Do you measure then listen or listen then measure?

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
I find it useful to at least make an impedance sweep measurement before hooking up the amp. Maybe not everyone has to double check their own work, but I do this out of routine. :eek:

After I hook it up, I might listen a little bit, but spl measurements are used to validate or reveal any primary issues.

It is interesting to see if my own ears might pick up on an spl peak (or null), if the mic measurements show it. Sometimes the problem is that I may not have a source (cd) that has the frequency band in question.

As an example, I found a replacement tweeter with similar specs to the original. At most, I figured that a small padding resistor may be necessary. The microphone measured a narrow 4-6 dB peak at around 11 kHz. I didn't notice it with a few cds that I listened to. A friend put on a jazz cd that had a particular saxophone passage, which really brought out the shrillness at that peak. After more measurements with the microphone, the peak was due to the abrupt edge of the tweeter flange, and was resolved by flush-mounting it.

I tend to use the microphone first, as the resolution tends to reveal the whole picture (through the audio spectrum). Then I go to listening. Then maybe back and forth, especially if there are tweaks done along the way.
 
Loudspeakers are highly subjective so personally I found listening to a driver first. Its tonal qualities and its general usable bandwidth, is what I found most useful before measurements. Clarity with low orders of harmonic distortion is what I find important, then a possible design might follow.

C.M
 
Last edited:
Arrogance, arrogance, arrogance. Everybody is certain they can hear and discriminate what frequencies and bands are errant. Toole showed you can't tell with music a boost in the upper bass from a cut in the lower treble and vice versa.

Granted the hearing situation is better than colour vision where you just can't no-how judge what are the colour pigments of a colour. But you can't just listen to a sound and have a good notion of what the FR is like.

Granted.you can play a soprano singing and decide if the sibilants are peaked or something a bit lower down in the tone compass is amiss and with long and patient efforts using recordings you've played on many systems for decades, you can take a shot at fixing.

While there's no disputing taste in sound, you can't get great sound that works for all recorded sources (esp newer and better recordings) by simply listening. A quick run with REW (or even test tones, in a pinch*) will illuminate the situation (including distortion and "group delay" issues) right away.

B.
*I've been using the Pop Science test record sweep band 300-20 Hz with cricket markers at 50 Hz intervals since 1957 and have developed a certain acquaintance with it
 
Last edited:
Administrator
Joined 2004
Paid Member
But you can't just listen to a sound and have a good notion of what the FR is like.
Well, maybe you can't, but plenty of people who make a living in pro audio can. If they couldn't, they'd lose their jobs. If you can't quickly reach over and pull down the right EQ slider to kill feedback right now, you shouldn't be doing the job. Ditto for finding problems on the channel strip. All it takes is practice and experience. Outside the business I can also show you FR graphs of crossovers done completely by ear.

As for me, I listen first, because listening is the ultimate goal. Measurement comes next, to confirm and refine what you hear - and maybe look for surprises. :)
 
Measure first, ask questions, then listen. If it measures good, it will most likely sound good.

It's incremental and repetitive for me. I need repeatable measurements to help identify where the problems are. My ears always have the final say after measuring.
 
Since the midrange is the most important part, I tend to go for the midrange first. Once I get a good handle on the midrange, I then sample the tweeter and see how it will integrate with the midrange. Once I got the mid and tweeter integrated to my satisfaction, I then measure the bass. Someone mentioned the iterative process which I tend to alternate adjusting between the midrange and tweeter integration. Since the bass frequency is long relatively, so integration is not as difficult and it only has to do with adjusting the bass level to the rest and it only takes one or two time adjusting the bass. The mid and tweeter tend to take the most time.
 
Last edited:
I sit down and listen my playlist for testing loudspeakers. It is music i know so well and i listened for so many times that i'm almost sick when i have to do this. Then i write down my conclusions. After that i measure to check if my conclusions matches measurements - they mostly do.

I do make impedance sweep (as DaveR mentioned) just to make sure everything is connected as it should be.
 
Last edited:
I always listen first - not because of any technical reason but because of impatience and curiosity.

Then there will be measuring - finetuning - listening - finetuneing - measuring - finetuning ...

I would not dare to rely on listening alone. There will always be problems that are not revealed by listening alone.

Regards

Charles
 
The order of things is not that important to me, because, mostly for me getting things to work the way I want it is an iterative process. If you walk a circle several times, does it matter where you start?

Most of the times I first check the drivers. Do they look OK? Apply some signal to them, do they make a sound? Then, exercise them a little bit with a signal below resonance. Do the cones move without scraping or other funny noises? If these basics check out OK, I break them in a little, and measure T-S parameters. Then the build starts. As soon as I put a driver in its enclosures, I test with sweeps, music and whatnot, just to get an objective and subjective idea on how the system performs as things progress. Sometimes, issues show up worse in plots than in a subjective impression or the other way around, but I have never found that I couldn't correlate things I heard with my measurements.

There are several things that need to be addressed as the build/tuning progresses, and measurements serve to identify these things. But the subjective impression (listening) will guide me to what needs to be addressed first. So the process really becomes something like simulate-tinker-listen-tinker-measure-listen-tinker-measure-whatever in no particular order. Just what happens to be the thing I feel like doing most. But the cornerstone of the process is always: the measurements help me identify the points to be addressed, but the listening (and of course my mood) will tell me what to do next. I keep going until I feel satisfied or until I am fed up with it.

So it is not a linear process like select drivers, measure drivers, design, simulate, build, measure (verify), done, sounds great! I'm not that good.
 
I measure first, and measure again.

How else do you cut the baffle with any accuracy? ;)

100% with Pano. Working with any decent mix or monitor engineer will disprove Ben’s statement.

I live in the DSP world and I measure first. The end game is good sound and I get there much faster with tools.

Barry.
 
I00% with Pano. Working with any decent mix or monitor engineer will disprove Ben’s statement.

I live in the DSP world and I measure first. The end game is good sound and I get there much faster with tools.
Well, in the end we all agree.

But I am mightily miffed that Pano quoted me out of context. I gave a few examples of how you detect problems by ear and implied you can make yourself happy enough if you have a lot of time and experience. But along with Barry, I don't think you ever have the quality results REW would give in 1/100 of the time.

Once again folks bringing examples from PA practice as "lessons" for quality audio design. Very different worlds.* As far as the very crude adjustment needed to make an awful school gymnasium with howl back sound tolerable with a 5-band EQ, that is not a meaningful comparison to the level of attention I give to my DSP-EQ system.

You'd think the "ear" advocates in this thread had never heard why blind testing is used.

B.
*I'll resist adding comments about tapped "horns" here
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.