Objectivist or Subjectivist? Give Me a Break

so exhausted you need to leave letters out if you persist with 'forum monikers'? (...)


Apologies for my mistake in your moniker - I will correct it in a few minutes.

Your irate sound and final insidious advices makes me leave this FR debate - it is useless.

Take care.
 
Rob, hope we are not confusing phase with polarity?

Hello Terryj

If you flip the positive and negative leads on a driver in a system you just did the equivalent a 180 degree phase change. The phase change is what gives you the destructive interference and notch in the FR. If you look at the poles in a 12db network 180 degrees hence the polarity change on one of the drivers.

As far as drivers there are many older JBL's that are opposite the normal convention of a + and the Red gives you a forward cone motion. I look at polarity as a driver issue more than a system issue. Once you get the polarity of the drivers worked out you just go from there. I have my own weird way of looking at it but I do recognize the difference.

Rob:)
 
The first graph is the Q5??

60 thou gets you that?

And all this time your argument hinged on people being unable to do as good a job as the 'passive experts'. And you show that graph with a straight face?

Forget the peaky response in the bass, it is not even level matched despite the response.

But the bling and the blurb makes up for it I guess. The B&B.

It's not even full range for god's sake.

Perhaps, we should consider understanding these graphs better before we spend so many characters on what we think is important. According to JA measurements, the Q5 FR is within +/- 3db from 30Hz to 30K. It is only 7db down at 20Hz. In comparison to what many here consider a full range loudspeaker; the Maxx 3 is 24db down at 20Hz. The Q5 has more than 1/2 an octave more extension on the bottom and a full one on the top! It is also much smoother, which, BTW, also matter.You could manipulate this depending on where your reference fq point is, but that does not change the premise of what I am saying.
I would argue that the Q5 has one of the better FR JA has measured, especially given the fact that it is one of the fullest (If not THE fullest) range, non-active, speaker he has ever measured.
 
Perhaps, we should consider understanding these graphs better before we spend so many characters on what we think is important. According to JA measurements, the Q5 FR is within +/- 3db from 30Hz to 30K. It is only 7db down at 20Hz. In comparison to what many here consider a full range loudspeaker; the Maxx 3 is 24db down at 20Hz. The Q5 has more than 1/2 an octave more extension on the bottom and a full one on the top! It is also much smoother, which, BTW, also matter.You could manipulate this depending on where your reference fq point is, but that does not change the premise of what I am saying.
I would argue that the Q5 has one of the better FR JA has measured, especially given the fact that it is one of the fullest (If not THE fullest) range, non-active, speaker he has ever measured.

Excellent points.
 
Perhaps, we should consider understanding these graphs better before we spend so many characters on what we think is important. According to JA measurements, the Q5 FR is within +/- 3db from 30Hz to 30K. It is only 7db down at 20Hz. In comparison to what many here consider a full range loudspeaker; the Maxx 3 is 24db down at 20Hz. The Q5 has more than 1/2 an octave more extension on the bottom and a full one on the top! It is also much smoother, which, BTW, also matter.You could manipulate this depending on where your reference fq point is, but that does not change the premise of what I am saying.
I would argue that the Q5 has one of the better FR JA has measured, especially given the fact that it is one of the fullest (If not THE fullest) range, non-active, speaker he has ever measured.

You are addressing the most important aspect. Just one detail - the other speaker was the Magico V3 - I did not want to re-start the M-W war.

If you look in detail at the V5 you will see a regular tilt up between 2 and 10 kHz of about 5 dB at maximum and a fall between 10 and 20KHz. I doubt this this a flat FR ... It looks rather "tailored" - for me with good results, considering my (short) audition of this model.
 
Perhaps, we should consider understanding these graphs better before we spend so many characters on what we think is important. According to JA measurements, the Q5 FR is within +/- 3db from 30Hz to 30K. It is only 7db down at 20Hz. In comparison to what many here consider a full range loudspeaker; the Maxx 3 is 24db down at 20Hz. The Q5 has more than 1/2 an octave more extension on the bottom and a full one on the top! It is also much smoother, which, BTW, also matter.You could manipulate this depending on where your reference fq point is, but that does not change the premise of what I am saying.
I would argue that the Q5 has one of the better FR JA has measured, especially given the fact that it is one of the fullest (If not THE fullest) range, non-active, speaker he has ever measured.

Not sure where the maxx 3 came into it, I checked the graphs from 'Jeff Fritz' and did not see them measured there either so I can't quite follow that part of the post, sorry.

Any idea of what level of smoothing has been applied to the graphs from stereophile?? I presume it is always the same, must admit it has not occurred to me to find that out before.

As you rightly point out, we often look at the window within which the measurements fall, in this case +- 3db. One of the planks as it were for the 'anti' measurement people, because you can line up fifty speakers all falling within +- 3db and yes, at last, have them sound completely different.:D And yes, smoothness does matter, greatly.

I assume (?) the Q5 is a three way...well a quick glance at that response suggests the tweeter is slightly hot (or mid slightly recessed), based an a reasonable assumption that the tweeter crosses somewhere about 3k. That could be totally wrong in actuality, it could cross higher or lower. But a reasonable first guess. Drop that by two or so db and it would fall into line much better.

That suggests voicing?? Fair enough, we all make products according to what we like or think makes it more appealing to the market, whatever the reasons behind it.

Do you have any thoughts on the question raised, namely how 'useless' or 'wrong' the bass measurements are?? I have given up asking micro anything, he's good at throwing challenges out to others (who usually answer BTW) but not so good on the reverse flow.

As those measurements stand however, personally I would not at all be happy with them as published. For 60 thou I expect stellar performance, could care less about how shiny the cabinet is, or if it was milled from solid aircraft grade aluminium with fancy spikes.

You mention it (from that graph) being only 7 db down at twenty, ok sure. It does not concern you in the slightest that that makes it then down 13 db in only an octave and a half ? I mean it is up 7 db at 50, down 7 at twenty. That all changes in the room, to what we do not know.

Again, a reasonable assumption is a xover point somewhere around 200 hz, I guess you have to run the bass hot (as it is) in order to be only 7 db down at twenty. Is that the rationale?? Who knows.

Your last line is the most telling perhaps, as not only might it be true it goes straight to the heart of how and why those graphs came up! They only appeared as a rebuttal to Tim and it was claimed that active can't make it in the market place because the poor boobs who design them have no clue! They do not appear because those bozos cannot for the life of them design a speaker that performs as well as a passive speaker.

This graph, tendered as evidence, is one of (if not the) most accurate full range passive speaker available?

God help us all.



I can tell you that me, a poor old diy bozo unemployed house husband (supposedly) has an active speaker which runs rings around measurements like those. Measurements don't tell all? Fine. But as they were introduced as some sort of evidence for something, then on those grounds at least the claim that active cannot compete are demonstrably rubbish.

Ps micro, I don't care about the typo! I can't call you by your first name cause I don't know what it is, but mine (except for my own typo when registering) is obviously Terry (j). I can never quite understand then why people write terryj. I mean I write microstrip (or micro) as that is all I have. But if you are going to be 'formal' and always write terryj rather than terry, then fine. In those cases it is amusing when it get's mispelled (trying to be 'formal') and in that case it was extra amusing to tie it in with the 'exhaustion' bit.

Hi Rob

firstly, just curious...reckon you can equal the response graphs from stereophile earlier:D??

Yeah, get the 180 phase reversal, but was that what we were talking about before? If it were, then there would be very few components making it to market with incorrectly wired up drivers (if talking about speakers). TBH I cannot say exactly what phase is when we are talking about things other than swapped pos or neg wires. That obviously shows I am not fully conversant with the whole area.

I guess what i mean is correct phase thru all the frequencies of the pass band. Thru that pass band (remember, this is only my poor understanding of the actual thing) then each frequency would be delayed according the slowest in that band, then they all arrive at once. Could be wrong technically, but that at least is conceptually how I view it.

The best demonstration of this is on a single driver. It has no drivers that can be connected in wrong polarity, and no xover to muddy the waters so to speak. You can also leave the FR unchanged to more completely isolate the effects of 'correcting the phase' within the passband.

I find it has the greatest effect on the 'space'.
 
i think i just thought up a really easy way to describe phase:

ok, at the olympics, all those runners on that round track are at their starting blocks, but they are all spaced apart from one another, cause the ones in the outer lanes have to run further to get to the finish line thatn the ones in the inner lances. Just to make it easy, say they are all spaced 50 yard apart. each runner is a different frequency.

If you get that concept, if the amps or electronics do not change the phase of frequenices, then when they are done running, they will all still be 50 yards apart. ie, the timing between them all from the output of the cd player till the output of the speaker did not change, then no phase change.

Err, if they were not all together at the finish line I'd be calling foul!:p

They're not 'fifty yards apart', they are all exactly the same distance from the finishing line.

So if the timing were perfect (or maybe another analogy, if the handicapping on the horses were perfect) then they should all cross the finish line at exactly the same time.

That they cross at different times (we have first, second third etc) shows that the timing is NOT the same for these different frequencies (runners).

Personally, I doubt there is much phase problems contained in amps say, and if there were phase problems they would be very gradual and over a large span (??), quite unlike the drivers of a speaker which contain them within their passband.
 
You Aussies have this wicked, irreverent sense of humor. Hilarious! :D
 
I shall remember that the next time we have an analogue dialogue. :D
 
The above referenced post has stood without a response for 24 hours from a single so-called suubjectivist. This provides substantive proof that subjectivists are willing to live and let live. OTOH objectivists have droned on for 85 pages. Smile
 

Say it is not so Don. Even though it took over 27 hours and it was done by proxy the first insult was hurled.
Needless to say, most people making this claim - including "The Audiophiliac" - have little or no technical background. So it's not surprising to see similar such comments in his latest article, including "measurements have little to do with the sound of music" and "the real goal of a hi-fi is to play music and not test tones."
Of course such "audiofool" [emphasis supplied]notions are easily refuted. And the author is certainly entitled to his opinion that the best path to achieving "good sound" is through subjective evaluation and the use of less-than-accurate audio reproduction equipment. But wait, there's more.
 
The above referenced post has stood without a response for 24 hours from a single so-called suubjectivist.

Right, because there's nothing to refute. Sure, you could use logical fallacies or Paul Ryan-type outright lies and make up an attack on the car specs analogy. But your argument that something is wrong because nobody refuted it is "interesting" to say the least. If I ever need a criminal defense lawyer, you're definitely my guy. :D

--Ethan
 
Say it is not so Don. Even though it took over 27 hours and it was done by proxy the first insult was hurled.

No, the one you emphasized would not even be the first one in your own quote. That would "the real goal of a hi-fi is to play music and not test tones." We're not children. We've all been hanging around these sites long enough to know exactly what that exceedingly common remark implies, and to fully understand that it is an insult.

Tim
 

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