Klipsch....buy or avoid?

[Tomorrow]

Not at all...but what it does make me is an expert in exposing bogus studies that don't have excellent control. I'm not an expert on angiotensin receptor blockers either, but I can certainly tell if the studies that claim their effectiveness are well designed or not. The "perceptual" issue is what leads me to categorizing this type of info as more like post-marketing reasearch.....and now I'm assuming that you guys know the difference....more directed at how a product is perceived in its desirability or usefulness may not really ever tell us anything about its actual quality. It can tell us what a certain cohort likes or dislikes. But do I want to quantify speaker quality by an "average" group of listeners? I think not. Yes, it may be good information but it doesn't inform me much about the sound quality. Like I said in an earlier post, if you could really quantify this quality sound...then there is no argument on what is better....You go get the lastest list of "best speakers"....read down the list to your price point....buy it, take it home, plug it in to whatever generic system you have because the opinion is that the components don't matter and listen....you know it's good because someone told you it was!

ACE inhibitor and loudspeaker testing methodology/results comparisons? Now I've seen it all on this forum. Clinical trials and reports of pharmaceuticals are more nuts than audio science, and can certainly be less trusted. Dying from medications like the acclaimed flecanide seems somehow more goofy than buying a speaker without auditioning...but I'll wager it's a LOT more common.

 

[mazersteven]

ACE inhibitor and loudspeaker testing methodology/results comparisons? Now I've seen it all on this forum. Clinical trials and reports of pharmaceuticals are more nuts than audio science, and can certainly be less trusted. Dying from medications like the acclaimed flecanide seems somehow more goofy than buying a speaker without auditioning...but I'll wager it's a LOT more common.

Cialis

 

[tbewick]

Hi UFOBuster,

If you refer to the earlier AES seminar zip file I linked to, you'll find that the Sean Olive lecture covered listener training. This was a method which helps to identify what listeners are sensitive to loudspeaker performance, and Mr Olive related the findings of trained listeners to those of average listeners:

'Loudspeaker preferences of trained listeners were very similar to untrained listeners. On this basis, the preferences of trained listeners can be extrapolated to untrained listeners. The often-held notion that trained listeners are biased appears to be unfounded; correlation between preference vs. objective measurements indicate listeners prefer accurate, linear loudspeakers regardless of training.'

Tomorrow,

Your point about statistical trials reminded of something I read before on publication bias:

http://www.badscience.net/?p=408

I still think, however, that the randomised controlled trial is the ideal choice for subjective testing, whether in medicine (see below) or in hi-fi.

Michael Clake review for the BMJ of 'Non-random Reflections on Health Services Research', Ed Alan Maynard, Iain Chalmers.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7143/1543

 

[jaxvon]

Not at all...but what it does make me is an expert in exposing bogus studies that don't have excellent control. I'm not an expert on angiotensin receptor blockers either, but I can certainly tell if the studies that claim their effectiveness are well designed or not. The "perceptual" issue is what leads me to categorizing this type of info as more like post-marketing reasearch.....and now I'm assuming that you guys know the difference....more directed at how a product is perceived in its desirability or usefulness may not really ever tell us anything about its actual quality. It can tell us what a certain cohort likes or dislikes. But do I want to quantify speaker quality by an "average" group of listeners? I think not. Yes, it may be good information but it doesn't inform me much about the sound quality. Like I said in an earlier post, if you could really quantify this quality sound...then there is no argument on what is better....You go get the lastest list of "best speakers"....read down the list to your price point....buy it, take it home, plug it in to whatever generic system you have because the opinion is that the components don't matter and listen....you know it's good because someone told you it was!

You seem to have a bias against these studies because they're 'perceptual'. But your argument does not hold water. The research done by Floyd Toole and the NRC is in fact very highly respected, peer-reviewed research that has influenced the entire speaker industry. The testing done at the NRC is true double blind testing with proper controls. You claim that the research done does not tell you much about sound quality and that it is essentially flawed because it is based on perceptions. This is completely untrue! These were not post-marketing studies about desirability. These were studies about perceived audio quality.

For starters, measurements are only useful if you know what you are looking at. For a layman (such as yourself, it seems), looking at frequency response, THD, and other audio graphs does not seem to correlate to sound quality because you do not know how to interpret the data. Secondly, the set of graphs often supplied by manufacturers or audio magazines are often coarse and are not the complete set that one needs to truly analyze the sound of a loudspeaker. But as for the research being perceptual, well, it has to be. How else are you to study the sound of a speaker and how it relates what humans hear? What your hear is a perception! When the research in question was carried out, steps were taken to eliminate as much bias from the test subjects as possible, including proper lighting, level matching, proper preparation for the listening session, and a properly set up room with known constants. After compiling research from thousands of subjects, strong trends in perceived 'good' sound were found and the conclusions of the studies were based on these results.

Lastly, I'd like to explain why there isn't just a list of the "best speakers" if this body of research is valid and exists. Well, just because the research exists does not mean that any manufacturers actually have to heed it. Many of the steps necessary to create "good sound" by NRC standards are expensive and complicated to implement and therefore don't make good business sense to manufacturers that are marketing to the average person. As for the higher end companies, there is an explanation, too. As you go higher in price, the more esoteric speakers become in their design, often having nothing to do with audio science but more with cool-sounding audio voodoo that interests audiophiles that enjoy spending $5k on speaker cables that will give them chocolaty midrange (for you, Gene ). These people have no regard for audio science and are much more interested in the process of auditioning and listening to gear. That's fine, as it is just a personal preference. But their rejection of audio science does not invalidate it.

Many of the high end manufacturers have their own 'scientific' processes they use for designing speakers that, because of their flawed nature, result in flawed speaker designs. One speaker manufacturer that is an exception to this is B&W. They spend and immense amount of money on R&D and it shows in their flagship speakers. For monopolar speakers, their 800D and 802D speakers are about as close to technically perfect as one can get. Why are the same qualities not found in their lower line? They are, but to a more limited extent due to the cost.

So why are Harman listening tests valid and your listening session at the local hi-fi shop invalid? One word: bias. Because the study is dependent on the research is dependent on the perceptions and response of listeners, uncontrolled bias in the test subjects will corrupt the data. When you listen at the shop, you have all sorts of other stimuli that create bias when you listen to the speakers, affecting the way you hear them. The way the room is lit, the conversation you had with the salesman, the appearance of the speakers and the room, they all have an effect on how you perceive the quality of the sound. If you even know what brand speakers you are listening to, you have already invalidated the scientific worth of your listening session because the preconceived notions you have about a brand that will affect how you hear them. It does not matter if you try to listen with an "open mind". Simply having the knowledge is enough!

In closing, I hope this has been helpful in educating you about perceptual research.

 

[billy p]

You seem to have a bias against these studies because they're 'perceptual'. But your argument does not hold water. The research done by Floyd Toole and the NRC is in fact very highly respected, peer-reviewed research that has influenced the entire speaker industry. The testing done at the NRC is true double blind testing with proper controls. You claim that the research done does not tell you much about sound quality and that it is essentially flawed because it is based on perceptions. This is completely untrue! These were not post-marketing studies about desirability. These were studies about perceived audio quality.

For starters, measurements are only useful if you know what you are looking at. For a layman (such as yourself, it seems), looking at frequency response, THD, and other audio graphs does not seem to correlate to sound quality because you do not know how to interpret the data. Secondly, the set of graphs often supplied by manufacturers or audio magazines are often coarse and are not the complete set that one needs to truly analyze the sound of a loudspeaker. But as for the research being perceptual, well, it has to be. How else are you to study the sound of a speaker and how it relates what humans hear? What your hear is a perception! When the research in question was carried out, steps were taken to eliminate as much bias from the test subjects as possible, including proper lighting, level matching, proper preparation for the listening session, and a properly set up room with known constants. After compiling research from thousands of subjects, strong trends in perceived 'good' sound were found and the conclusions of the studies were based on these results.

Lastly, I'd like to explain why there isn't just a list of the "best speakers" if this body of research is valid and exists. Well, just because the research exists does not mean that any manufacturers actually have to heed it. Many of the steps necessary to create "good sound" by NRC standards are expensive and complicated to implement and therefore don't make good business sense to manufacturers that are marketing to the average person. As for the higher end companies, there is an explanation, too. As you go higher in price, the more esoteric speakers become in their design, often having nothing to do with audio science but more with cool-sounding audio voodoo that interests audiophiles that enjoy spending $5k on speaker cables that will give them chocolaty midrange (for you, Gene ). These people have no regard for audio science and are much more interested in the process of auditioning and listening to gear. That's fine, as it is just a personal preference. But their rejection of audio science does not invalidate it.

Many of the high end manufacturers have their own 'scientific' processes they use for designing speakers that, because of their flawed nature, result in flawed speaker designs. One speaker manufacturer that is an exception to this is B&W. They spend and immense amount of money on R&D and it shows in their flagship speakers. For monopolar speakers, their 800D and 802D speakers are about as close to technically perfect as one can get. Why are the same qualities not found in their lower line? They are, but to a more limited extent due to the cost.

So why are Harman listening tests valid and your listening session at the local hi-fi shop invalid? One word: bias. Because the study is dependent on the research is dependent on the perceptions and response of listeners, uncontrolled bias in the test subjects will corrupt the data. When you listen at the shop, you have all sorts of other stimuli that create bias when you listen to the speakers, affecting the way you hear them. The way the room is lit, the conversation you had with the salesman, the appearance of the speakers and the room, they all have an effect on how you perceive the quality of the sound. If you even know what brand speakers you are listening to, you have already invalidated the scientific worth of your listening session because the preconceived notions you have about a brand that will affect how you hear them. It does not matter if you try to listen with an "open mind". Simply having the knowledge is enough!

In closing, I hope this has been helpful in educating you about perceptual research.

I don't know about UFO, but it sure explained things to me and maybe a few others. IMO that deserves a chicklet

 

[Tomorrow]

"Tomorrow,

Your point about statistical trials reminded of something I read before on publication bias:

http://www.badscience.net/?p=408

I still think, however, that the randomised controlled trial is the ideal choice for subjective testing, whether in medicine (see below) or in hi-fi.

Michael Clake review for the BMJ of 'Non-random Reflections on Health Services Research', Ed Alan Maynard, Iain Chalmers.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7143/1543" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- tbewick, I thoroughly agree that randomized, controlled trials are indeed the best choice for testing methodology in both fields. But trusting them as foregone [I]truth[/I] is another matter altogether. I read your links. In the interest of brevity (on this audio forum) I did not go into great detail about the abject criminality of industry sponsored drug trials and straw FDA approval procedures. The incestual nature of pharmaceutical industry sponsored, university designed "clinical trials", and FDA approval of such studies is well documented. That UFObuster is a strong believer in such "science" generated my comment. It's gettin' kinda personal here, but...what the heck. Here is a book you should read, [I]Deadly Medicine [/I]by Thomas Moore (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0815/is_n192_v20/ai_16888615). I was nearly killed by this drug (Tambacor...for a benign condition) that was shown to have killed >50,000 Americans back in the late 1980's. It was approved by the FDA after just one year into a planned three year trial. (I wonder who got that payola.) After the initial deaths began trickling in, the FDA just scratched their chins. Then, one month too late for me, they pulled the drug from the market. And luckily enough, even though I was clinically dead for over 5 minutes, I survived, thanks to 20 cardiac defibrillations. I actually died on my wife's lap on the way to the hospital. You might think correctly that I am greatly cautious of ANY claim from medical science. And the irony is ... to this day, I am sustained by an ACE inhibitor...another new (at the time I started it) pharmaceutical.

 

[UFObuster]

"Tomorrow,

Your point about statistical trials reminded of something I read before on publication bias:

http://www.badscience.net/?p=408

I still think, however, that the randomised controlled trial is the ideal choice for subjective testing, whether in medicine (see below) or in hi-fi.

Michael Clake review for the BMJ of 'Non-random Reflections on Health Services Research', Ed Alan Maynard, Iain Chalmers.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/316/7143/1543" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- tbewick, I thoroughly agree that randomized, controlled trials are indeed the best choice for testing methodology in both fields. But trusting them as foregone [I]truth[/I] is another matter altogether. I read your links. In the interest of brevity (on this audio forum) I did not go into great detail about the abject criminality of industry sponsored drug trials and straw FDA approval procedures. The incestual nature of pharmaceutical industry sponsored, university designed "clinical trials", and FDA approval of such studies is well documented. That UFObuster is a strong believer in such "science" generated my comment. It's gettin' kinda personal here, but...what the heck. Here is a book you should read, [I]Deadly Medicine [/I]by Thomas Moore (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0815/is_n192_v20/ai_16888615). I was nearly killed by this drug (Tambacor...for a benign condition) that was shown to have killed >50,000 Americans back in the late 1980's. It was approved by the FDA after just one year into a planned three year trial. (I wonder who got that payola.) After the initial deaths began trickling in, the FDA just scratched their chins. Then, one month too late for me, they pulled the drug from the market. And luckily enough, even though I was clinically dead for over 5 minutes, I survived, thanks to 20 cardiac defibrillations. I actually died on my wife's lap on the way to the hospital. You might think correctly that I am greatly cautious of ANY claim from medical science. And the irony is ... to this day, I am sustained by an ACE inhibitor...another new (at the time I started it) pharmaceutical.[/QUOTE] {Reminder: I'm the OP of the thread...trying to debunk broad and undifferentiated claims that the entire production output of an entire company (in this case Klipsch) is "crap"}. I think that I am NOT a believer in pharmaceutical (or any industry) use of statistical trials to support product claims.....I read with interest your personal involvement in this system....and am sadly very sympathetic....my role in the field is not connected in anyway to any manufacturer....of drugs or audio equipment and speakers....in fact, I am a PAID skeptic. I think it was other responders who took the "high road" of scientific studies to claim a certain expertise in speaker quality. I look for the reasons WHY claims are not what they seem....and laying aside pharmaceutics now....we're in audio.....that's exactly why I'm so skeptical about the use of somewhat specious study designs to prove one speaker better than another.....I've seen too many mistakes in legitimate science and am very careful to trust "peer reviewed" articles when they dance around issues involving the sale of certain products....no matter what industry.....post-marketing. There are usually too many paid interests involved in the outcome of such projects to ever really know, and the audio industry is far and away as easily abused by subjective claims as any other...and I keep saying subjective because there is a finely developed art to couching subjective study outcomes as "objective". It's not the same as initial product testing....where performance standards are much more carefully restricted (there's a difference here but not deniably subject to abuse in this area also). It's not all black and white and I am impressed by some audio "science" studies that I've read so far. But really, I still have to say that in my view it's still intuitively false (but won't say impossible) to think that you could design a system of parameters that yields a metric of speaker "sound" that is universally accepted.....if this is true, then, once again I say: we test them all.....publish the scorecard....then we all go marching out to buy the speaker that fits our price point....take it home, plug it into a generic system (components don't matter in the study design).....and it's automatically as good as we can get.......and never believe our lying ears;).

 

[Joe Schmoe]

Dudes: Summarize! These posts have grown waaaaay too long and wordy. I gave up reading them a while back, and I'll bet most others have too.
Thanks.

 

[avaserfi]

Dudes: Summarize! These posts have grown waaaaay too long and wordy. I gave up reading them a while back, and I'll bet most others have too.
Thanks.

As one who is keeping up with this thread and a fan, if you could call it that, of statistics this is a thread that need not be summarized. The posts are full of good argument and much useful information. You are missing out by being lazy and not spending the extra five to read it.

This thread has also encouraged me to look into audio testing practices and articles just out of curiosity. If anyone has some good suggestions on where to look I won't say no to them .

 

[Nick250]

Disclaimer: I'm not doctor and I have read no studies.
That said and I am not going to re read every detail of the whole thread again, but I don't see much, if anything about the notion that everyone's hearing is not the same and and in fact varies over time for any given individual?

Nick

 

[Tomorrow]

{Reminder: I'm the OP of the thread...trying to debunk broad and undifferentiated claims that the entire production output of an entire company (in this case Klipsch) is "crap"}.

I think that I am NOT a believer in pharmaceutical (or any industry) use of statistical trials to support product claims.....I read with interest your personal involvement in this system....and am sadly very sympathetic....my role in the field is not connected in anyway to any manufacturer....of drugs or audio equipment and speakers....in fact, I am a PAID skeptic. I think it was other responders who took the "high road" of scientific studies to claim a certain expertise in speaker quality. I look for the reasons WHY claims are not what they seem....and laying aside pharmaceutics now....we're in audio.....that's exactly why I'm so skeptical about the use of somewhat specious study designs to prove one speaker better than another.....I've seen too many mistakes in legitimate science and am very careful to trust "peer reviewed" articles when they dance around issues involving the sale of certain products....no matter what industry.....post-marketing. There are usually too many paid interests involved in the outcome of such projects to ever really know, and the audio industry is far and away as easily abused by subjective claims as any other...and I keep saying subjective because there is a finely developed art to couching subjective study outcomes as "objective". It's not the same as initial product testing....where performance standards are much more carefully restricted (there's a difference here but not deniably subject to abuse in this area also).
It's not all black and white and I am impressed by some audio "science" studies that I've read so far. But really, I still have to say that in my view it's still intuitively false (but won't say impossible) to think that you could design a system of parameters that yields a metric of speaker "sound" that is universally accepted.....if this is true, then, once again I say: we test them all.....publish the scorecard....then we all go marching out to buy the speaker that fits our price point....take it home, plug it into a generic system (components don't matter in the study design).....and it's automatically as good as we can get.......and never believe our lying ears.

I have absolutely no issue with your objections to audio science, UFObuster. You'll note from my past posts that I have expressed much doubt about the description of "accurate" speakers...and the concommitant "sound better to most people" perceptual studies and demonstrable graphs and distortion rates.

I grew up on both sides of the fence. My undergrad work was in physics and my grad work was in research psychology. I can say that, at the time, the science involved in perceptual research was in its fledgling state, but still met rigorous testing standards. Nevertheless, I hold to the notion that one's hearing obviates what is an 'accurate' speaker...not a graph. ("What is the sound of an accurate speaker?")

My response to your post was to point out that perhaps you put too much credence in the science of Rx research design statements. Without trying to sound too paranoid, there is much larceny in the science and business of both activities (speakers and medications).

EDIT! All the above aside, the research referred to by WmAx, Jaxvon, et al is from VERY well designed projects.

 

[avaserfi]

Disclaimer: I'm not doctor and I have read no studies.
That said and I am not going to re read every detail of the whole thread again, but I don't see much, if anything about the notion that everyone's hearing is not the same and and in fact varies over time for any given individual?

Nick

The variance between individuals should be accounted for in a proper study through appropriate subject selection ideally random samples and with proper sample sizes. With this type of selection differences between individuals can be statistically canceled out through methods that are a pain in the butt. Also, the law of large numbers will come into play helping that end.

 

[UFObuster]

I have absolutely no issue with your objections to audio science, UFObuster. You'll note from my past posts that I have expressed much doubt about the description of "accurate" speakers...and the concommitant "sound better to most people" perceptual studies and demonstrable graphs and distortion rates.

I grew up on both sides of the fence. My undergrad work was in physics and my grad work was in research psychology. I can say that, at the time, the science involved in perceptual research was in its fledgling state, but still met rigorous testing standards. Nevertheless, I hold to the notion that one's hearing obviates what is an 'accurate' speaker...not a graph. ("What is the sound of an accurate speaker?")

My response to your post was to point out that perhaps you put too much credence in the science of Rx research design statements. Without trying to sound too paranoid, there is much larceny in the science and business of both activities (speakers and medications).

EDIT! All the above aside, the research referred to by WmAx, Jaxvon, et al is from VERY well designed projects.

That is in fact how I read it...but maybe I'm dipping in and out of this thread at too long an interval.......maybe it's better put this way: testing speakers seems to clearly fall into a "post-marketing" research area....using RX PM testing as an example, which I think is notoriously stilted in post marketing maneuvers...I speculate that PM testing of speakers is MORE subject to manipulation. As bad as it is, RX testing still has some pretty well defined research criteria that are quite empiric. Audio speaker sounds...well...face it, there is NO definition of quality sound. A tester has to first define what "quality" is, then find metrics for it, then objectively test it. I'm simply comparing the somewhat sleazy Rx industry to the more potentially sleazy audio industry in ability to induce sales based on interesting but possibly tainted study criteria.
...bottom line...I think we agree on this one....
...I hope I "summarized" that well enough for a previous poster...

 

[Buckeye_Nut]

The one thing I've read about Klipsch, due to their distinct sound, room treatments are a must! .

Ummm..... room treatments are a must in any room

Room reflections and the honeycomb filtering of sound waves is a phenomenon that effects all brands equally...LOL

 

[jaxvon]

UFO,

You have no reply to my post? How sad.

 

[tbewick]

Hi Tomorrow,

I'm very sorry to read of your experience in this matter. It's absolutely unacceptable for drug trials to be done in a way that compromises the reliability of the results.

Thanks for the link. There were some other publications I've seen recommended on pharmaceutical companies:

The Truth About the Drug Companies. Marcia Angell M.D., Random House, 2004 (ISBN 0-375-50845-3)

Smith R (2005) Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies. PLoS Med 2(5): e138.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/archive/1549-1676/2/5/pdf/10.1371_journal.pmed.0020138-L.pdf

Horton R (2004) The dawn of McScience. New York Review of Books 51(4): 7—9.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=16954

'It is common enough to hear criticism of the big drug companies by people in alternative medicine. That is not surprising -they are both chasing the same pool of money (yours). The interesting thing about these three sources is that they are not written by CAM [complementary/alternative medicine] people, nor by conspiracy theorists, nor my revolutionary marxists. They are written by people who, until recently, were editors of very well known medical journals. Marcia Angell was formerly Editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. Richard Smith was until 2004, editor of the British Medical Journal, and Richard Horton was editor of The Lancet. They know what they are talking about, and if they are worried, we should be too. Smith starts thus.

“'Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry', wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, in March 2004 [1]. In the same year, Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lambasted the industry for becoming 'primarily a marketing machine' and co-opting 'every institution that might stand in its way' ”

Doctors may not be as uninfluenced by the advertisements as they would like to believe, but in every sphere, the public is used to discounting the claims of advertisers. The much bigger problem lies with the original studies, particularly the clinical trials, published by journals. Far from discounting these, readers see randomised controlled trials as one of the highest forms of evidence.

For a drug company, a favourable trial is worth thousands of pages of advertising, which is why a company will sometimes spend upwards of a million dollars on reprints of the trial for worldwide distribution.

The evidence is strong that companies are getting the results they want, and this is especially worrisome because between two-thirds and threequarters of the trials published in the major journals—Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine—are funded by the industry'

David Colquhoun, Professor of Pharmacology at University College London.
http://www.dcscience.net/improbable.html#pharma2

 

[Rippyman]

I bought the entire line of Reference series by Klipsch after demoing a number of higher end brands.

Paradigm, B&W, Polk, Focal, and using the same AV Receiver for each one (Marantz SR7005) the Klipsch absolutely blew the others out of the water.

It wasn't even close for my ears.

The Klipsch offered the most clarity, the most balance & definitely the highest DB levels of all the brands.

It made my purchase that much easier.

I started my build thread in the Gallery section

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74678

 

[DenPureSound]

I bought the entire line of Reference series by Klipsch after demoing a number of higher end brands.

Paradigm, B&W, Polk, Focal, and using the same AV Receiver for each one (Marantz SR7005) the Klipsch absolutely blew the others out of the water.

It wasn't even close for my ears.

The Klipsch offered the most clarity, the most balance & definitely the highest DB levels of all the brands.

It made my purchase that much easier.

I started my build thread in the Gallery section

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74678

I have Klipsch Ref. Series RF-82II's, etc. and I am one very happy camper with them also, after adding an EMO XPA-5 and the Denon AVR-4311CI to the MiX...

Am hanging onto my KLIPSCH for years.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I have listened to some Klispch towers at Ultimate Electronics.

I can't recall if they were the RF82 or RF83?

But they sounded pretty good to me.

Numbers & graphs sometimes don't tell me the whole story either.

Just like I thought by Def Tech BP7000 & 7001 sound great, even though their Freq Resp were like +/- 3.6dB from 200Hz-10kHz 5-point avg.