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I am surprised there aren’t more mentions here of AudioScienceReview.com For anyone interested in buying speakers (or other audio products), it’s a fantastic r

I am surprised there aren’t more mentions here of AudioScienceReview.com For anyone interested in buying speakers (or other audio products), it’s a fantastic resource and an essential one to avoid getting ripped off with severely overpriced and underperforming products; sadly, the high fidelity speaker space is crowded with such products (many of which are borderline scams), using a ton of pseudoscientific marketing babble to push products ranging from “snake-oil” bunk, to mediocre garbage that still costs the price of an exotic car for no good reason. If you’re curious to cut through the garbage, and learn how to achieve the best sound quality for the best price with a no-nonsense approach, AudioScienceReview is the place to go. They have the highest quality objective measurements on many speakers (that goes far beyond frequency response, before you brush it off thinking that’s what I’m talking about) and tutorials on the well-established science of what makes a speaker sound better than others, and how we design and evaluate this. It turns out you can get sound quality ~90% as good as it gets for just a few hundred dollars, and ~95% as good as it gets for a few thousand dollars (obviously just rough numbers here). Beware of speakers sold for exorbitant prices and exotic visual designs that tout how they are built, rather than what measured performance they achieve objectively. B&W speakers are not bad, and I enjoyed mine very much when I had them. But there exist far better speakers at a fraction of the cost, and this includes their high end (like the Nautilus).

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Can you list the far better speakers?
- electrograv 5y ago
  The “Speaker Rankings” tab here is useful: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/SpeakerTestData/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Spe... Otherwise, let me know your price range and size constraints, and I’ll refer you to the best engineered (with subjective impressions that back it up) speaker you can get. Note that generally to get good bass response you need larger speakers due to the laws of physics, but more exotic construction can push these boundaries, albeit at the expense of greater cost and electrical power demands. If you want to know what is objectively far better (and subjectively according to most, as the science predicts), look to the Revel F328Be, Genelec 8351B + Genelec W371A, Kii Three + BXT, Dutch and Dutch 8C. These are very expensive, but even in the worst case they are half the price of the B&W Nautilus and perform far better according to what the state-of-the-art science tells us. And subjectively, this is easily confirmed.
  - exhilaration 5y ago
    That's a great link, thanks! For any other cheapskates out there, here are their highest rated speakers under $250: https://public.tableau.com/shared/T2YR3HZ25?:toolbar=n&:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link&:embed=y https://public.tableau.com/shared/T2YR3HZ25?:toolbar=n&:disp...
  - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    Thank you! I hadn’t seen that rankings tab.
  - siavosh 5y ago
    I'm totally ignorant in this area, what would you recommend for general use speakers for a living room that can be sync'd to an iPhone or TV for <=$2k? Thank you.
    - electrograv 5y ago
      For speakers, I’d recommend a pair of Revel M106 (or M105) for ~$1500 new (on sale price, which you can negotiate with dealers usually) plus a ~$500 AVR or integrated amplifier capable of wifi music streaming and HDMI ARC support for TV connectivity, like a Sonos Amp or any of Denon’s AVR products (more on this below). ( ASR measurements + review of the Revel M106: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/revel-m106-bookshelf-speaker-review.14363/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r... ) There are possibly better quality speakers to pick from in this price range (e.g. Genelec 8330A, however this trades off some bass power which you probably don't want unless you have a subwoofer), but to connect these to your TV and streaming music simultaneously requires a more expensive AVR (Audio Video Receiver) that supports unamplified audio outputs, costing around $1K (e.g. Denon AVR-X3700H). It’s ironic because the Genelec 8330A have built-in amplification and digital inputs but don’t accept power-amplified signals, which is significantly more advanced in many ways, yet this advanced nature makes it harder to integrate with TVs and streaming audio simultaneously simply because most AVR products for TV-speaker integration are geared towards “passive” style speakers like the Revel’s for complex and historical reasons. (For some strange reason buying an AVR that allows you to bypass its amplifiers via preamp outputs ends up costing more than AVRs where the amplifiers are always on.) So for best connectivity in this price range, I’d recommend the Revel M106 along with a Sonos Amp. The Sonos software experience is by far the best at seamlessly and automatically transitioning between wifi streaming music and TV use modes, works natively with Spotify and almost every other music app, as well as having a good app of its own. However the Sonos Amp (and Sonos Port product which produces unamplified outputs, but for some strange reason omits the HDMI audio input the Amp has, unfortunately, so doesn’t integrate with a TV well) both lack the ability to calibrate bass to your room, which is very important if you plan to upgrade to speakers and/or subwoofers with deep bass, where EQ calibration to the room’s resonant frequencies is essential for best results. If you want to be a little more future-proof and feature rich, and also be open to multichannel home theater in the future, a modern Denon AVR receiver with Audessy room calibration capability and “HEOS” Music streaming is also really good, but it gets complex as there are a lot of choices and depends on how “future proof” you want to be. And they tend to be fairly bulky. Note that I’m assuming you want to be able to use the same pair of speakers for both TV output, and for music streaming when the TV is off. This significantly complicates the electronics, and few products get the user experience here right. If you’re willing to manually use a remote or buttons to switch modes, or dedicate the speakers to either exclusively streaming music (controllable from your phone of course), OR TV audio output (which via Spotify TV app can sometimes be sufficient for music too), then much simpler and cheaper options are available.
Tsiklon 5y ago
ASR is good for graphs and stuff if you know how to interpret things. One thing worth bearing in mind for people new to Hi-Fi audio is that the experience is very much subjective. That people’s tastes, wants and desires in music and listening experience differ wildly. That while a loudspeaker pair or headphone may measure or perform objectively well, it may not pair up well with your particular taste, or with your music. As an example Sennheiser’s HD800 is a well regarded high end headphone that does particularly well with the fine details of orchestral music, but lacks the low end punch required for Hip-Hop or other styles of bass heavy music, and it’s elevated treble can make the heavily distorted guitar of Black Metal incredibly grating on the ear. Of course everyone is different. If you know the equipment you like, and how it’s sound signature translates to graphs you can use the measurements and commentary on ASR to discover other equipment knowing how it differs within that context.
- electrograv 5y ago
  This trope that ‘the best audio product for you is a highly subjective personal choice’ directly contradicts decades of well-established science, and is a long-standing myth that plagues this industry — and not coincidentally, serves to sell a ton of over-expensive garbage to under-educated (by design, via marketing bunk) consumers. If you read ASR’s materials on headphone science and the HD800S review in particular, it will become entirely clear why it sounds the way it does, and what you need to do to EQ it to fix its tonal character issues out of the box. I own the HD800S and if it wasn’t for the scientifically derived EQ filters some community members have developed, I would be entirely unable to listen to them for the reasons exactly as you describe. But once the EQ is applied fixing their FR curve to the Harman target curve, suddenly the sound signature dramatically changes from unlistenably painful (for metal music, for example) to perfectly balanced sound. I should add though that headphones are definitely more subjective than speakers. This is because we are shoving a speaker 1 inch from our ears and hoping it will sound like the music is in the room around us instead of actually shoved right up against our ear — and the way this sounds actually does differ from person to person due to different ear canal geometry! This limitation is not the case for speakers, though! The consensus science shows that for speakers, an “objective best” does exist (such that the objective “best” has extremely high likelihood of sounding best to >95% of people), whereas for headphones this number is not as high (though I don’t know that number off the top of my head). And you know what’s great about ASR? They explain all this! All you need to do is read their resources and understand what the science does and does not help with.
js2 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370372
rodgerd 5y ago
> it’s a fantastic resource and an essential one to avoid getting ripped off with severely overpriced and underperforming product Yeah, you need to whip off the rose tinted glasses. ASR is a step in the right direction, but there are no shortage of issues with the quality and consistency of Amir's testing, or his ludicrous hyperbole.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Can you list the far better speakers?

electrograv 5y ago
The “Speaker Rankings” tab here is useful: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/SpeakerTestData/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Spe... Otherwise, let me know your price range and size constraints, and I’ll refer you to the best engineered (with subjective impressions that back it up) speaker you can get. Note that generally to get good bass response you need larger speakers due to the laws of physics, but more exotic construction can push these boundaries, albeit at the expense of greater cost and electrical power demands. If you want to know what is objectively far better (and subjectively according to most, as the science predicts), look to the Revel F328Be, Genelec 8351B + Genelec W371A, Kii Three + BXT, Dutch and Dutch 8C. These are very expensive, but even in the worst case they are half the price of the B&W Nautilus and perform far better according to what the state-of-the-art science tells us. And subjectively, this is easily confirmed.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  That's a great link, thanks! For any other cheapskates out there, here are their highest rated speakers under $250: https://public.tableau.com/shared/T2YR3HZ25?:toolbar=n&:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link&:embed=y https://public.tableau.com/shared/T2YR3HZ25?:toolbar=n&:disp...
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Thank you! I hadn’t seen that rankings tab.
- siavosh 5y ago
  I'm totally ignorant in this area, what would you recommend for general use speakers for a living room that can be sync'd to an iPhone or TV for <=$2k? Thank you.
  - electrograv 5y ago
    For speakers, I’d recommend a pair of Revel M106 (or M105) for ~$1500 new (on sale price, which you can negotiate with dealers usually) plus a ~$500 AVR or integrated amplifier capable of wifi music streaming and HDMI ARC support for TV connectivity, like a Sonos Amp or any of Denon’s AVR products (more on this below). ( ASR measurements + review of the Revel M106: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/revel-m106-bookshelf-speaker-review.14363/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/r... ) There are possibly better quality speakers to pick from in this price range (e.g. Genelec 8330A, however this trades off some bass power which you probably don't want unless you have a subwoofer), but to connect these to your TV and streaming music simultaneously requires a more expensive AVR (Audio Video Receiver) that supports unamplified audio outputs, costing around $1K (e.g. Denon AVR-X3700H). It’s ironic because the Genelec 8330A have built-in amplification and digital inputs but don’t accept power-amplified signals, which is significantly more advanced in many ways, yet this advanced nature makes it harder to integrate with TVs and streaming audio simultaneously simply because most AVR products for TV-speaker integration are geared towards “passive” style speakers like the Revel’s for complex and historical reasons. (For some strange reason buying an AVR that allows you to bypass its amplifiers via preamp outputs ends up costing more than AVRs where the amplifiers are always on.) So for best connectivity in this price range, I’d recommend the Revel M106 along with a Sonos Amp. The Sonos software experience is by far the best at seamlessly and automatically transitioning between wifi streaming music and TV use modes, works natively with Spotify and almost every other music app, as well as having a good app of its own. However the Sonos Amp (and Sonos Port product which produces unamplified outputs, but for some strange reason omits the HDMI audio input the Amp has, unfortunately, so doesn’t integrate with a TV well) both lack the ability to calibrate bass to your room, which is very important if you plan to upgrade to speakers and/or subwoofers with deep bass, where EQ calibration to the room’s resonant frequencies is essential for best results. If you want to be a little more future-proof and feature rich, and also be open to multichannel home theater in the future, a modern Denon AVR receiver with Audessy room calibration capability and “HEOS” Music streaming is also really good, but it gets complex as there are a lot of choices and depends on how “future proof” you want to be. And they tend to be fairly bulky. Note that I’m assuming you want to be able to use the same pair of speakers for both TV output, and for music streaming when the TV is off. This significantly complicates the electronics, and few products get the user experience here right. If you’re willing to manually use a remote or buttons to switch modes, or dedicate the speakers to either exclusively streaming music (controllable from your phone of course), OR TV audio output (which via Spotify TV app can sometimes be sufficient for music too), then much simpler and cheaper options are available.

Tsiklon 5y ago

ASR is good for graphs and stuff if you know how to interpret things. One thing worth bearing in mind for people new to Hi-Fi audio is that the experience is very much subjective. That people’s tastes, wants and desires in music and listening experience differ wildly. That while a loudspeaker pair or headphone may measure or perform objectively well, it may not pair up well with your particular taste, or with your music. As an example Sennheiser’s HD800 is a well regarded high end headphone that does particularly well with the fine details of orchestral music, but lacks the low end punch required for Hip-Hop or other styles of bass heavy music, and it’s elevated treble can make the heavily distorted guitar of Black Metal incredibly grating on the ear. Of course everyone is different. If you know the equipment you like, and how it’s sound signature translates to graphs you can use the measurements and commentary on ASR to discover other equipment knowing how it differs within that context.

electrograv 5y ago
This trope that ‘the best audio product for you is a highly subjective personal choice’ directly contradicts decades of well-established science, and is a long-standing myth that plagues this industry — and not coincidentally, serves to sell a ton of over-expensive garbage to under-educated (by design, via marketing bunk) consumers. If you read ASR’s materials on headphone science and the HD800S review in particular, it will become entirely clear why it sounds the way it does, and what you need to do to EQ it to fix its tonal character issues out of the box. I own the HD800S and if it wasn’t for the scientifically derived EQ filters some community members have developed, I would be entirely unable to listen to them for the reasons exactly as you describe. But once the EQ is applied fixing their FR curve to the Harman target curve, suddenly the sound signature dramatically changes from unlistenably painful (for metal music, for example) to perfectly balanced sound. I should add though that headphones are definitely more subjective than speakers. This is because we are shoving a speaker 1 inch from our ears and hoping it will sound like the music is in the room around us instead of actually shoved right up against our ear — and the way this sounds actually does differ from person to person due to different ear canal geometry! This limitation is not the case for speakers, though! The consensus science shows that for speakers, an “objective best” does exist (such that the objective “best” has extremely high likelihood of sounding best to >95% of people), whereas for headphones this number is not as high (though I don’t know that number off the top of my head). And you know what’s great about ASR? They explain all this! All you need to do is read their resources and understand what the science does and does not help with.

js2 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26370372

rodgerd 5y ago

> it’s a fantastic resource and an essential one to avoid getting ripped off with severely overpriced and underperforming product Yeah, you need to whip off the rose tinted glasses. ASR is a step in the right direction, but there are no shortage of issues with the quality and consistency of Amir's testing, or his ludicrous hyperbole.