Any objective measurements available for Audio Products ( eg Indiq audio)

[keith_correa]

Finally the master that goes out for the CD is a dynamically compressed one that will sound good on mainstream speakers only.

they don't realise the crucial fact that the " Final master that went out for CD " was meant to be listened to on a mainstream speaker. Unless the recording is an audiophile grade one. Even those are tuned for audiophile speakers !

Not true at all! There is no such "tuning" of sound for mainstream speakers simply because there is no reference or baseline. They do tune the sound but that's for the type of music, their target audience etc and definitely not for speakers they're going to be played on. Even though I knew the answer, I just called up a friend who is in the "industry" and asked him - all I got was sinister, maniacal laughter.

That a perfectly valid reason not to buy it.

If anyone feels the need to evaluate an equipment based on certain measurements which are important to them, one should of course not buy it and its the manufacturers problem of loss of revenue .

After all its the buyer choice of buying and sellers choice in selling !

Buying or selling doesn't come into this at all. I don't see why this needs to divert into this tangential direction.
Our argument was that providing measurements are not done because for the large majority, they are unimportant/do not make sense/do not know how to interpret etc and there's no malafide intent. Given, the argument, I agree.
So, if a small minority asks for measurements, and the manufacturer does not provide that, it means one of 2 things:
1/ the manufacturer does not measure and hence cannot provide what they do not have.
2/ they do not provide them because they do not want to and we are free to draw our own conclusions.
If 2/, then given the logic of the agreed upon argument, the manufacturer has something to hide. If 1/, there's nothing to say.

From what I understood is that it is impossible for loudspeakers to imitate the reverb that happens in a church because of the geometry with domes, large halls, etc. So if you like that sound the only realistic solution is to build your own church and play music in it. Similary there is a limit to the amount of compression that a speaker driver can achieve. The sound of a dynamite exploding comes from the extreme compression of air in just few milliseconds. You can never reproduce that sound using a speaker where it can move air across the entire room and blow you away with other things in the room.

This is like saying, if one wants sweet sound, one should pour some sugar in one's ears and then listen. It's senseless!!!

 

[prem]

I like to buy speakers which measure well. Ideally I look for a plus minus 1 dB between 70 Hz to 13 kHz. And a plus minus 3db at 30-35 Hz.

In the past I have bought speakers which don’t adhere to above specs. But what I found is I generally seem to prefer speakers which fall in above specs.

Ditto with source too. I only buy ones that measure well.

I keep my amplifier choice open. I use it to tune the sound to my preference. I feel having one component variable is enough to tune a system to ones preference. But for this to happen the others in the chain have to measure very well and be as neutral as possible.

Above has been my experience

 

[arj]

Buying or selling doesn't come into this at all. I don't see why this needs to divert into this tangential direction.
Our argument was that providing measurements are not done because for the large majority, they are unimportant/do not make sense/do not know how to interpret etc and there's no malafide intent. Given, the argument, I agree.
So, if a small minority asks for measurements, and the manufacturer does not provide that, it means one of 2 things:
1/ the manufacturer does not measure and hence cannot provide what they do not have.
2/ they do not provide them because they do not want to and we are free to draw our own conclusions.
If 2/, then given the logic of the agreed upon argument, the manufacturer has something to hide. If 1/, there's nothing to say.

This is like saying, if one wants sweet sound, one should pour some sugar in one's ears and then listen. It's senseless!!!

Not sure as to why buying is not an issue as generally one would look at specs only if they were evaluating it for a purchase and that was my view on the discussion. Unless if course one is taking it up as a social or industry standardization issue- then of course it fine to bring these up, but again unless the majority of consumer's ask for it, manufacturers will not provide it and may not push regulatory agencies to mandate it.

But again going on your line, there is a 3rd reason as to why they may not give it. They have it but believe this is such an irregulated and fragmented market with no standards devised that some of it may just be misrepresented. This is what I mentioned in a post above which Bobby of Merlin once mentioned, and his speakers usually measured very well in stereophile tests. many of these small manufacturers are fanatic about social media since they do not have the economics of marketing and distribution worked out.

I am not saying its right but thats just the nature of any market ie unless a regulatory body decides and defines the specs to conform to, many may not give that out.

And this is true for any consumer product today including foods and beverages which is of course far more dangerous to health than audio which is "just a hobby".

 

[keith_correa]

And this is true for any consumer product today sold including foods and beverages which is of course far more dangerous to health than audio which is "just a hobby".

I'm not sure why this is happening but we seem to be veering off on different, unrelated, over defensive and disconnected tangents. Maybe it's me, so I'm just going to try to keep away from this thread.

 

[arj]

I like to buy speakers which measure well. Ideally I look for a plus minus 1 dB between 70 Hz to 13 kHz. And a plus minus 3db at 30-35 Hz.

In the past I have bought speakers which don’t adhere to above specs. But what I found is I generally seem to prefer speakers which fall in above specs.

Ditto with source too. I only buy ones that measure well.

I keep my amplifier choice open. I use it to tune the sound to my preference. I feel having one component variable is enough to tune a system to ones preference. But for this to happen the others in the chain have to measure very well and be as neutral as possible.

Above has been my experience

Thats stringent ! I somehow preferred +/- 2 db from 50-10khz and a 3db till 30hz if possible, but again I have realized that my ears are far more forgiving

I'm not sure why this is happening but we seem to be veering off on different, unrelated, over defensive and disconnected tangents. Maybe it's me, so I'm just going to try to keep away from this thread.

No Keith, the topic is still audio as were all the lines above these 2 lines, but the point is that market behavior/economics remains the same. We cannot expect a different behavior from a consumer/manufacturer just because its audio. Unless you are talking of a specialist market like Pro Audio which does behave differently.,

 

[Hari Iyer]

And this is true for any consumer product today including foods and beverages which is of course far more dangerous to health than audio which is "just a hobby".

IMO bad sounding speakers can also be a health hazard if there are serious resonance and phase errors in the design. They can cause irritability syndrome, listening fatigue and sleep disturbance, hallunication, tinnitus and hearing loss in the long run. Collateral damages are huge with family members and neighbours.

 

[prem]

Thats stringent ! I somehow preferred +/- 2 db from 50-10khz and a 3db till 30hz if possible, but again I have realized that my ears are far more forgiving

I try to keep tight specs so that I get some leeway when setting up in the room

 

[Analogous]

Just trying to make sense of this discussion. Here is what I got so far:

Speaker Measurements are good to have if available. Numbers are reassuring
Most manufacturers don’t bother measuring or publishing this as those who want these numbers are insignificant to them (economically/commercially)

A pair of speakers may measure well and not sound great; this is a happy ending for some.
A pair of speakers may measure well and sound not so good; this is a no no for some.
A pair of speakers may measure poorly but sound great to some.
A pair of speakers may sound good but no measurements are available; this is kind of happy with a twinge of uneasiness for some.

This discussion is entertaining, informative, opinionated,..in parts.
FM have become more skilled in using civil language, avoiding personal remarks and trolling while sharing their view points or disagreeing with someone else’s opinions.

Some like to be identified as objectivists and some like to be called subjectivists. Labels are reassuring to some. But, Most sit on the fence watching the fun (and learn?)

A lot of people talk about measurements but very few know how to interpret these measurements meaningfully. (I don’t ) Or relate the numbers to what we hear.

The variables like source material used to evaluate, the amplification equipment matching, the room, the looks/appearance, the brand name, place of manufacture etc all lurk in the background of the discussion as we seek numbers to inform us how we should feel while listening to our music.

 

[square_wave]

Not true at all! There is no such "tuning" of sound for mainstream speakers simply because there is no reference or baseline. They do tune the sound but that's for the type of music, their target audience etc and definitely not for speakers they're going to be played on. Even though I knew the answer, I just called up a friend who is in the "industry" and asked him - all I got was sinister, maniacal laughter.

I think you misconstrued the point I was trying to make. Ask the guy about how different the main master will be from what goes out for making the retail product. Ask what parameters usually get changed.

The retail master ( not sure what the technical name for this is ) is not the flat and dynamic sounding main master that sounds awesome on your main monitor speakers in the studio. It is a tweaked version. Once it is tweaked ( usually to make it sound great on dynamically compressed music listening solutions that are quite popular in the market), it is very debatable whether a flat sounding studio monitor is the best speaker it should be listened to.

 

[square_wave]

I have finally tweaked my OB loudspeaker to measure flat +/- 1.5dB 100 Hz to 10 khz. Anyone interested to discover how bad they sound are welcome for a listen. That should put an end to this debate. -

Btw, I have zero room treatment in my home. Only the usual furniture.

The question is not about whether achieving a baseline for good measurement is good or bad. It is about where you take the design from there..

For example, your speaker is great with measurements? Will it be accepted by a sound engineer as his main monitor?

Does it sound more like a studio monitor or a great sounding home loudspeaker?

The whole point about the discussion is to understand if measurements are the only thing and also will measurements tell the whole story?

Total respect for your loudspeaker design though.

I have spent many hours giving feedback to loudspeaker design purely from a listener perspective over many years to someone pursuing high end manufacturing. Tell you the truth, good measurements are only a baseline. The real hard work starts from that point onwards.

 

[Bloom@83]

I think you misconstrued the point I was trying to make. Ask the guy about how different the main master will be from what goes out for making the retail product. Ask what parameters usually get changed.

The retail master ( not sure what the technical name for this is ) is not the flat and dynamic sounding main master that sounds awesome on your main monitor speakers in the studio. It is a tweaked version. Once it is tweaked ( usually to make it sound great on dynamically compressed music listening solutions that are quite popular in the market), it is very debatable whether a flat sounding studio monitor is the best speaker it should be listened to.

From what I know , the studio uncompressed masters sound very different from what goes out commercially on CDs.
Given a photography analogy , the uncompressed, untweaked studio masters are like the digital RAW files generated by DSLR cameras.
They are huge in size - 5-6 times the size of a JPEG or PNG formats that we see and use normally. They contain the complete dynamic range of an image and all the information that’s captured by the camera sensor.
It’s the job of the skilled editor to bring out the highlights , lowlights , contrast , color tones etcetra of the RAW file , compressed down to a PNG/ JPEG which finally gets published or printed.
And an editor , working on a professionally calibrated monitor , can either do a great job out of it or a botched one.

 

[Hari Iyer]

The question is not about whether achieving a baseline for good measurement is good or bad. It is about where you take the design from there..

For example, your speaker is great with measurements? Will it be accepted by a sound engineer as his main monitor?

Does it sound more like a studio monitor or a great sounding home loudspeaker?

The whole point about the discussion is to understand if measurements are the only thing and also will measurements tell the whole story?

Total respect for your loudspeaker design though.

I have spent many hours giving feedback to loudspeaker design purely from a listener perspective over many years to someone pursuing high end manufacturing. Tell you the truth, good measurements are only a baseline. The real hard work starts from that point onwards.

Thank God we are not discussing speaker cables, IC Cables, amplifiers and power cables, power conditioners in this thread and limiting ourselves only to speaker designs.

Btw, my current speakers were never designed to be monitor speakers, but only for home use. I have probably over engineered other aspects too like my source, speaker cables, IC cables, preamplifier, amplifiers and power cables. It's the entire setup that needs to be considered when evaluating and not in silos imo. If your work takes you near Mumbai / Thane you can discover how the synergy works in my setup w.r.t my room.

 

[Hiten]

posting without any authority on the subject...

It has really good consistency in off-axes responses (upto about 15k). Clearly this is one of the best budget/ value for money fabric dome tweeters around.

Speaker design is complicated. Driver response changes when put in box and flush or differently mounted. A slight variaion on mounting (For ex. There was some reputed brand whose ring surrounding of the driver changes the response. Probably on ASR website )

and about an octave high above its resonant frequency.

idealy 2 octaves is preferred. But manufacturing good tweeter is expensive.

Majority of western or Indian companies dont post measurement.s. (Days of golden era of hifi are over where manufacturers used to do so. in 70s good no. of companies used to provide data). If one desires one can get sufficiently good measurements at home (Being tweeter and mids). There is also problem of sample variation in drivers for budget speakers. No one canbe sure if all would measure same.

Still If anyone is interested to know, some Sonodyne studio monitor were measured by german magazine. And they were appreciated. But Sonodyne does not get mentioned in the forum often.

Linear response gives accurate tone, multidrivers would cover most of frequency band and with low distortion one can play very loud or have somewhat distortion free transients. Having measurements is good but most are immune to slight off response here and there(aakhir brand name bhi koi chhej hoti hai.) So all is good . Even single driver wideband speaker can sound good and are enough for some music. So much depends on personal likings in this hobby.
Regards

 

[Vineethkumar01]

posting without any authority on the subject...

Speaker design is complicated. Driver response changes when put in box and flush or differently mounted. A slight variaion on mounting (For ex. There was some reputed brand whose ring surrounding of the driver changes the response. Probably on ASR website )

I agree that it is complicated but it is manageable complexity. As you said putting drivers on a baffle changes its native response due to baffle diffraction (based on baffle dimensions and edge treatment) and cabinet diffraction based on the ratio of width-depth of the box around the driver. Proper measurements will show all this.
Regarding the ring around the driver, I think you may be referring to the KEF R3 which has what they call a shadow flare. One of its main purposes is to aid smooth wave front expansion and hence better directivity.

idealy 2 octaves is preferred. But manufacturing good tweeter is expensive.

The tweeter mentioned in my post is a good low budget tweeter. There are better tweeters at different price points depending upon application. The 2 octave rule depends on crossover also. In the past people used to say have the tweeter at least 18dB down from its flat level by the frequency it reaches resonance. So a 3rd order (acoustic) high pass filter on the tweeter is good for that. Again it depends upon the application what one wants to achieve with the response of the tweeter

Majority of western or Indian companies dont post measurement.s. (Days of golden era of hifi are over where manufacturers used to do so. in 70s good no. of companies used to provide data). If one desires one can get sufficiently good measurements at home (Being tweeter and mids). There is also problem of sample variation in drivers for budget speakers. No one canbe sure if all would measure same.

I dont know about 70s but if one wants to, as you said, good quality and very useful/insightful measurements can be got even at home with gated polar measurements using REW/ARTA, a calibrated mic like Dayton EMM-6 (or a better one)+ dual channel sound card, a turntable and VituixCAD. Or this is what I use personally.
Attached image is what my Q acoustics 2020i looks like with angular measurements upto 90degrees in the horizontal plane. Due to the symmetry of the construct, this is good enough in horizontal plane and not having vertical polars will result in about +/- 0.5 dB of error in directivity. (Ignore everything below 400 Hz as the gate window is 3.7ms in duration and I haven't stitched it with nearfield measurements in this plot)


Thanks
Vineeth

 

[Enkay78]

A pair of speakers may measure well and not sound great; this is a happy ending for some.
A pair of speakers may measure well and sound not so good; this is a no no for some.
A pair of speakers may measure poorly but sound great to some.
A pair of speakers may sound good but no measurements are available; this is kind of happy with a twinge of uneasiness for some.

Am I missing something? No good speakers with good measurements?

There are many speakers which sound superlative (and respected) which measures extremely well.


IMO the quoted surmises needs ratification by evidences/statistics. A single FM saying a good measuring speaker sounds poor does not have power of significance.

However there are many audio researches proving that good measurements correlates well with sonic qualities. (Preference and taste is different).

 

[Analogous]

ratification by evidences/statistics

I would love that too.
Unfortunately for all of us, this is available for only a small proportion of all available speakers.
This is the reason this thread/discussion was started.

 

[square_wave]

This thread is a good example of motivated perception and motivated reasoning. Many people are just scanning paragraphs and just picking up only stuff that they are motivated to perceive and then just responding to those without considering the big picture.

The subjectivists are just saying that pinnacle of speaker design goes beyond measurements.

The objectivists are just saying that measurements are very important.

Both sides are making perfectly correct statements!

 

[jls001]

Not speaker design per se, but please read this interview of Rob Watts, the designer of Chord's DACs. He uses measurements to design DACs and correlates measurements with subjective listening. The main takeaway for me is the fact that he said that seemingly inconsequential measurements/parameters have far reaching sonic repercussions. All design endeavours of audio electronics and speakers necessarily involves mathematical calculations and a deep understanding of physics. But these are starting points. These are made to reproduce music and therefore any designer would listen to his creation. When psychoacoustics is skillfully added to fine tune the design the end product is more wholesome and pleasing. So both measurements and listening are essential ingredients, IMO.

But to come to the subject, I'm assuming the subject line is a question. If it is, are the measurements needed so that they can be emulated by DIYers?

 

[Hari Iyer]

View attachment 68248

Thanks
Vineeth

The response is not at all flat in room. Most FMs in this thread will like this speaker. -

 

[Hari Iyer]

Check this interview by John Dunlavy where he has mentioned to avoid surrealist subjective listening.

Loudspeaker designer John Dunlavy: By the Numbers...

One of the characteristic traits, I have found, that defines the loudspeaker designer is that they are loners—they seem to avoid one another's company as if on purpose. But if ever you sit down with a designer, all you need to do to open him up is to ask him what he feels to be important in...

www.stereophile.com