Subjective Loudspeaker Reviews - All About Price?

[JackVa1]

I used to be a fairly serious wine drinker. The Wine Spectator had a one hundred point scale for any bottle of wine it reviewed. While it wasn't perfect, the numbers said some things pretty clearly to me a wine drinker.
A bottle of wine scoring in the eighties was a solid performer, one scoring in the nineties was something special, and a bottle that scored 98, 99, or the rare 100 was an exceptional bottle of wine that would knock your socks off.

If you start to include price in there, a bottle that scored 85 and cost $400 was a terrible value, while one that scored 85 and cost $12 was an exceptional value.

So, I disagree wholeheartedly that speakers cannot be scored. Yes, there is no perfect review methodology, and there are many variables. But as a consumer, I want the expert to give me his best judgement on a speaker's performance. Then tell me what it cost, and I as an informed consumer can make my personal value determination.

That makes two of us - give me a score and I'll use my ears and wallet (and wife) to select.

We need the governement to.....(J/K)

 

[mtrycrafts]

It is true that the room does affect the perceived sound to a degree, and with far too many speakers to a high degree. .

I bet that when the anechoic chamber FR is compared to the in room FR, there is more than just 'a degree' of difference in them. I wonder where that would come from?

 

[no. 5]

Thank you ! I totally enjoyed reading the CR from 1976.

The AVID's were the speakers I bought and now passed to my son. Trust me, they were and are still good speakers no matter what you think of CR. I swear I blind tested them agains a pair of large ADVENTS, a weird speaker that looked like a large white screen, and a big speaker that sat in a corner with the midrange or tweaters actually aimed into the corner of the room (these suckers weighed a ton).
All were pricy.

your welcome.

I have little doubt that your Avid's sound good, and there are other speakers of that era that are still well regarded by many (the Yamaha NS1000 for example). But the fact is, knowledge about how to build a good speaker has advanced, so the number of very good speakers available thirty years ago has been greatly eclipsed by the number available today, and due to the information available to designers today, there are speakers available now that are superior to the best that was available then.

So, I disagree wholeheartedly that speakers cannot be scored.

The notion is not that speakers cannot be scored, but that to produce a very accurate and reliable score, more is needed than a simple in room RTA measurement and a panel of moderately, or non trained listeners.

 

[JackVa1]

I appreciate you information, No_5.

This is all good stuff. I wish I knew what those wild screen speakers were - they looked like masts..completley thin and very cool.

Amazing what guys were working on back then (We all thought Bose 901's were good and like a Corvette, sorta expensive and beyond out reach)

 

[fmw]

It is true that the room does affect the perceived sound to a degree, and with far too many speakers to a high degree.

I would disagree with the term "to a degree." The room is more important than the speakers in virtually every case I've ever encountered. I'm not suggesting room treatments are all that important. But the acoustic character of the room - it's dimensions basically - are more important than the speakers or any other part of an audio system. I can get better sound from lesser speakers in an acoustically superior room than I can with better speakers in an acoustically inferior room.

I did some blind testing years ago using two rooms. One was 25' long and 14' wide. By placing the speakers 6 feet from the back and listener 6 feet from the front and along the long walls, the acoustics were outstanding. The other room was 15' square. Neither room had any audiophile treatments.
Both had carpeted floors. The better speakers were B&W Matrix 802 and the lesser speakers were Boston Sub/Sat 6. All but one of the testers preferred the sub/sat 6 in the good room over the B&W in the poor room in a blind test. Yes, they preferred the B&W in the good room over the Boston in the good room. The difference in price between the speakers was pretty dramatic. So was the acoustic presentation produced by the rooms themselves.

One of the reasons movie theaters have good sound is that they are significantly deeper than they are wide.

The listening room itself is #1. Then speakers and then everything else.