how immune are WE from audiphile wankosa??

[terry j]

OK, be honest.

How detached are we really when we evaluate our own creations?? How ruthlessly honest is it actually possible to be I wonder.

"not my child, he must have been led astray by the others, he's an angel really''

What are some of the common reasons given for diy (or net 'diy' designs)??

*you can end up with a comparable or better sound for much less money

*there is really very little r&d in commercial designs, it's all marketing budgets

etc etc (feel free to add your own slant)

And how often do we hear (and I say it to, I'm not particularly immune) wow, I went to the local hi end hi fi store and came away very unimpressed by the high price offerings from the name brands.

So, how much of what we believe is actually true, and how much of it is wishful thinking and/or misplaced pride??

I'm leaving aside the desire, pride. bang for the buck or 'wanting to learn' aspects of building your own speakers, but I'm concentrating on the final sound quality aspect of it all.

Here are some snippets from Dave Moulton, a site that is a great way to while away some time I might add, when he tested a pair of speakers that he thought were the bees knees he and some associates had developed up against sone readily available commercial speakers.

Then, in 1991, my partners and I built some loudspeaker prototypes to test, prototypes that we thought were ready for prime time. So, I called Floyd, we booked NRC and we then took a lovely-looking pair of loudspeakers up to Ottawa, where we spent two days measuring them in the NRC’s anechoic chamber and listening to the them in double blind tests in the NRC’s listening room, comparing our babies to a range of commercially available consumer speakers offered at a variety of different price points. And so began my adult education regarding subjective measurement.

We knew, before we even started, that our loudspeakers were superior. We had no doubts. So, we settled down to listen to our babies behind the black screens. We told ourselves. We filled out our test forms. We described quite convincingly to ourselves exactly in what ways and how it was that our babies, our lovely-looking cherry veneer ready-for-prime-time loudspeakers, sucked.

We told ourselves what was wrong, in comparison with a whole bunch of speakers, with our babies, our beloved prime-time babies. It was traumatic. It was an education. Nobody from NRC came into the room and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Moulton. Your speakers didn’t make the grade.” I wouldn’t have believed them if they had. But I did it. It was me that said, “Hey, self! Your speakers aren’t competitive. Whaddaya think of them apples, eh?” And my partners all agreed. It wasn’t just me. When our speakers were named Speaker D, Speaker D just wasn’t very good. When they changed the name of our speakers to Speaker B, and located them elsewhere in the room (still behind the screen, of course), well, it was Speaker B that came up short.


Here is the original article, well worth a read

http://www.moultonlabs.com/more/some_reminiscing/P0/

So, how confident are you that you have in fact objectively and detachedly (such a word??) evaluated your own speakers???

Now, that is a great idea for a diy event (maybe one for the canada boys)...hire out the NRC facility for a weekend and pit the 'best of the diy crop' against the similar commercial offerings.

I wonder how well the diy stuff would go when it is done blind and simply labeled speaker d!!!

So fellow diyers, how would we actually go??

And if we were barracking for 'our team', which speakers/designs (you know, from Troels, tony g, etc etc...) would we choose as our champion? Or maybe some local 'home grown' stuff like shin or whoever.

What would we be testing? Dollar for dollar, bang for the buck, champion on it's class???

And just for a bit of fun and muck raking, from your own sighted and non-blind listening, which of the big names/tall poppies would you expect to see tumbled??

Except of course, they could come out tops when labeled speaker a against our speaker d!!! as we may have let our 'snobbery and superiority' of diy over commercial influence our tests.

Anyway, it's just that I personally wonder about our ability to really let go of the knowledge that we built the suckers and hence completely honestly be able to judge them.

And boy, wouldn't being able to do a test of that sort at a facility like that be something!!! You would learn so much methinks.

[sqlkev]

I can forsee a few problems w/ such testing.
What if you're comparing a simple 2 ways w/ 6.5 woofer + 1" tweeter to a all horns speaker system in a large listening area?
where are the sweet spots? how narrow are they and vice versa?
what about individual preferences?
I don't like to listen to my speakers flat at all, but someone else might prefer that.

room/listening enviroment and design goals have a tremendous amount of influence in the outcome of a loudspeaker. Me thinks it's best to leave the speakers in the room it was designed for and tweak it to your content, but that's just me.

[Robh3606]

I got a shot about 5 years ago so I guess I need a booster soon.

I have been building speakers for a while and the first real wake-up call was when I got my first rudimentary measurement system. It was just a basic 1/3 octave RTA and I learned quickly that I couldn't always trust what I heard.

I have since moved up but what I really depend on are the various reference systems that I have cloned over the years. I have 2 basic clone systems that I use for comparison purposes. I am actually building a third reference system now to use as comparisons to DIY set-ups I mess around with.

I like to use them as a benchmark to see if what I can come up with is really an improvement or not.

Without the measurement tools and the reference systems I don't see how you can tell if you are really making progress or not. Even then it's not blind but at least it gives you something to compare against.

Rob

[Moondog55]

Interesting post, I for one would be scared to compare mine to a measured reference system, I'm going deaf so what I hear isn't what others will hear, and I still tend to build by ear, and modify when they have been listened to by my partner who has excellent hearing.

I think you have to compare apples with apples.

Audiophiles talk about the sound I just listen to the music

[TomatoBangBang]

Well , i don't know if you liked your speakers because they were your babies or because you liked at this moment some ultra colored sound !

Or may i say you were not enough experienced to get tired of that sound

I never heard about a guy listening since the begining correct tuned speaker, at first you want to be impressed

Well the measurments showed you that


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What is weird too, is that you claim that machines can told you what is good sounding and what is not

[fredex]

No one is immune. A big problem is the room and where the speakers are. A speaker you lovingly tune in your own room and sounds great may disapoint in another setting.
Using just your ears is really hard, you really should get it basically right and use your ears to tweak a bit. You can easily end up going in circles, fixing one aspect of the sound while making another aspect worse, but you don't notice this at first as your concentration is focused elsewhere. Duh!
Sure is fun though.

[David Gatti]

Around 20 years ago I built my first speaker system - a 3 way using Dynaudio drivers. As a uni student it cost me a fortune in parts, and I spent months lovingly crafting the cabinets, tuning the crossover and experimenting with stuffing.

I truly thought they were the last word in high-fidelity and was very proud of my hard work. Keep in mind though, that back then there was no internet, no fancy PC or design software. This was all done by mathematical equations, textbook theories and listening. I thought that the quality drivers all but guaranteed a brilliant final product.

Then one day I listened to my brother cheap Warfedale speakers, which probably cost 1/5th of mine. What a shock to discover that it sounded so much better in so many areas! A humbling experience, and one that taught me to be less subjective and egocentric when evaluating my own designs. Also CAD design, measurements and testing are a must, plus occasional listening to live music and other high-end speakers as a reference.

[the joz]

Terry your not having doubts about your soon tobe nmew born are you???

[Moondog55]

I agree that live music ( orchestral and unamplified acoustic ) is a must; I re=evaluate everything after each concert.
Yes Terry how is the new baby faring ???????

[terry j]

Originally posted by the joz
Terry your not having doubts about your soon tobe nmew born are you???

ha ha, no mate no.

But on another forum there has been a bit of talk about dbt's etc, as well as the old mantra of 'who cares if the speaker is accurate', it's how it 'moooves' you that counts.

You know, typical audiophile guff, and that's after spending mega dollars on the 'best source, best pre amp, best amps and cables ' blah blah blah....but hey let's have a highly coloured pair of speakers to ruin it all shall we??

No, you want coloured then at least do it smartly and have a good equalizer in circuit, that way when you want it to sound like the chipmunks you can, and can at least turn it off.

And the old dbt debate, sigh. 'No way MY ears can be fooled', those pictures in the freezer sure make a heap of difference don't they!

Still, to be honest, none of us are immune from auto suggestion etc, which is what led to these questions.

Seems like I'm the only one that would think it an amazing experience to be exposed to the rigorous methodology of the NRC???

Perhaps another way of putting it, who amongst us would be confident of 'success' if they had their speakers on the carousel up against well regarded commercial offerings...sight unseen?

gee, I get the screaming butterflies when people come to hear my system for the first time, all that worry etc etc (which is silly really, but to a degree we do expose ourselves a bit when others hear it)

Maybe more so when it's diy??? At least if I had a well regarded commercial speaker/system that someone listened to it would be 'less me' under inspection wouldn't it.

No thoughts on which big names might suffer?

Well, let me say my few experiences with WW have been, hmm, less than impressive.

Funnily enough Floyd Toole often mentioned those type of things in his studies, the 'big names' always scored well sighted, but at least in some cases not so well unsighted. And often the person who had marked down the big names in the unsighted test, instead of trusting their own ears, went into self doubt about their hearing!

Speaks volumes for the power of the buzzzz don't it.

The new babies have had to take a back seat for a while, just HAD to get the piece of furniture I'm restoring finished. That should be wrapped up tomorrow (hooray), maybe will post a picture of it as well in the thread.

THEN I have to clean up the place a bit and make it hospitable...have a few people coming in the next couple of weeks.