I think you made some insightful comments. I wonder though about the quote above. I just don't look at decisions through an objective microscope all the time. My career has been teaching woodwork to middle school kids. Every class I have to make dozens of decisions that I base on my experience. I make subjective calls on who to discipline. When you have a student teacher it becomes apparent quickly if they have any feel for the classroom right away. Few (definitely not me) walk in with a great feel but through years of practice you figure out which battles to fight. Some things can be quantified at least where I teach " Boys are achieving lower then girls" while others things like who to give that tough pull your socks up speech are much more difficult to be objective about. What i try to empart on new teachers is to trust your gut, always calm down before making a big decision and strive to improve each year. Develop a feel for the class and don't treat each class the same. Do I think an accurate measure of a teachers success is test scores ? Definitely not. It tells a small part but you will never know if I am any good unless you sit in my class. (thankfully in Canada we don't use test scores like the US does)
Teacher to teacher (math), standardized are pretty bogus and tell as much about students as verbally interviewing a rock. However, there's not question objective data does and must play a huge role in education. Subjective decisions need to weigh heavily as well, but without objective data stripping away preconceived notions, the status quo, and other subconscious mumbo jumbo and showing what's really going on then the subjective stuff ends up being equally ineffective. For some practical and easy to understand insight on this, I recommend swinging by your local library and ready a chapter or two from freakonomics (or buy it since I think it's a great book anyways) on education.
When I look at Bwaz's post he has experience with it seems dozens of speakers across the financial spectrum. He will have a certain sound , tone, frequency, that he prefers from his ear. It might be that he likes speakers with an edgy, bright, neutral, sound according to him. If I were to base my sale just on his individual feeling then I agree I would be shooting blind. When I converse with 30-40 people about any speaker and ask them for their feedback (which I and others do) you will most of the time come up with conclusion. If it were search of sub his opinion (sorry dude) would be thrown out but I would include Bwaz. In the end it is an educated guess. For me to be out the 300 bucks or so to send them back is not a big deal. Can I afford to take a 2k hit ... no way. For others 2k is a drop in the bucket.
First, I'm not against gathering opinions. They do mean a lot and weigh heavily on a buyer who can't necessairly hear the speakers before purchasing or is just floating in the sea of options out there. However, until you or whoever has established that the opinion being gathered is from someone who has similar tastes, has heard or owned similar speakers, and can describe what they heard in a way that is meaningful to you or whoever then it still is pretty useless. Example, if a guy A heard the Philharmonic 3's but complained of a lack of volume, lack of bass presence, but a nice wide and tall soundstage and guy B who heard the Phils said the bass and volume were more than adequate, but the bass sounded a bit boomy and the soundstage was a bit small, how are we to reconcile these two reviews? With objective "stuff" of course. Now both scenarios can be contributed to speaker placement and room size. Guy A heard the speakers in a huge room where the speakers had plenty of space and were away from any walls. The space hurt the bass response, but helped the soundstage. Guy B heard them in a small room, but pushed right up to the walls and in a narrow room collapsing the soundstage somewhat, but aiding in volume and bass response (sort of). So assuming these guys listened to the exact same tracks at the same volume (unlikely), how do we now reconcile the two reviews and begin to take the room out of the equation to get us to two useable reviews that will helpful in decision making? With measurements.
With brings me to my second point. The number of reviews is
somewhat irrelevant when all of them are by owners. Without getting too deep into brain science the act of spending money on them and pretty colors (no condescension intended, I like pretty colors too
) it's an extremely difficult thing to overcome and give an unbiased opinion. Which means we need a point of reference to give all the subjective reviews some solid ground to stand on and so we don't get carried away with flowery language and exaggeration.
P.S. $300 is a lot of time and effort when you consider all the speakers out there that come with less risk (a more well known quantity) and similar or smaller price tags, at least IMO.
I am learning more about what the measurements mean and I love to learn. I can't wait to get my preamp and use the peq for the sub. I will be interested in how the graphs look and how rew does in taming my room.
What pre-amp? REW by itself won't do anything to tame your room. You need something else like a behringer, miniDSP, etc to use its equalization features.
When I bought my current home of five years I did the research to make sure I didn't overpay. I had a list of criteria it needed to have. What sold me on my place was the feeling both my wife and i had after two minutes in the place. We looked at each other and at the same time said This is it. The place needed some reno work and wasn't perfect. I still have the feeling of it being the right home.
Even better now with my sweet home theater. I hope bwaz continues to post and I like to hear fuzz's side of the equation too.
BUT you still got to see and walk into the house before you bought it. Can't do that with ID speakers (i.e. Tekton), unless their owners go to audio shows.
