3 ms·
> But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically aud
by mbell 7y ago
> But when you start getting into things like frequency-dependent phase response, radiation patterns, reflections... there's a tremendous world of logically audible speaker behaviors that could maybe be measured in isolation, but you get so many of them that you can't assemble a meaningful picture of how a speaker is going to sound.
These things aren't particularly difficult to measure, we even have standard plots for them. Polar response, energy time curves, cumulative spectral decay, electrical phase and group delay are all standard measurements for a loudspeaker.
- beat 7y agoYes, but can consumers look at those and derive meaningful expectations for their subjective experience of using the speakers? And how many of those things are sensitive to dynamics, volume, signal complexity, etc? I think this stuff says a lot more about psychology than it says about technology. When I'm mixing music, my "final arbiter" for mix quality is the crappy stock speakers in my car. A mix may sound great on my studio monitors, but if it's not happening in that extremely inaccurate car system, it's not happening. A lot of professional mixers use "bad" speakers like Auracubes or Minimus-7s just to emulate that experience. And of course, this kind of experience is also inseparable from context. It's not just that they're car speakers... it's that they're in a car. They're in the door, not aimed at my ears. Their bass-reflex behavior is from the volume of the door and whatever venting it has, and reflections are completely crazy.