B&W Nautilus vs Sonus Faber Cremonas

[tonmeister]

Why not boycott the manufacturers that refuse to disclose the information? Once their sales drop off enough, they'll get the message, especially if they're a publicly traded company

That will work, but make sure you let them know why you are boycotting them so it they can take the appropriate corrective action.

 

[tonmeister]

The main problem I most often run into is people are influenced by looks and price. If the dealers we visited simply placed an acoustically transparent but visually opaque cloth from wall to wall, I have a feeling consumers/my friends would wind up spending less than the salesman pushes, and select a speaker that they may not have thought about listening to originally (like the consumer Infinity or JBL stuff, which for some reason people seem to immediately shrug off, at least in my experience).

.

Exactly why the perceptually relevant specifications would allow people to choose the best sounding ones before visiting the stores or web sites. Once the duds were eliminated, then it comes down to picking the best looking ones they can afford. At least when they got to the audio store the salesperson could not so easily steer the customer to something whose specifications are inadequate.

Ask anyone "new" to this hobby if they'd rather own the B&W 703 (horrible speaker to my ears) or the Infinity Primus 362 based on looks; I think you know what the answer would be. However, under blind listening conditions I can pretty much guarantee some of those opinions would change. This, unfortunately, is something I believe will never be adopted by dealers/B&M's, because their greed influences their recommendations. IE, the higher the price of the sale, the more revenue they make. So why are they going to recommend a $500 speaker when they may be able to sell a $5000 one? Greed is our enemy as well.

Just my $0.02

Visual appearance/ industrial design are definitely important factors for most people when making purchase decisions, but hopefully it shouldn't be at the expense of sound quality. Right now it's too easy for manufacturers to make pretty boxes that don't sound every good, and charge consumers a lot of money for it. This is where the perceptually relevant SQ specifications come to the rescue.

There are still opportunities for dealers to up-sell consumers to a more expensive loudspeaker than say a Primus 362 - but it has to offer something more in terms of better specifications (smoother frequency response, more extended bass, more SPL output, more features,etc), and look like a well-crafted beautiful object of art.

 

[Nuance AH]

Stereophile has pretty good measurements, although they neglect to make distortion measurements and according to Sean their low-frequency measurements might be a little off ue to lack of an anechoic chamber. There's also Soundstage magazine which has a website; I don't know if they also have a print magazine. They do measure distortion. I think the only thing they don't do that Stereophile does it to print waterfall plots, even though with an anechoic chamber they should be able to make better ones that go into lower frequencies than Stereophile.

(Here's a directory of Soundstage measurements: http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/measurements/ Go to the main website for the text reviews.)

Thank you. I knew of those magazines along with a couple of other ones, but I just never know which to trust (other than soundstage!).

Exactly why the perceptually relevant specifications would allow people to choose the best sounding ones before visiting the stores or web sites. Once the duds were eliminated, then it comes down to picking the best looking ones they can afford. At least when they got to the audio store the salesperson could not so easily steer the customer to something whose specifications are inadequate.

So you're speaking of choosing first based on science and measurements, then going to the stores and listening to the speakers that performed well in said categories? In other words, weeding out the inferior products objectively first, then pulling the trigger based on subjectivity after the final candidates have been chosen. I am all for that, but I thought you were painting a bigger picture (see below).

Visual appearance/ industrial design are definitely important factors for most people when making purchase decisions, but hopefully it shouldn't be at the expense of sound quality. Right now it's too easy for manufacturers to make pretty boxes that don't sound every good, and charge consumers a lot of money for it. This is where the perceptually relevant SQ specifications come to the rescue.

Are you speaking of just the "general" measurements here (such as those found in Stereophile or Soundstage!), or beyond that, such as the tests you have performed (bias free, blind tests)? I would be prefer both, of course, but I just can't see the retail A/V community adopting the latter, which is unfortunate because that information is very valuable to the consumer.

There are still opportunities for dealers to up-sell consumers to a more expensive loudspeaker than say a Primus 362 - but it has to offer something more in terms of better specifications (smoother frequency response, more extended bass, more SPL output, more features,etc), and look like a well-crafted beautiful object of art.

Right. I agree. There would just be less $10,000+ speakers to make "bank" from. And the old saying "you get what you pay for" would finally start applying in the world of consumer Audio and Video. Being a consumer and not a dealer, I have no issue with this (duh).