This is continued on from this post in another thread https://www.marchaudio.net.au/forum/main/comment/602fbc1bf74c980017656431 Hi @oldgoalie3 I agree and disagree 😀 The measurements do tell us what's going on, however interpretation with speaker measurements is everything. This was the point Doug from Soundstage was making before he "disappeared" from ASR. I agree with the fundamental ideas that Toole et al have concluded regarding speaker design; that a flat smooth on axis anechoic response with a smooth off axis response is required. However real speakers are always compromised and will always deviate from this ideal. Said deviations may be subtle but have a big impact on the sound. Understanding the effect of any particular deviation is crucial and not always obvious. I have spent about a year on and off developing our first speaker ( Sointuva ) and that process has taught me a lot about the correlation between the measurements and perceived sound. In some areas subtle differences can make surprisingly large differences to the sound. Some of those differences aren't easy to read in the measurements, but they are there. One part of the frequency range and its slope affects how you perceive another part of the frequency range. My view is that as Amir hasn't spent time developing speakers he doesn't have a good understanding of those subtleties and is taking a very broad brushed approach to the data and drawing conclusions that won't necessarily be supported when listening. More importantly is the flawed methodology he uses. He measures and sees the data before sighted listening. So he is already primed to think the speaker may sound a certain way from his interpretation of the measurements. He would be the first to criticise (and has) others who ignore the effects of bias, yet he blatantly ignores it for this testing. He then EQs the speaker to correct what he has interpreted in the measurements to be wrong and miraculously everything is always fixed! It's just a self confirming bias loop. It's bad science. Basically I don't trust his sighted and uncontrolled subjective listening impressions any more than anyone else's. He would be best to just publish the measurements and leave out the subjective IMO.
