Loudspeakers - looking for a correlation between measurements and listening impressions

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#61
mayhem13 said:
There's multiple challenges and problems to your quest but first and foremost....
What is the reference or Benchmark?
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well if i should decide i would perform some blind tests listening to a real musical performance and the same performance recorded and played back through speakers At some point i should be fooled to listen to the real while i am actually listening the recording
Extreme realism
mayhem13 said:
I'll give you a hint,......in the interpretation of Art regardless of the medium, there is none.Human beings are tremendously susceptible to bias......subjective, suggestive, objective.......you name it......the most difficult person to be honest with is yourself.
Sighted listening is just about the best way to establish a baseline bias..........a misguided understanding of how you perceive the world around you is.....i can see it, therefor it is............not a good place to find yourself if enjoying music for the satisfaction for the whole thing
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i agree and this is way the listening must be done in the dark or blindfolded I did it sometimes but never got the feeling of complete realism
The vision of the equipment can be deceiving The vision sense must be switched off I believe a lot in blind test
This is a video that i found very interesting I think they made some mistakes but the goal was very fascinating


the interesting part is the final comments from people attending the event
someone even preferred the recorded performance !
 
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#62
Of course there are measurements for almost every physical phenomena, but the problem is not the measurement it is the subjective perception of the listener, that unfortunately is not measurable it is well, nonsense. You should be able to read the measurements and in your head visualize exactly how it will sound, now imaginative. Did they really go to the moon using computers less capable than your phone? 🤔
 
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#64
have you ever listened to your system wearing a sleeping mask ? i meant this for blind listening Very easy to do
I had a weird experience listening to huge JBL monitors With the system warmed up at a certain point they disappear sonically but not visually of course
it was amazing Then the owner switched off the lights on the speakers and we see the concert hall in the dark
One thing is listening another seeing
I like black boxes without lights on them
 
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#65
I have found out this year that noise and distortion in the sound comes mostly from things totally unrelated to the high system, not the electronics, not the speakers, not the cabling, not acoustic anomalies in the room or the house AC or even RFI. And I can prove it. Even with controlled blind testing. How bout them apples? Kind of makes all the measurements of speakers and amplifiers, etc. seem uh, defunct. Y’all been following the wrong sheep.
 
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#66
Very interesting thank you I wanted to say that the perception of the sound can vary looking at the system and the environment and instead being blindfolded I hear more things and usually the system seems to sound better In some case quite better
very easy test
 
#67
ginetto61 said:
Thanks again Actually this is what i have in mind but i would like to keep the fullrange outside in a small box
i understand it has just to be very heavy While for the woofer the cabinet must be stiff to move resonances up in frequency
i have learned the lesson now
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that's what i do also, the mark audio is in a 11.5L sealed cabinet. The amps are Ncore amps and the crossover is a MiniDSP Flex.

This is the stack about 4 years ago, when i was still using passive crossovers and a tube amp, what also worked very well. Now the tube amp is used elswhere in my house...
DSC_0210-2020-e.jpg
 
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#68
Don't understand me wrong, imagination is a weird phenomena. You can see, feel, hear, smell and taste very realistic things in your head, even see ghosts when you are in the right state of mind. If you are very relaxed and the environment is right and you are subjected to some beat (a voice, ticking clock, dripping water, music) you can enter a state of self hypnosis which is not uncommon at all.

Speakers disappearing, orchestras emerging, all kinds of things and it is not related to the quality of your system, it is you becoming absolutely involved. When someone turns on the light or turns off the music, you feel as you not quite sure what happened almost awakening from a dream.

It often happens with headphone listening, sitting in a comfortable position, lights dimmed, eyes closed no distraction, you actually become part of the environment in your head.

You often see someone on the bus or train listening to music with earphones and you recognize them not actually being there and forgetting to get off at their stop. They were not asleep, they were temporally removed from reality.
 
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#69
very nice system It is exactly the concept i have in mind
For the full range i would like to use some small cabinets i have at hand maybe increasing their mass with some lead sheets
but the real only requirements is for the two boxes to be separated
i do not understand to use a single box when the requirements for low and mid high frequencies are so different
 
#71
Nico Ras said:
Don't understand me wrong, imagination is a weird phenomena. You can see, feel, hear, smell and taste very realistic things in your head, even see ghosts when you are in the right state of mind. If you are very relaxed and the environment is right and you are subjected to some beat (a voice, ticking clock, dripping water, music) you can enter a state of self hypnosis which is not uncommon at all.
Speakers disappearing, orchestras emerging, all kinds of things and it is not related to the quality of your system, it is you becoming absolutely involved. When someone turns on the light or turns off the music, you feel as you not quite sure what happened almost awakening from a dream.
It often happens with headphone listening, sitting in a comfortable position, lights dimmed, eyes closed no distraction, you actually become part of the environment in your head.
You often see someone on the bus or train listening to music with earphones and you recognize them not actually being there and forgetting to get off at their stop. They were not asleep, they were temporally removed from reality.
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well that is wonderful Often the reality is not nice
I found in the words of a reviewer what i am looking for

I found it disorienting to slip the headsets on and be immediately transported into the acoustic of the chapel—which makes me wonder how the characters on Star Trek can handle transporter beams with such aplomb. Ah, the wonders of bad acting.
It sounds silly, but I'm not kidding. Putting on the Nova Sigs took me so totally into a different space that it was confusing.
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https://www.stereophile.com/content/stax-lambda-nova-signature-electrostatic-ear-speaker-page-3
 
#74
I used three stereo amps with electronic cross over, variable frequency variable slope and phase and variable amplitude. (It was modeled on SL late prototype cross-over box). I made not a single measurement but tuned the system in my listening room to exactly how I wanted it to sound and it did. I lived with these speakers for maybe 15+ years and never changed them. When we moved were we retired, the movers dropped one box from the truck and it was destroyed. No insurance money could ever replace them ever. I took the drivers out and stored them.

DSC00136.jpg
 
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#75
Impressive set up indeed Sorry for the accident I have bad memories about relocations 😒
I had to give away some equipment for lack of space to store them Some of them i regret Like a nice Primare preamp Full of opamps😊
but i need to keep things simpler i like to swap parts from one unit to another I have no high end pretensions. Just satisfactory sound.
but biamping a two ways seems a very good thing to do It will make things more complex I do not know
i have the feeling the bad passive xovers can make disasters indeed the good ones look very expensive
 
#76
ginetto61 said:
well if i should decide i would perform some blind tests listening to a real musical performance and the same performance recorded and played back through speakers At some point i should be fooled to listen to the real while i am actually listening the recording
Extreme realism

i agree and this is way the listening must be done in the dark or blindfolded I did it sometimes but never got the feeling of complete realism
The vision of the equipment can be deceiving The vision sense must be switched off I believe a lot in blind test
This is a video that i found very interesting I think they made some mistakes but the goal was very fascinating


the interesting part is the final comments from people attending the event
someone even preferred the recorded performance !
Click to expand...
Dude I’ve been a recording/live engineer for 40 years……..you’re extreme realism is a pipe dream….let it go.

My point was that there isn’t or shouldnt be a benchmark…..your personal enjoyment and preference is the benchmark……it’s exactly what some of the most revered and famous speaker systems are also the same that measure so horribly.
 
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#77
lcsaszar said:
Would you mind to share the model of this loudspeaker?
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Alas, this has been out of production for some 2 decades. I don't think the cone material or the treble dome material is available any longer either.

Some of my friends are trying to corner the 2nd hand market for these unicorns and would not like me to reveal its identity.

A small number of (sighted) listening tests this Millenium suggest it is still one of the best speakers around; certainly the best small speaker.
 
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#78
kgrlee said:
To find the correlation between measurements & listening, you must first make the 'listening' a measurement. ie it must be a repeatable experiment. You do this with DBLTs.

When you start doing this, you quickly find certain unwelcome truths. eg
  • most (all?) wannable Golden Pinnae are deaf (give random results in DBLTs).
  • HiFi Reviewers are mostly deaf compared to the 'man in the street'. (There are a VERY few exceptions)
  • The 'woman in the street' is more perceptive than the 'man in the street' so pay attention when your girlfriend, wife, mother says, "I don't like this new one as much as your old one."
If you do enough DBLTs, you will eventually find stuff that is useful to you in designing speakers. eg
  • Good speakers are preferred by ALL types of (perceptive) listeners ... this includes, recording engineers, speaker designers, teenage pop lovers, classical musicians to da guy who designs his own microphones and insists on using his own recordings done with them. From this, I conclude there is such a thing as a 'good speaker' ... one which is preferred by everyone who can actually hear the difference reliably.
  • Above a quite low standard, THD has little relevance. There are speakers with high measured THD that perceptive listeners say sound low distortion.
  • A nice frequency response and CDS (waterfall) is one of the hall marks of a good speaker but not the only one.
In some 20 yrs of DBLTs, the best performing speaker was a small 5 ltr (?) box. It came out top in every DBLT, more than a dozen, usually against MUCH bigger and $$$ speakers. VERY few listeners (a couple of recording engineers) realise it has limited LF, but still say they like the bass. No other speaker has a record even near this. I wish I knew what made this speaker so good. Though it had loadsa ju ju we developed and pioneered, we had other speakers with the same ju ju which perform well .. but not as well as this little box in DBLTs. About the only magic I am sure of replicating is the LF response.

But there is a clue. The Room Interface Profile is a naive 1D signal path which somehow incorporates the total magic. You can clearly hear it ... or the lack of it. If I am lucky, I might figure out how to 'measure' this signal path and grok da magic before I drop dead.

But how do you deal with the unwashed masses of deaf Golden Pinnae? No point designing stuff to suit their ears cos they are deaf. For them (including most HiFi reviewers), you say loudly and clearly that your stuff is Hand Carved from Unobtainium and Solid BS by Virgins.
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Tiny and large speakers can NEVER truly be compared over the full spectrum without the addition of a subwoofer.
You could add a 'truck-load' of EQ to a tiny speaker and listen at very low levels > but this is NOT 'real world'.
 
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#79
Presumably, you've actually tried to conduct DBLTs of big speakers vs small speaker (like I have 😊 ) It's not easy and also VERY expensive to do properly. But the results are illuminating and surprising as I've noted.

About the only fancy electronics (apart from the tools to do DBLTs) was a 1000W/channel amp so the 80dB/2.83V @ 1m speakers are not disadvantaged against the 94dB ones ... especially on uncompressed live recordings.

At that time, only one amp with that power was good enough to be blameless. We lent it to What HiFi for their early mass reviews of speakers.
 
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