From: chrisc@gold.gvg.tek.com (Chris Christensen)
Newsgroups: rec.audio
Subject: Re: Improvement to cost ratio of moving speakers
Date: 15 Apr 92 20:45:21 GMT
Organization: Grass Valley Group, Grass Valley, CA

In article <1992Apr13.143501.28444@uicc.com> neidorff@uicc.com 
(Bob Neidorff) writes:

>If you can indeed change the sound quality dramatically by speaker
>placement, as one poster observed, and you can make a good speaker
>sound worse with bad electronics, as many have proposed, then why
>should we as consumers put any faith in our own ears and auditioning
>at three different salons of three different products? 

If anyone auditions speakers, amplifiers, CD players, turntables, speaker
cables ANY item!  and doesn't not take out the variables then all of the
testing is invalid!

>The room is completely different, the electronics are very different, and the
>placement is tailored mostly for convenience of the store to display
>all of their wares at fairly good positions (wall of sound?).  Yuk.

If anyone listens to speakers in a room that is not properly treated
acoustically, be it "salon" or home, there WILL be differences in
the sound of the speakers. 

>To add insult to injury, you never listen to the same music when
>auditioning, right?

This is the one is the killer!

>Now, there ARE really objective comparisons.  You can take speakers
>home and compare them in your own "environment".  But who ever does?
>Few of us, I suspect.  I helped a friend with a comparison of speakers
>at his house.  We had three pairs lined up.  We listened for hours.  We
>finally concluded that despite the fact that all three were different
>constructions and different brands, you got what you paid for.  In that
>single instance, the $4000 Infinities sounded better than the $3000
>Magnats which sounded better than the $2000 Snells.  (Your mileage may
>vary).

But no "reference" to a Urei 813B or a 815B ?

>I am writing this to tease and solicit response from the subjectivists
>who claim that "when I heard XYZ, it sounded great/tinny/different".
>I wonder how good we humans are at assimilating the sonic "signature"
>of electronics, rooms, and speakers.  Let alone cables, power line
>quality and other more controversial differences.

So far I haven't seen any takers to your tease....

>I remember that when friend S heard speaker X at store B, it sounded like
>dog dung.  When he was at store C a month later, he again heard the same
>model X and it sounded like spun gold!  He was blown away and bought it.
>I know friend S is a critical, sensitive listener with a very refined
>ability to distinguish nuances in sound.

As sensitive as your friend is he has no idea what the room was doing
to the speaker (see "...take out the variables...." above).

>I welcome any flames at all.  I really am asking for them.  I even
>welcome support for this tenuous position.

Well Bob,  I think that you are poking fun at those who have done what
your friend did and I couldn't agree more with you.

I believe that you, as well as I am, are dismissed by all of the
audiophiles on this forum.  Didn't we have a similar discussion, off
line, a few months ago.......
-- 
Chris Christensen                  The opinions I express are my own,
chrisc@gold.gvg.tek.com            and sometimes they are wrong!
916-478-3419 FAX 916-478-3887      After all, I AM only human.
Newsgroups: rec.audio