Gizmodo Visit With Mikey

[Dre_J]

I think I've been pretty consistent in showing that most reviewers, including Fremer, have mediocre rooms. It's a joke to review $350,000 gear in such a crappy setup. Feel free to disagree all you want. I'm not likely to change my opinion.

Maybe that new statement is the subject for another thread (High dollar equipment in a "mediocre" room and the manufactures/dealers that sell to them anyway). Although, don't you think it would be more productive to at least hear the room before declaring it crappy?

BTW: I'm not interested in changing your opinion. Far from it...

For me, part of understanding the mindset of an individual is trying to grasp (and sometimes respect) their perspective. It simply helps me (and maybe others if I can get more of your specifics) understand you better with your own words instead of forming a bogus or fictional view of those thoughts.

Dre

 

[dallasjustice]

I'm not the one reviewing $350,000 systems and claiming to hear profound differences between one $55,000 stereo amp and another pair of $180,000 monoblocs. The burden of proof is on the one making the claims, not me. I am just providing my skepticism and offering basic room commonsense to help others understand how gross the errors are in these rooms in comparison to the trivial differences between solid state amplifiers, for example. For many, this hobby has devolved into serial electronic component deification. Most folks don't give the slightest thought to how components might interact with the far more profound system filter, and it doesn't come in a beautiful aluminum box.

I think w/o actually hearing the setup, your opinion is hard to take seriously.

 

[mep]

Wow, wow, wow! I see Myles inadvertently started a s**t storm here by posting an article about MF. My listening room is a mess right now too so I shan't be throwing any stones Mikey's way. In fact, I have less excuses than Mikey does for not keeping my room cleaner.

As for Dallas and the rarefied air that he breaths in, I don't know how much money is supposed to be sunk into a room and how big it has to be before it receives his approval. Let's face it, some people just don't like reviewers and won't waste any opportunity to take pot shots at them. My room is 15' W x 23' D x 9' H with an 'L' shape at the listening end that adds another 4' in width to the room. Is that large enough? Is my room good enough? I'm just damn glad to have a room that I can call my own and knowing it's sound isolated from the rest of my house. It's very special to me.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Make sure to read the last paragraph.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexandria-xlf-loudspeaker-measurements

 

[MylesBAstor]

Wow, wow, wow! I see Myles inadvertently started a s**t storm here by posting an article about MF. My listening room is a mess right now too so I shan't be throwing any stones Mikey's way. In fact, I have less excuses than Mikey does for not keeping my room cleaner.

As for Dallas and the rarefied air that he breaths in, I don't know how much money is supposed to be sunk into a room and how big it has to be before it receives his approval. Let's face it, some people just don't like reviewers and won't waste any opportunity to take pot shots at them. My room is 15' W x 23' D x 9' H with an 'L' shape at the listening end that adds another 4' in width to the room. Is that large enough? Is my room good enough? I'm just damn glad to have a room that I can call my own and knowing it's sound isolated from the rest of my house. It's very special to me.

The number of owners with "normal" rooms far outweighs those with "customized" rooms. Hence, one of the difficulties of being a speaker designer eg. to make your product work in a variety of rooms. And the variability of listening conditions is something that Wilson for one, allows for, in many of his models. Another way of looking at it is if a speaker works in a hotel room, the chances of it sounding good in your room is increased.

Funny thing is I don't know one orchestra hall or club that measures flat.

 

[dallasjustice]

Make sure to read the last paragraph.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/wilson-audio-specialties-alexandria-xlf-loudspeaker-measurements

"I suspect this is due to interference between the direct sound from the midrange units and the reflection from the sidewalls. (The floor-bounce cancellation of the woofers' output will be above their passband and is thus inconsequential.) The 200Hz dip is inevitable given the room dimensions, and I suspect that much of the fine-tuning of the speakers' positions is to arrange for this cancellation notch to have the least effect on music."

Thanks Myles! It's an SBIR. It doesn't matter how expensive the speaker or how awesome the hand claps were when they were setup. The fact is that setting speakers up that close to boundaries affects the sound. Things can be done to mitigate the effects though. It doesn't look like much is done in MF's room to mitigate the SBIRs.

 

[mep]

"I suspect this is due to interference between the direct sound from the midrange units and the reflection from the sidewalls. (The floor-bounce cancellation of the woofers' output will be above their passband and is thus inconsequential.) The 200Hz dip is inevitable given the room dimensions, and I suspect that much of the fine-tuning of the speakers' positions is to arrange for this cancellation notch to have the least effect on music."

Thanks Myles! It's an SBIR. It doesn't matter how expensive the speaker or how awesome the hand claps were when they were setup. The fact is that setting speakers up that close to boundaries affects the sound. Things can be done to mitigate the effects though. It doesn't look like much is done in MF's room to mitigate the SBIRs.

So how bad does Steve's room sound?

 

[microstrip]

I think I've been pretty consistent in showing that most reviewers, including Fremer, have mediocre rooms. It's a joke to review $350,000 gear in such a crappy setup. Feel free to disagree all you want. I'm not likely to change my opinion.

I think in audiophile matters involving stereo we should not expect other members to change opinions based in our posts, although some people constantly seem to be in a crusade and feel disappointed when we disagree.

IMHO you have showed very little, almost nothing using the Stereophile graph and any one reading hifi magazines articles and reviews and wanting to learn from them will learn a lot more from MF than just looking at single FR graphs. IMHO if people want to go the measurements way, a way that I respect, then they must go full way, going into deep extended measurements and careful analysis of them. And also IMHO, words like joke and crappy do not help you showing your point. They just show you do not understand or disagree with MF and many others view on sound reproduction.

 

[microstrip]

Wow, wow, wow! I see Myles inadvertently started a s**t storm here by posting an article about MF. (...)

Mark,

IMHO not a storm, but matter for an interesting debate.

 

[dallasjustice]

So how bad does Steve's room sound?

I presume you are talking about Steve Williams. I am glad you brought him up.

What Steve has done is exactly what any smart person that honorably and through very hard work earned the money to acquire the system of his dreams. Folks like Steve understand that it's not good enough to buy the boxes and be done with it. This hobby is distinct from many of the collection-hobbies in that it's not good enough to buy expensive stuff. That's not even half the battle. The hard part is figuring out how to make the stuff sound best. That's what Steve has done. Steve is motivated to make his expensive gear sound best because HE earned the money to PAY for it. You think if someone had just dropped the boxes off at his front door, he would have gone to the incredible efforts of time and money to build a first class listening space? I doubt it. That's really the reason reviewers don't have quality listening spaces. It's not their gear! They are just borrowing the stuff.

I haven't been to Steve's room either, but I bet it sounds a heck of a lot better than MF's room.

 

[Steve Williams]

So how bad does Steve's room sound?

I don't have those issues Mark the way my room was treated. Having said that, the reason i did what I did and had it treated the way I did was because of my concern for the very issues that Michael mentioned here.

So to some extent I disagree with Michael about how large speakers don't work in a small room.

 

[cjfrbw]

If Steve's room sounds better than his old room, as reputed, it has got to be knock out.

John Atkinson also has kind of a pig pen room, but it is the comfy, very well used room of an audiophile space cadet, kind of like mine. Don't think my room would really disturb a clutterphobic TOO much. I do prefer something that is vividly lived in rather than merely an equipment exhibition space.

 

[mep]

I don't have those issues Mark the way my room was treated. Having said that, the reason i did what I did and had it treated the way I did was because of my concern for the very issues that Michael mentioned here.

So to some extent I disagree with Michael about how large speakers don't work in a small room.

He made the statement that you can't have speakers next to room boundaries and not expect problems:

Size matters when it comes to listening rooms.

With speakers that large and and so many boundaries so close to each speaker, he will have 3 significant SBIRs (ceiling, sidewall and frontwall). I don't understand why this is controversial for you. Atkinson has posted 1/6 FR of Fremer's room in Stereopile. You can review it yourself. In fact, he's mentioned how low Fremer's ceiling is. Look at figure number 6. This is only 1/6 averaging, but you can see a good 10-15db energy loss covering almost all of the lower bass to mid-bass. I am sure if we got more detailed measurements you would see the individual nulls for each of the three boundaries mentioned herein.

I read that as a condemnation of your room too. I know he did the Texas two-step in his last reply with regards to your room, but I don't see how his criticisms of MFs room wouldn't apply to a large extent with your room either.

 

[dallasjustice]

I said that MF made no efforts to deal with the well documented SBIRs in his room caused by small room size. Steve obviously has done that. Steve has purpose built false walls that are specifically designed to mitigate room ringing and SBIRs. I've never criticized Steve's room. You mentioned Steve's room and I am glad you did because it shows the difference between how a reviewer approaches this hobby and a real passionate owner appoaches this hobby. It's totally different.

He made the statement that you can't have speakers next to room boundaries and not expect problems:



I read that as a condemnation of your room too. I know he did the Texas two-step in his last reply with regards to your room, but I don't see how his criticisms of MFs room wouldn't apply to a large extent with your room either.

 

[mep]

I said that MF made no efforts to deal with the well documented SBIRs in his room caused by small room size. Steve obviously has done that. Steve has purpose built false walls that are specifically designed to mitigate room ringing and SBIRs. I've never criticized Steve's room. You mentioned Steve's room and I am glad you did because it shows the difference between how a reviewer approaches this hobby and a real passionate owner appoaches this hobby. It's totally different.

Whatever. I didn't realize that reviewers cared any less about how they approach this hobby than "a real passionate owner." Can we translate that into saying that "real passionate owners" are loaded and most reviewers just don't have the same financial resources in order to be as passionate about their rooms? Are you also inferring that reviewers don't own any of their gear?

 

[jap]

Is that with or without HFTs ?

So they roll off below 60 Hz?

The Helsinki 1.5 measurements were done in 2008.

Yes, they rolled off fast below 60hz.

 

[MylesBAstor]

"I suspect this is due to interference between the direct sound from the midrange units and the reflection from the sidewalls. (The floor-bounce cancellation of the woofers' output will be above their passband and is thus inconsequential.) The 200Hz dip is inevitable given the room dimensions, and I suspect that much of the fine-tuning of the speakers' positions is to arrange for this cancellation notch to have the least effect on music."

Thanks Myles! It's an SBIR. It doesn't matter how expensive the speaker or how awesome the hand claps were when they were setup. The fact is that setting speakers up that close to boundaries affects the sound. Things can be done to mitigate the effects though. It doesn't look like much is done in MF's room to mitigate the SBIRs.

As I said at the beginning of this section, there are practical limitations when measuring so large a loudspeaker. While I am confident that my measurements regime fully characterizes the performance of a small speaker (such as KEF's LS50, which I reviewed last month), with a speaker as large as Wilson's Alexandria XLF, the measurements offer suggestions rather than certainties.

Or:

I'll tell you a story, not that it will penetrate your "brain" but I'll try:I encountered a couple of young Russian-born engineers at a turntable set-up seminar I did at Stereo Exchange in NY.

They said to me: 'we saw the measurements on the Wilson MAXX3s: boomy bass!"

I said: do you think I would live with "boomy bass"?

They said: "but measurements show boomy bass".

I said "Come on over and listen to the 'boomy bass' "

They said "You would invite us over?"

I said, "Why not?

So they paid a visit. They brought a test CD they'd devised that they use to judge speakers.

When they'd finished listening they exclaimed "NO BOOMY BASS! GOOD BASS"

Then I played them a format that doesn't MEASURE as well as CDs... a format they'd not really paid much attention to because IT DOESN'T MEASURE AS WELL and guess what?

When they heard what proper vinyl playback sounds like they almost S...T.

Measuring a complex speaker like the XLFs is NOT EASY. And clearly interpreting a complex set of measurements and attempting to sort of what that might sound like is clearly beyond your abilities. But JohnnyR: blather on....

 

[asiufy]

I like MF's room, it's pretty awesome actually. Wish mine was full of LPs like his... I'm only up to 2000 or so...

Dallasjustice,

I'm sure you'll know MF owns just about every equipment that is in those pictures. Including the new $200k XLF that came after the pictures were taken. So there goes your argument...

As for "big speakers in small rooms", the first time I actually enjoyed a Wilson speaker was in Steve's room. In big rooms, they lack bass. So, maybe MF is actually getting better bass in his tiny room that some people with huge rooms, even with the 200Hz dip.

All that to say that you simply can't thrown generalizations out there... You think his room is a mess, sure, some people don't like that kind of "lived in" look (I do, love it actually). But to generalize that every review's room would be like that (or worse) is just wrong.

Myles' room is pretty tidy and organized, quite a feat given the size of your typical Manhattan apartments! If I lived there, I'd have to throw stuff out so people could get in

alexandre

 

[Gregadd]

The island of Manhattan is still the most expensive real estate on the planet. I see no evidence that room treatment manufacturers are any less generous to reviewers. Finally room treatment takes up space. A problem for one already cramped for space.

 

[microstrip]

Mark,

IMHO unfortunately bringing Steve to this thread was a poor move. I respect his approach, enjoy a lot reading about his system, room and experiences, but IMHO his and MF priorities on sound reproduction are very different. Having people who NEVER HAVE BEEN in both rooms debating their respective attitudes seems an absurd nonsense. Although room treatment and big speakers is a subject I would like to debate I am now out, as the debate is becoming too personal.