What is Stereophile smoking? "Finest loudspeaker to ever grace my home"

And can I have some? I was reading through some Klipsch reviews to look at how horn-loaded speakers measure. In the Forte III review, Ken Micallef describes the Volti Audio Rival speakers as "the finest loudspeakers to ever grace [his] home." I thought, "Wow! These speakers must really be something special, then. Let's see how they measure." I was utterly shocked to see this frequency response graph:



A stereotypical smiley-face sucked-out graph with a horribly ugly booming 100 Hz peak and virtually no midrange to speak of. The area from 80-120 Hz or so (the BOOM zone) is nearly 15 dB louder than the vast majority of the midrange, and the treble is beyond "icepick" territory. So what gives? How does something that measures this poorly gain a "Class A" rating from this magazine?

It just irritates me to no end that a loudspeaker that costs eight thousand dollars can be sold with such off-kilter measurements, and the s̶h̶i̶l̶l̶s̶ gentlemen at Stereophile will give it such superlative praise as "finest ever" and "flat-out musical fun," and describe such screechy treble as "smooth, wide open, and grain-free." Then he goes on to say that the speakers have "immaculate transparency." I've always suspected that when reviewers describe something as "alive" and "transparent," they actually mean "tipped-up treble with no midrange." This seems to confirm that!

 

I also refuse to believe that any kind of natural stereo imaging can come out of a speaker with such a Himalayan mess as this step-response chart.

 

Some of that 100Hz peak is an artifact of John Atkinson's measurement regimen.

 

I don't read the Mags and like you, haven't heard the speaker. However, I listen to music, not graphs.

 

It is entirely possible for something to sound good and also measure well.

 

I think the summary in John Atkinson’s measurements spells it out pretty clearly.

 

Flat speakers are boring to many, if not most.

 

Ya, like pancakes without syrup.

 

Of course, the listening room will add its own take on the graph(s). I have a pair of KG-4s that probably don't graph well, but I still like them. I'll bet that many "historical" speakers don't graph all that well, but they do make a presence that make a statement, even if they are imperfect.

 

Do you measure your wine to decide if it’s any good? Just asking…..

 

BTW, lets add a graph of the listener's hearing response. So we have speaker response, room response and listener response and it all came out perfectly flat.

 

I try to measure as much as I can, when I make my own wine - from the soil, to the fruit, to the pH and sugar content. Of course, most of the process is up to the little yeasties, but measuring and monitoring sure helps!

 

For me listening is the golden standard. Measurements might give clues to the sound of a loudspeaker.

 

Some wines do come with a rating. This isn't a new thing. Wine Spectator

If I'm going to spend a certain amount on a bottle, it better have more than 90 points.

jeff

 

I guess over the years I’ve come to believe this:



“With audio my eyes can lie while my ears speak the truth.”

 

5dB down at 15KHz, then 15dB down at 20KHz? Can these be called full-range speakers?

I had an old pair of maggies that measured similarly (pre-quasi ribbon, and they were *not* marketed as full-range) You could absolutely tell, my MGMC1s are *much* clearer through the treble.

 

"Your ears are lying" -- Mr. Expectation Bias

 

My ears never lie. They told me so.

 

And add cartridge, phone preamp response, etc. etc.

 

A rating isn’t a measurement though. It’s subjective, as it should be. Another example: You can’t measure the quality of a painting by any scientific means….

 

Am I the only one who thinks it odd the review of these fairly large speakers would be conducted in this room? Listening Room: 12' L by 10' W by 12' H, system set up along long wall; suspended wood floor, 6"-thick walls (plaster over 2x4), wood-beamed ceiling.—Ken Micallef
He states the speakers were 5.5 feet from his listening chair. Who is going to place these speakers in a room that size?

 

Tell me about it. I had a what I thought was the original painting of
Édouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folis-Bergėre” until I scraped a bit of the paint off and saw the numbers underneath.

 

I bet these would sound great playing Layla and Wheels of Fire and other Tom Dowd productions.

 

Correct. So why did you bring it up?

jeff