Re: 4" Midrange Comparison Shootout - Dyn, Scan, Hat, More
Ok I read over the results some more and I have a few question about the subjective listening test part.
If a driver were tonally accurate but were unable to
create any real feeling or emotion to the music, they were not overly detailed, and
did not produce an accurate sound stage. An increase in the high pass crossover frequency or slope would seem to help.
How does it rank lower then a driver with the following subjective comments. Is it the info in Bold above?
play with some detail but lacked richness and depth, sounding very dead and lifeless on most musical passages.
or
Detailed but dry with not much more to offer aside from great looks. These are great to show off as long as the speakers stay off.
or
sound very distorted and therefore makes it almost impossible to decipher what you are hearing. There were some high frequency detail aspects during songs, but the overall detail was poor due to the muted and muffled instrumentation.
or
the speaker created an almost hollow quality to the music, struggled to produce an accurate soundstage with instrumentation overpowering the voices at inappropriate times. The only redeeming quality with these speakers was their ability to play male and female vocals with some sense of accuracy.
or even this comment
The sound stage seemed well placed with just a fair amount of depth. Male and Female vocals sounded good with a full, pleasant quality, although a little too gruff and flat sounding on lower vocals and music. There was nothing these seemed to do bad, but nothing really great either as the music was not real lively and lacked emotion. One tester noted, “nothing really wrong, but they put me to sleep.”
ect....
The reason I ask is Tonal Accuracy is what most look for and not being overly detailed.
If it is the comments in Bold here is my take.
Sound stage in mobile audio has tons more to do with install then the driver itself. Emotion Feel is a human emotion and as I have done tests on many drives, the ones that gave me the most Emotion feel were not even the best in the test. If I missed something in your comments please point them out.
:blush:
Not being combative or knocking the results and anyone who knows me would tell you the same. I just would like to be a little clear on the subjective part of the test. Maybe there was something not being said, but I doubt it as seen from some of the other comments.
Also from my understanding it was supposed to be more a technical testing then a subjective one, but the ranking was done on subjective listening. The Tier is just another way of ranking or placement based on the subjective listening, Not based on technical info.
So this quote seem not to be exactly true. Still some spoon feeding and not exactly tested on there own merits.
Nothing against you MiniVanMan just using your post as you had connect with the reviewers.
Yeah, this wasn't a competition. Each driver was evaluated on it's own merits and will have comments published. I haven't seen the data, and I've only had it briefly explained, but it's going to be some sort of tier placement, that is categorical.
The initial idea was to do a "shootout" to see which was the best, and which ones performed to their price. Then as the process, and testers developed a more professional method for the testing it became apparent that there can't be a "best". That's too subjective and an extremely inaccurate way to evaluate a group of drivers that all have different strengths, weaknesses and need to be applied within a system uniquely. Which is essentially every driver.
Unfortunately, I think the individuals that like to be spoon fed will not be happy with the final data. They're going to have to read through a lot of information to find out which speaker meets their needs. There just won't be a "buy this speaker because it's the best".
and
x2 on this question: Can you explain why you placed so much emphasis on the nominal Qtc rating of .707, yet you did not desire to achieve it during the actual test?
But once more I still say great job and I truly thank you guy/gals for the effort it took to do this.