse response processing. It was simply having the listener's head move in the same way that a binaural dummy head did in the original sound field. It was uncanny. We simply could not tell what was recorded  and what was live headphone bleed. If you walked down the hall and shouted "Hey, take off the headphones. Lets go eat lunch" during the recording the test subject would promply take off the phones and say ok, I'm coming, then head for the hall. Even though it was a recording!!!

That was the most accurate sound reproduction I have ever heard. Here's the rub...the astounding realism (not accuracy) still happened if the frequency response was severly limited and the phase response was strongly degraded. It even worked with telephone like quality.

That showed me just how far removed some speakers in a room are from any kind of  sonic reality.
It's the format really. So I just use speakers that sound good and make me smile. They are neither flat nor "accurate", but they can reproduce low distortion audio over the audible range at very high SPL. To me this gives an effortless quality at normal low listening levels.

Les Watts
L M Watts Technology

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #68 –
Quote from: odigg on
Quote from: solive on
2. I gave my old speakers  (Genesis) away shortly after that illuminating test as I became exposed to a lot of good speakers while working at the NRC during those years (1985-93). At various times I worked for and tested speakers for companies like Paradigm, PSB and Energy/Mirage --


Would you feel inclined to mention a few of the brands that best matched the results (flat FR, good off-axis performance, etc) of your research?


This is ancient history (> 16 years ago), but most of the companies that used the NRC were aiming for flat FR & good off-axis performance because that is what the NRC research showed produced the highest listener fidelity ratings. The companies included the ones I mentioned -- Paradigm, PSB, Energy/Mirage  -- and Camber, Axiom,Waveform Research - and few others. It was at NRC, where  I met Kevin Voecks (now at Revel) who worked for Mirage and then Snell at that time. He would travel from Los Angeles to Ottawa just to measure and listen to his prototype speakers.

Cheers
Sean
Audio Musings

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #69 –
Quote from: LesW on
One big problem with judging accuracy is that most music is manufactured. Nothing to compare it to!

One of the most important factors to me is output level capabilities of the system

One other thing I wanted to mention. The BRS (binaural room scanning) written about in Sean's blog.
Long ago we did some testing with head movements in binaural recordings. It was not as sophisticated as binaural impulse response processing. It was simply having the listener's head move in the same way that a binaural dummy head did in the original sound field. It was uncanny. We simply could not tell what was recorded  and what was live headphone bleed.


Hi Les,

1. We try to pick timbrally accurate recordings that cover the entire audio bandwidth. Even though the recordings are mostly "manufactured" listeners become familiar with them and know how they should sound. In multiple A/B/C/D comparison tests, any errors in the recordings are common to all loudspeakers and tend to be ignored.  By switching between different speakers you can quickly detect the presence of resonances and which speakers are not spectrally balanced.

2. I agree that output level capabilities are important, and the most difficult to test subjectively without damaging the listeners' hearing. I think objective tests are probably the best way to characterize power compression,etc. There is still no standard loudspeaker specification for nonlinear distortion that is perceptually meaningful, unfortunately.

3. We did a similar thing back at  NRC  using two chairs that could rotate via a stepper motor and were coupled to each other When the listener in another room rotated  in their chair, the KEMAR sitting in the listening room in an identical chair would rotate the same angle.  The realism was quite good but never as good as when the listener sat in the same room as KEMAR.  It's important with  auditory displays to have realistic visual cues so there is no cognitive dissonance between the senses. For that reason we do BRS listening tests in the same room or car (or a facsimile of the car) as where the scans were made. It adds to the realism/presence in the auditory display, particularly in terms of spatialization.

Cheers
Sean
Audio Musings by Sean Olive

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #70 –
Quote from: solive on
1. See I would love to see the data from the MP3 study but the author doesn't respond to email. I can't believe that the media would go bonkers over the findings without referencing or reading a scientific paper about it.

@solive--I think you have just increased your credibility as a dedicated researcher (as though that were needed) by showing that you waste no time at all on the media.

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #72 –
Quote from: weaker on
@rpp3po: I think what you mean is only employed in the new Nubert nuVero series. And the filter math was shown in their forum. You may check the math whether it is impossible or not: http://www.nubert-forum.de/nuforum/viewtop...ro&start=10

Nubert has been using linkwitz-riley crossover filters for their speakers for quite a while.
Their new filter solves problems inherent in designing crossovers for Satellite/Subwoofer systems and 3-Way Speakers (the sum of outputs have near perfect frequency and phase linearity), previously only possible with FIR DSPs (but without the long group delays associated with FIR filters with low frequencies). But other then what they thought it seems that the concept is not entirely new, so they might not get that patent...

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #73 –
Quote from: 2tec on
If the only audible difference left between different digital systems is with the speakers, personally, I'd like to know what's objectively the best speaker.


To me, thinking about "the best speaker" is strange because IMO they are all so bad that comparing speakers is like judging mud pies at a county fair as if they were apple pies.

IOW, show me a speaker that is as good of a transducer operating in a room as an apple pie at a county fair, and then we can talk about which one is best. ;-)

-------

Moving down this thread,  Les who used work at Shure comes closest to agreeing with my opinion of speakers in general. To me, some of them are good enough to work with given that they are all we have, but all the best speakers do is make pleasing noises. True realism or even a good approximation of it is nowhere to be heard.

Also near the end of the thread you see comments that stunning realism is possible with headphones and binaural recordings. I agree. One problem with binaural recordings is that they sound strange when played on speakers.

The idea of masses of people walking around listening to music with headphones used to be pretty strange, but now people do it all the time. Maybe we ought to just forget about  using loudspeakers for most listening applications and just use headphones or earphones. It isn't hard to mix multichannel recordings so that they sound great on headphones. I sense that with the iPod revolution in full swing, that may become a trend.

IME there is one loudspeaker-based listening experience that is more like headphones, and that is listening in a car.

Of course there are situations where speakers seem to be more convenient. However, I notice some trends and that is more and more audiophiles seem to be iterating their listening rooms towards more and more acoustic treatments.

If this trend continues we might find ourself facing a new truth, and that the best speaker might be the one that least engages the listening room.

Quote
So, objectively speaking, what's the most accurate, or honest, speaker made?


Summa speakers, designed, built and sold by my good friend Earl Geddes.

http://www.gedlee.com/Summa.htm

Only, when Earl's not looking, you need to beef up their bottom ends with subwoofers. ;-)

Quote
Which type of speaker design is the best overall?


As close to a full-range waveguide as you can get. In the real world we keep having to blend waveguides and direct radiators, but the transition to the DR should be done at the lowest frequency possible.

Quote
Is it even possible to build a 'transparent' speaker?


We do remarkably well with headphones and earphones.


Quote
How can you properly compare two sets of speakers?


Talk to Sean Olive.

He seems to be posting here, time to ask him your burning questions - but maybe read up on all of his online stuff first, before boring him with questions he has already answered. ;-)

Quote
By the way, personally, I'd vote for electrostatic speakers.


Electrostatic is just a transducer design, not a speaker system design.

You really didn't answer your own question. ;-)

Objectively speaking, what's the best speaker?

Reply #74 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote
So, objectively speaking, what's the most accurate, or honest, speaker made?


Summa speakers, designed, built and sold by my good friend Earl Geddes.

http://www.gedlee.com/Summa.htm

Only, when Earl's not looking, you need to beef up their bottom ends with subwoofers. ;-)



AFAIK, Earl recommends the use of subs with all of his speakers, including the Summas.