TLS Guy -vs- Studio 100's

[Alex2507]

Ouch! Paradigm is taking quite the beating in this thread,

Beating? If you say so. What kind of speakers do you have?

though I don't find this thread as interesting as bashing Definitive Technology.

I had a chance to listen to some of those as well. The Martin Logan's kind of took a hit in that thread but I'm pretty sure that they can take it (sorry bandphan) but it's not like my opinion is going to sway the masses. I'm confident that the Martin Logans could have benefited from better placement, tuning and room correction. Doing all that is way harder than turning up the volume, although turning up the volume works too.

I'm pretty easy to please and pretty happy to sample as many different products of this caliber as possible. I mean, I audition this stuff with music that I already like. Something would have to be drastically wrong for me not to be diggin' it.

 

[bandphan]

Beating? If you say so. What kind of speakers do you have?



I had a chance to listen to some of those as well. The Martin Logan's kind of took a hit in that thread but I'm pretty sure that they can take it (sorry bandphan) but it's not like my opinion is going to sway the masses. I'm confident that the Martin Logans could have benefited from better placement, tuning and room correction. Doing all that is way harder than turning up the volume, although turning up the volume works too.

No reason to be sorry.... Logans are all about the room and setup. Im no fanboy about them and mine are based on RADIA planers not ELS (though I like the ELSs) IMHO Vocal and acoustic reproduction are very detailed with them and at Majors GTG most gave them the nod.

 

[GO-NAD!]

I was just thinking (does anybody smell the smoke?), is pretty much an academic exercise to pursue a flat anechoic FR for any given design? If you could possibly produce such a speaker, that flat FR goes right out the window as soon as you put it in a listening room. So, in the end, is it a "tilting at windmills" effort?

Wouldn't it be more intellectually honest and practical to say: "Look, if you want a flat in-room FR, you will have to use room treatment and/or equalization to get there. Period." Or, would it be business suicide to say such things, because 90% of speaker buyers won't want to hear that?

Should we, who are willing to employ such measures, be more concerned about other aspects of a speaker design, i.e. cabinet rigidity, quality drivers, power handling, quality bits & pieces in the crossovers, etc? If the FR is "in the ballpark" and one assumes that the room will have to be corrected through treatments and/or equalization to get the FR one wants, should we be overly obsessed with the speaker's FR?

Is there any way to persuade manufacturers to stop juicing the bass and/or treble FR in an otherwise fine design? Would they listen to: "Hey, how about aiming for a flat FR? It doesn't have to be perfect, because it's going to be skewed in a person's listening room anyway. If we want to get good in-room performance, we'll do what it takes on our end". What are the chances?

 

[Alex2507]

... 90% of speaker buyers won't want to hear that?

90% don't know what that means. Another 5% think you need to adjust the FR to the song. That leaves me and LOTR against the world.

Another one of the things I remembered about well liked speakers is that they had an off axis response that was reasonably close to on axis. The thinking was that the reflected sound that did make it to the listener from the first reflection points was good enough to add positively to the whole experience.

Getting it 'right' isn't easy and cheap. Why throw an extra $100 at crossover and cabinet when a $10 silver pin stripe will sell 10 times as many speakers? For the most part speaker manufacturers are pandering to ... the not so well informed and playing fair would just put them out of business. They aren't in this game to give you good sound ... well, Jim Salk might be.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Beating? If you say so. What kind of speakers do you have?

So whats a shellacking? We all get varnished at one time or another.

 

[lsiberian]

This really is an unfair thread IMO. TLS Guy is a top shelf only kind of guy.

I'm not and would gladly take a pair of these of anyone's hands.

 

[MinusTheBear]

I'm not and would gladly take a pair of these of anyone's hands.

And then I would take them from you.

 

[Alex2507]

So whats a shellacking?

... a beating ... but that was in a different thread.

In this thread we explored the useful interpretation of graphs and measurements ... mostly.
I also had a few laughs with some friends.

 

[njedpx3]

Agree that TLS Guy is really top shelf

This really is an unfair thread IMO. TLS Guy is a top shelf only kind of guy.

I'm not and would gladly take a pair of these of anyone's hands.

I only dream of someday getting closer to TLS Guy's knowlege and mastery of audioholics. It is one of those unreachable asymptotic levels. When he says something I listen and try to learn

However, in defense of Alex, I think he was trying to continue the objective speaker comparison/discussion, not criticize TLS.

Later,

Forest Man

 

[GO-NAD!]

Getting it 'right' isn't easy and cheap. Why throw an extra $100 at crossover and cabinet when a $10 silver pin stripe will sell 10 times as many speakers? For the most part speaker manufacturers are pandering to ... the not so well informed and playing fair would just put them out of business. They aren't in this game to give you good sound ... well, Jim Salk might be.

Well, I'm not sure TLSGuy was criticizing the actual bits used in the S-100 crossovers, as much as their implementation. If that's the case, they could've made that speaker sound better, for the same price.

What if manufacturers didn't deliberately skew the FR curves? Then, instruct their dealers to emphasize that fact when dealing with customers and why the speakers are built that way. They could explain that overly bright speakers will be fatiguing over time and bloated bass will smother the mids. Tell the customer that if they want booming bass, get a subwoofer and crank the snot out of it.

On the other hand, if that won't happen, should those of us who care be overly concerned about the FR curve (BOSE excepted) if we plan to use room treatments and/or equalization to correct it, or at least approach correctness?

 

[billy p]

LOL! You kind of had it coming.

Tell us what it said and I'll make it up to you.
Stop bashing TLS. Two rights don't make a left upper cut.

I'm fine now, I needed to get it off my chest..........

 

[Alex2507]

I'm fine now, I needed to get it off my chest..........

I'm only interested in knowing what it said in the comment. Don't tease me like this, Billy.

should those of us who care be overly concerned about the FR curve

I think the idea is to start with a speaker that sounds right and then treat and EQ the room to correct the room, not the speaker. Clearly most of the site's brainiacs lend a considerable amount of weight to the FR curve. While it may not tell the whole story, it does tell an important part of it. Not giving the hard data it's due would be a mistake in my opinion. Besides, it's something that I'm enjoying learning about. I already know everything I need to know about power cords, speaker wire and women.

 

[billy p]

(TLS has contributed more than you ever have).......
That ain't saying much....jk....

 

[GO-NAD!]

I'm only interested in knowing what it said in the comment. Don't tease me like this, Billy.



I think the idea is to start with a speaker that sounds right and then treat and EQ the room to correct the room, not the speaker. Clearly most of the site's brainiacs lend a considerable amount of weight to the FR curve. While it may not tell the whole story, it does tell an important part of it. Not giving the hard data it's due would be a mistake in my opinion. Besides, it's something that I'm enjoying learning about. I already know everything I need to know about power cords, speaker wire and women.

I'm not saying ignore the FR curve! But, if it's the general tendency of manufacturers to deliberately mess with it, should we take that into account and not to discount a speaker based on that alone. In other words, if you plan to correct the in-room FR, should the FR curve be placed further down the list of priorities, when evaluating a speaker for purchase? If you don't want to correct the in-room response, maybe it should be closer to the top?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

We just need to chill out, sit back, relax, and just enjoy the music and movies, instead of critically analyzing the frequencies and stuff.

 

[Alex2507]

(TLS has contributed more than you ever have).......
That ain't saying much....jk....

Oh that's just ripe. See that? That's the best thing I heard all morning.

lmao, you get any more of these, you come see me. I'll get your points all sorted out for ya. I'll be laughing about this for a while. Thanks for contributing.

 

[lsiberian]

I'm only interested in knowing what it said in the comment. Don't tease me like this, Billy.



I think the idea is to start with a speaker that sounds right and then treat and EQ the room to correct the room, not the speaker. Clearly most of the site's brainiacs lend a considerable amount of weight to the FR curve. While it may not tell the whole story, it does tell an important part of it. Not giving the hard data it's due would be a mistake in my opinion. Besides, it's something that I'm enjoying learning about. I already know everything I need to know about power cords, speaker wire and women.

The waterfall is where I cook my bacon. Which is essentialy and extension of the FR curve.

And yes that bacon tastes really good.

 

[Swerd]

I'm not saying ignore the FR curve! But, if it's the general tendency of manufacturers to deliberately mess with it, should we take that into account and not to discount a speaker based on that alone. In other words, if you plan to correct the in-room FR, should the FR curve be placed further down the list of priorities, when evaluating a speaker for purchase? If you don't want to correct the in-room response, maybe it should be closer to the top?

Yes, some manufacturers publish very optimistic FR curves. That's why good 3rd party measurements, such as from Stereophile reviews or the Canadian NRC are so valuable.

Room corrections can help improve a room's acoustic failings, but it won't improve a speaker with a poor FR curve, just like no speaker, no matter how good it is can make Barry Manilow sound like Frank Sinatra .

 

[GO-NAD!]

Yes, some manufacturers publish very optimistic FR curves. That's why good 3rd party measurements, such as from Stereophile reviews or the Canadian NRC are so valuable.

Room corrections can help improve a room's acoustic failings, but it won't improve a speaker with a poor FR curve, just like no speaker, no matter how good it is can make Barry Manilow sound like Frank Sinatra .

Would you consider the FR of the speaker in question (Studio-100) to be poor? Or, is it good enough that with room correction, they're perfectly acceptable within that price/quality category? I know a lot of people in this forum love them just as they are, but there are a select few who think they stink.

Nobody has mentioned any other issue with these speakers, so is that their only "failing"? If, for the sake of argument, I was in the market for speakers in that category (price, appearance, driver layout, etc.) should I expect most competing models to be similarly "juiced" in the FR?

 

[Alex2507]

I'm not saying ignore the FR curve! But, if it's the general tendency of manufacturers to deliberately mess with it, should we take that into account and not to discount a speaker based on that alone. In other words, if you plan to correct the in-room FR, should the FR curve be placed further down the list of priorities, when evaluating a speaker for purchase? If you don't want to correct the in-room response, maybe it should be closer to the top?

My general instinct is to try to better understand how those measurements and graphs correlate to the type of curve that the 75% majority prefer and look for a speaker to match. I'm not 100% on what manufacturers do deliberately but I'm looking at those graphs hard. You remember WmAx posting the FR curve and water fall plot earlier in the thread? I heard those speakers and I would be okay owning a pair of speakers with an identical response.

Later on I will try to find third party measurements for the Paradigm Sig 6, Sig 8, B&W 804s and Def Tech 7002 speakers just to know stuff about them. If other people trust their ears or are only swayed by in home auditions, that's fine with me. I like the numbers and have faith in reproducible tests.

As has been mentioned in this thread before, people become accustomed to a certain sound. So if your current speakers are inaccurate, there is a tendency for you preference to lie with a speaker that is similarly inaccurate. I'm pretty sure that such has been demonstrated with distorted car audio.